Tag: crime

Road Trip, One of Charlie Kirk’s Antagonists Gets Some Karma, and the Wilks Family Deserves Praise (posted 10/24/25)

It’s good to be back home, and back in the friendly environs of CO Nation.

My trip north went well.  Since I wanted to stop and see my mom and sister in Tennessee, and to go up and hang out with the cousins in Illinois, I drove for the nearly 2500-mile round trip. 

That gave me time to catch up on some podcasts and listen to a few books on cd along the way.  I’m listening to CS Lewis’ That Hideous Strength for the first time in a long time, and it’s as gripping and weird as I remembered. 

And I was able to make the entire trip without being killed by an intoxicated illegal behind the wheel of a semi who bought his CDL for 5,000 rupees from Ken-Doll Newsom in California.  So I’ve got that going for me. 

Regular readers will remember that my mom has Alzheimer’s, and in August my sister and I finally had to move her into a memory care place in TN, near Rhonda’s home.  After a rough transition and a lot of struggles all around, we checked out a couple of more places, and have arranged to move her into a place that we think will be a better fit for her shortly.  Those of you who have gone through this know how fraught the process can be, and we have learned some hard lessons.

When I got to Illinois, the cousins and I drove up into Wisconsin, and enjoyed some cool weather and beautiful fall foliage.  On my way back south I stopped by Ottawa, Illinois to spend a contemplative hour at my maternal grandparents’ grave, which is beneath a maple in a pretty cemetery beside the Illinois river.  

Since we don’t have much of a fall here in Florida, I really appreciate October up north, which always evokes nostalgia and childhood memories of Halloween, diving into piles of leaves, and hayrack rides, followed by hot apple cider and maybe some roasted marshmallows.

Of course I didn’t have the chance for all that on this trip.  But I felt lucky to be able to spend some time on a cool, sunny autumn afternoon talking to my grandparents.  (I don’t know whether they can hear me, but I know where they are, and I suspect that they do.)

As usual during travel, I only caught bits and pieces of the news, but it seemed to be a continuation of the foolishness and absurdity that we’ve gotten used to. 

I saw that the usual suspects got together for the second annual “No Kings” extravaganza, and that they’re now 2-for-2.  Last year and this year they loudly and self-strokingly demanded that we not have a king.  And for the second year in a row, we don’t have a king.  So…mission accomplished!

(Please don’t anybody tell them that the reigns of Emperor Haile Selassi Obama and Sir Auto Pen are the closest we’ve come to having a king in nearly 250 years. They are so satisfied with themselves, and they can’t maintain that if outside reality intrudes into their bubble.)

I also saw that the big blue cities are still hell-bent on self-destruction.  Commie Mamdani appears to be on a glide path into the mayoralty of NYC, with his campaign slogan of, “Flee Now, Productive Citizens, Inshallah!” 

And another lefty with more than a dusting of Somali “Allahu akbar” is set to edge out Jacob “Wussy McPussington” Frey as mayor of Minneapolis.  Poor Minnesota!  Jazz Hands is their Governor, brother-marrying jihadi Ilhan Omar is one of their House reps, and Amy Klobuchar is one of their senators.

And now Mogadishu-St.Paul is going to be stumbling toward sharia law.  Well done, Gopher Staters!

But elsewhere, there’s a lot of good news happening.  Red states continue to do pretty well, and Trump continues to troll the eminently troll-able.  Especially entertaining were AI presentations of Trump and Melania in royal robes and crowns on “No Kings” day, as well as Trump in a Top Gun situation, dropping a few metric tons of fecal matter on the kind of protestors who have been spewing the same at us for many years now. 

I also have two other heartening stories.  The first comes from Oxford, England, where regular readers may remember that a Nigerian-Brit creep named George Abaraonye (whose name is not worth spelling correctly again) was elected the president of the Oxford Union back in June.  Because: DEI.

He had been one of the students Charlie Kirk debated there in the spring.  Charlie had been polite and respectful, and mopped the floor with Georgie, intellectually speaking.  Alabastard, on the other hand, acted like a total douche.  His conduct and arguments were as unsightly as his appearance.  (He wore slippers, sweatpants and a black t-shirt to an Oxford debate!) 

So when Charlie got murdered by a leftist spouting mainstream leftist talking points, Abalone checked all the boxes to establish himself as the quintessential leftist a-hole. 

First he posted a tweet celebrating the assassination.  (Check.)

Then, when he began to get blowback over his egregious behavior, he lied like a coward, claiming that he had posted one terrible tweet “in a moment of shock.”  (Check). 

It then turned out that he had posted other similarly awful tweets a bit later.  Because of course he did. (Check.)

In subsequent weeks, more and more influential figures began to protest Abhorrent’s hateful behavior.  Prominent speakers who had been scheduled to debate at the Oxford Union began cancelling.  Members of Parliament began criticizing Oxford, and the university finally published a condemnation of George, with the weak-sauce “his views don’t represent us” ploy.

So G. Abominable played the victim, claiming that his hateful remarks were “shaped by the context of Mr. Kirk’s own rhetoric” and whining that he had now become the target of “racist comments and threats.”   (Check.)

Finally, on October 18th, the Oxford Union took a no-confidence vote on Acrimonious.  They needed a two-thirds vote to oust him as president, and they got 5% more than that.

After checking another leftist box – Abysmal smeared his opponents, claiming that a vote against his hateful arse was “a victory for hate” – he completed the leftist Bingo card by…wait for it…becoming an election denier.

Check and mate!

His supporters pitched a fit, accusing the voters of “procedural sabotage and intimidation,” after which Appalling then did what we in the States call “pulling a Stacy Abrams.”  He defiantly declared that he was “still president-elect.” 

Okay, Georgie. 

Thank God Biden’s ghost is not still president, or George would come here illegally, the Dems would declare him a citizen, and he’d be their next nominee for President. 

Finally, I want to give a shout-out to an unlikely group: the family members of a black criminal shot dead by a white cop. 

On October 9th, Elijah Wilks, 26, was shot by a plainclothes cop who had been on his way to work.  The police told the Wilks family that Elijah had driven recklessly, cut off the cop and caused a minor collision, then stopped his car, got out and pistol-whipped the cop once with a handgun, after which he pointed the gun at the cop. The cop shot him, killing him.

The Wilks family initially said they didn’t believe the cops’ narrative, and demanded to see the dash-cam footage from the cop’s car.  The police showed them the video, which corroborated the police account.

Now this is a story we see every day in America, and it always seems to unfold the same way.  The family cries racism, proclaims their family member a saint who was brutally killed for no reason, and engages a racial arsonist like Al Sharpton. 

Sometimes they do this because they’ve imbibed the racial hatred of leftist propaganda.  Sometimes they see a big payday that can be gained from spineless authorities who are terrified of racism charges, bogus or not.  And sometimes, I’m sure, they do it because they honestly think their family member was innocent.

But in this case, the Wilks family rose above all that.  After they watched the dash cam video, they gave a press conference.  They had hired an attorney named “B’Ivory LaMarr,” who violated the Simpson Rule of Odd Apostrophes, to wit, “Never Trust a Man with an Odd Apostrophe in his First Name.”

But B’Ivory is B’atting .1000, because he announced, “I don’t think I’ve ever given a press conference and said this, but we will acknowledge that we do believe that this officer-involved shooting is justified.”

Elijah’s aunt said that her nephew “made a decision that he should not have made, and that’s just something we have to live with.”

And LaMarr concluded with, “Our hearts and our prayers go out to the off-duty officer.  I’m sure that he’s going through a healing process.”

Seriously, I nearly teared up when I read those words.  I can only imagine how painful it is to lose a family member like that.  And I’d guess that your grief is made even worse when mixed with anger at him, when you discover that his death is entirely his own fault, and the result of his own stupidly reckless behavior. 

At a terrible moment like that, and despite all of the toxic anti-whitey and anti-cop hatred you’ve been immersed in, I admire your ability to tell the hard truth, and to extend your sympathy to the man who was forced to kill your loved one. 

B’eautiful job, B’Ivory, and good on you, Wilks family!  You’ve earned some peace, after Elijah’s death.

Hamas and Trantifa delenda est!

My Strategy For Not Letting Politics Turn You Into an Idiot (posted 8/28/25)

In the comments to my Wednesday column, David Michael DeLoach wondered whether, when I mentioned that “an extended family member [of mine] is a manager of a Cracker Barrel,” I may have been talking about JB Pritzker.  Even though I probably wouldn’t admit it if the Round Mound of Unsound Governance were related to me, I can promise that he isn’t.

But the idea did cause me to wonder what that might be like.  The first thing I thought of was a hypothetical Thanksgiving if Uncle Pritzker – D(irigible) came over for dinner.  I can picture how it would start: I bow my head to say grace.  “Lord, we thank you for this—”

And the prayer is interrupted by a horrific, cacophonous chomping/gnashing/slobbering/crunching sound that drives us all to instinctively crouch beneath the table, before we open our eyes and slowly peek out.

Annnndddd…there’s a stripped-clean turkey carcass that looks like a school of piranhas just swam over it and JB’s chair is empty.  And probably broken into kindling. 

And, scene.

Okay, having got that out of the way…

Regular readers often tell me that I’m a role model for them.  Well, maybe not “often.” 

Okay, one reader said that once.  He said that whenever he’s faced with a choice, he asks, “WWMD?” (What would Martacus do?) and then acts accordingly.   And who am I to contradict his wise plan?

So as a public service, I will now explain how I think we should behave when we’re confronted with bonehead mistakes by politicians on our side of the aisle.  And it’s a pretty simple plan:

Admit it.  Don’t lie about it, or try to spin it.  Call it a mistake, explain your reasoning, and then do whatever you can to persuade people to agree with you, and to persuade the politician to reverse course. 

Don’t be a spoiled narcissist and stomp away, pouting that your guy has betrayed you, and if you ever vote again, it won’t be for him!

After that, recognize that no politician will please you 100% of the time, and consider rating your guy with a batting average.  If he’s hitting over .500, that’s good.  Anything over .700 is great, and the best you’re likely to get in this fallen world.

Then move on with your life.

I’ll give you an example. I am a dedicated conservative, and pretty much no politician with a chance of winning national office is conservative enough for me.  So I’m generally hoping for the best, but expecting to be disappointed fairly often, without that thought crushing me.  (I might call this being “cautiously optimistic.”)

Right now I’d say that Trump is hitting around .750, and I’m loving a lot of what’s happening.  Closing down the border in 20 minutes, ramping up deportation efforts through various means (raids prioritizing the worst of the worst, encouraging self-deportation through the app and even cash payments, etc.), the BBB tax breaks, cracking down on antisemitism on campuses, cutting USAID and the Department of Education and PBS/NPR, some DOGE cuts, taking out Iran’s nuke facilities etc. and etc.

But he’s not a consistent and disciplined conservative, so he’s done things I don’t like.  I don’t like the “no taxes on tips” – not because I don’t like tax cuts, but because I don’t like the government picking winning and losers, and giving bennies to some blue collar workers (wait staff) over others (cooks, bus boys, etc.).  Just lower taxes across the board, and let the free market work.  

I don’t like the feds taking stakes in private companies (Intel, Nvidia, etc.), for the same reason.

I think his tariffs have been more chaotic and confusing than they’ve needed to be, and I don’t understand imposing them on our allies as much (or sometimes more than) on our enemies.

Speaking of the Chicoms, I also don’t like inexplicably playing nice with them, as when he has allowed them to keep TikTok going (breaking an earlier promise), and especially agreeing to allow 600,000 Chinese students to take up slots in our universities and gather intelligence for a brutal communist dictatorship. 

And as positive as Trump’s governing results have been, I think he’s giving up 10-15 points in approval – which becomes political capital in future battles – as a penalty for acting more like a jackass than he needs to.    

Still, all things considered, he’s doing a really good job, and considering the hellish possible Hillary and Que Mala administrations that he’s saved us from, he’s by far the best president since Reagan, IMHO.       

See?  Was that so hard?  I know that parts of it probably bugged some of you, but we’re all fine.  I might even be wrong about some of it.  (Spoiler alert: nope!)

Now let’s look at the other side of the aisle, to the smoking, clattering, rattling wreck that is the national Democrat party and their MSM remoras.  How have those elite Dems been reacting to Trump’s second term so far?  Are they admitting the mistakes their side has made, or some of the good moves that Trump has made, and doing a little self-reflection?  Are they trying to call balls and strikes, and trying not to look like they’ve gone bat-guano crazy?

Hoo-boy, they are NOT! 

Start with the border.  The Dems are obviously on the losing end of that issue, but they can’t just admit that Trump was right to close the border.  And when he deports a high-profile bad actor like Kilmar, the Dems can’t just say, “Okay, he’s a bum, but a lot of the illegals are good people just trying to make better lives for themselves.”

Nope, they’ve got to claim he’s an unjustly victimized Maryland father.  And when it comes out that his wife told the cops that he was beating her – twice! – they say, “Don’t believe all women!”  And when he has common MS-13 tattoos, and when video surfaces of him smuggling half a dozen Mexicans cross-country in another gang-member’s car? 

The Dems plug their ears and close their eyes and chant, “Mary-land fa-ther, Mary-land fa-ther” over and over again.

Or consider crime.  When Trump goes into DC and crime immediately drops, the Dems can’t just say, “Thanks for the help, and we now realize that we need to do more, so we’ve got it from here.”

Nope, they’ve got to scream about orange fascism, and show the country that they’d rather let their black constituents die than let them be protected by the Apricot Adolf.  Ken-Doll Newsom tried to troll Trump, pointing out cities in Red States with higher murder rates per capita than LA.  Annnnddd… all of those cities have been governed entirely by Democrats for decades.  D’oh!

When a smarter Democrat like (don’t laugh) Joe Scarborough tried to keep Chicago’s awful mayor “Let’s Go” Brandon Johnson from making the same mistake of denying his obvious crime problem, Johnson was too dimwitted to take the lifeline.

Scarborough first asked him if an extra 5,000 cops on the beat would help, but Johnson rambled about how money for more housing and education would help.  Joe tried again, suggesting that more cops would be useful, but Johnson Que-Mala-ed off into some word salad about how the question is too complex and multifaceted, and root causes, and infrastructure…

To his credit, Joe said, “That’s not what I asked,” and begged the dope to just say that more cops could be part of the solution.  But Let’s-Go was still muttering his previous answer. “…and systemic racism, and Jim Crow, and unequally distributed resources…”

When Joe finally threw up his hands and gave up, Johnson then had his bodyguards pop some smoke outside the studio, so that he could run serpentine to his limo amid chattering small arms fire, while he called back over his shoulder, “We don’t want Trump’s KKK storm troopers here, we’re doing fine!”    

The lefties have been doing the same thing about redistricting.  Rather than just admitting that they’ve gerrymandered in all the blue states but that it’s sleazy and everyone should stop it, they have to pretend that the GOP move to do it in red states is an unprecedent assault on democracy. 

David Brooks, the formerly reasonable person who sold his soul to become the token “conservative” at the NYT compared Texas redistricting to the use of mustard gas in war!  And he couldn’t even leave it at that, saying “I fully grant you that Trump started it,” when he knows perfectly well that the largest blue states are more lopsidedly gerrymandered than the red states will be after they redistrict.

Finally, the tragic shooting in Minneapolis, which is a story we’ve seen way too often: mentally unstable damned soul commits mass killing atrocity.

Decent people would feel the grief and hold their tongues and support the victims in any way they could.  Stupid politicians would jump in and start assigning blame without knowing the facts.  Evil morons would apply their political litmus test, playing the story up if the killer could be identified with their opponents, or trying to bury it if he’s associated with their side, and lying about the details either way. 

Does anyone have to guess which way the Dems and the MSM (but I repeat myself) played the Minneapolis story? 

Even after so many such stories have blown up in their faces in the past, the Dems can’t resist jumping on the rake again.

Mayor Jacob Frey – who you may remember as Mayor Wussy McPussington from several years ago, when he was surrendering his city to BLM rioters –sneered at those offering “thoughts and prayers,” and condemning anyone who noticed that the killer identified his own “trans” identity as one source of his misery as transphobic bigots.

A soporific NPR host, after an interview in which a Minneapolis official correctly called the male killer “he,” corrected the “error,” saying that we don’t know the killer’s identity or how “they” identify.”  Later on, the New York Times cleared up the confusion, calling the male killer “her.”  Because: journalism!

Talented writer/moron Stephen King – perhaps thinking that since inanimate objects in his fiction (e.g. the car Christine) kill people, inanimate guns must also kill people in the real world – shared his wisdom about the culprit.  “Whether he was transgender is beside the point.  The point is he had a gun.” 

(Um, do I have to admonish you about misgendering the obviously female killer, Stephen?  Shame on you!)

A gun “expert” on CNN agreed with King that semi-automatic weapons are the problem.  Then he immediately proved that he doesn’t know the most basic facts about guns, by saying that “these things [semi-auto weapons] can shoot dozens of bullets in just one trigger pull.”  (Of course, FULLY automatic weapons do that.  And in this context, they are the opposite of SEMI-automatic weapons, you numbskull.)  

Perhaps the best example of leftist lying about this newest story came from ABC News reporter Aaron Katersky who said that “the name of Donald Trump” was written on his guns.  Could this finally be the elusive, murderous Trump supporter whom the legacy media has been waiting for, lo these many years?

Nope!  It turns out the phrases, “Kill Donald Trump” and “Kill Trump Now!” appeared on the killer’s guns. 

If I didn’t know the killer is already dead, I’d phone in a tip to the cops that they might need to see if Tim Wolz, Gavin Newsom or most of the Democrat members of congress can account for their whereabouts at the time of the shooting. 

Because that sounds like something straight out of the DNC.  

Hamas delenda est!

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!

Red and Blue See Crime & Punishment Very Differently (posted 8/18/25)

In recent decades, attitudes toward crime from the right and the left have diverged, not because the GOP has moved a lot, but because the Dems have raced to their extreme left.

Conservatives have always been enthusiastic about law and order, and prone to more vigorous law enforcement, and it’s no coincidence that red states are the ones who allow the death penalty.  The attitude of many conservatives has been parodied as, “If you kill someone in a red state, we’ll kill you back.”

And most of us don’t mind that jibe one bit.

While old-school Dems also wanted to live in crime-free communities, their approach to the justice system was heavy on the rehabilitation and light on the punishment.  They had some good points, and for prisoners who were willing to make changes in their lives and rehabilitate themselves, some good came out of that approach.  But nobody can say the results weren’t mixed, at best.

However, conservatives’ attitudes toward law enforcement have also been complicated, due to our instinctive skepticism about the encroachments of the power-hungry State.  Tensions were brought to the fore during covid, when conservatives in blue states had repeated and increasingly contentious run-ins with states who quickly instituted draconian restrictions, and then held onto them like grim Pelosi.

Sorry, that’s “grim death.”

Most blue states imposed mandatory lock-downs, mandatory school and business closings, mandatory masking, and Rube Goldberg rules about everything.  You had to wear a mask on a plane, but the airline served snacks…which you could eat by lowering your mask…but only for long enough to stuff some snacks into your mouth.   After which you should yank your mask back up, so you could aspirate a mouthful of peanuts and choke your way to a covid-less death.  Hooray for science!

You had to stay 6 feet apart, and could only occupy some buildings at 25% capacity – two numbers that were plucked out of thin air, and meant nothing.

California filled skate parks with sand…because young kids who were at no risk from the virus needed to be prevented from getting fresh air and exercise, lest they be slain by the virus that was no threat to them in the first place. 

California also arrested a guy who was paddle boarding.  Alone.  In the ocean.

So normally pro-law-enforcement conservatives became scofflaws during Covid.  Most of them will explain the contrast by drawing a distinction between laws – which we support pretty enthusiastically – and regulations – some of which are reasonable…but not many.

Traditional Democrats/leftists have usually been much more fond of regulations in general – they love to tell you what kinds of toilets or light bulbs or cars you may buy, and (recently) that you ladies must allow a creepy dude to watch you shower, while he levitates a towel in front of him without the use of his hands.

And you are legally required to call him “Crystal.” 

What has changed lately is that what had been the extreme fringe of the left has wrested away control of the Democrat party.  They have not just energetically piled into the lefty clown car, they’re now driving it!  

Consider the dramatic changes in just the last several decades.  In the early 1990s, Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously coined the phrase “defining deviancy down,” by which he meant permissively normalizing bad behaviors.  Some of those were social – removing the stigma from out-of-wedlock births, allowing “social promotion” of under-performing students in schools – but many involved the greater acceptance of criminal behavior.

Think about that.  Not that long ago – not in Pilgrim America, or Victorian England, but when Kurt Cobain was still alive! – one of the most influential Dems could write an essay calling for more stringent enforcement of traditional social and legal norms, and get a respectful hearing and a lot of support from elected and influential lefties all over the country.

Today, that world seems as dead and gone as Julius Caesar, or Joe Biden.

The dominant far-left – the group who cheers on the murder of a CEO by a trust-fund coward, who will elect Commie Mamdani in NYC, and who has stage-four TDS – has lost its ethical moorings when it comes to crime.  They’ll ignore and deny that crime is happening, and dare you to disagree.

Baltimore and New York City are as safe as Pennsylvania Dutch country during Amish-Fest.  Publicly defecating meth-enthusiasts in San Francisco are “outdoorsmen.”  Shambling armies of mentally ill addicts living in filthy tents all over LA and Seattle and Portland are “urban campers.”  Brother’s-widow-jumping addict Hunter Biden is “the smartest person I know.”    

Nearly a century ago, four gunmen killed seven rival gangsters in Chicago in the still-infamous “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.”  Today, seven Chicagoans are killed every other weekend, and it barely makes the papers.  And if you do notice it, Mayor Brandon will call you a racist.

Even worse, lefty pols and media actively excuse the most brutal acts if they’re perpetrated by one of their pet victim groups.  The half-dozen black criminals who beat and stomped three defenseless middle-aged white folks in Cincinnati were defended by a black elected official on racial solidarity grounds, and by a black police official because the video you watched “lacked context.”

There is a silver lining in this mess, though, because the legacy media’s ridiculous crime coverage is giving them even more opportunities to discredit themselves.  They’ve already greatly decreased their ability to harm their enemies and help their friends.  Accusations of racism used to end careers; now they elicit mostly eye rolls.  Reports that some leftist project is succeeding or some rightist action is bringing about the apocalypse are both greeted with instinctive skepticism or outright disbelief.

And the Left’s doubling down on crime is putting them even more behind the 8-ball.  Trump’s move into DC has maneuvered them into insisting that DC is super safe, and the residents there resent law enforcement coming in and ham-handedly arresting all of the violent criminals who weren’t really there, and confiscating all the illegally-owned guns that don’t exist.  Or something. 

The infamous covid-era “mostly peaceful protests” (spoken by a leftist reporter in front of a block full of burning buildings) has now got two new contenders in dishonest cluelessness.  The first was CNN empty head Erin Burnett’s idiotic description of the whacko who killed three people in NYC a couple of weeks ago: “male, mustache, sunglasses, possibly white.”

Burnett immediately became a laughingstock, because viewers could see a picture in real time of the killer walking into the building while carrying a rifle.  Burnett was referencing that picture, and she got the male, facial hair, and sunglasses parts right.  

But that guy was as white as Liz Warren is Cherokee.  (#wemustneverstopmockingher) 

The sunglasses hid his eyes – which in subsequently released pics had an Asian look to them – but he was clearly black, and it wasn’t a close call.  He had a short Afro, and he looked like if John Shaft and Billy Dee Williams had had a baby. 

By the way, this just in from Cincinnati: Seven people have been arrested in the beatings, and they include a Montianez, a Jermaine, a Dekyra, a Dominique, and an Aisha. 

Or, as Erin Burnett would put it, “they’re all possibly white.” 

The second contender in the leftist cover-up sweepstakes comes to us from New Jersey, courtesy of a “journalist” named Dana DiFilippo.  Dana was covering the story of an illegal alien named Raul Luna-Perez, who was picked up for DWI three times in four months.  The third time, he caused a wreck that killed a woman and her daughter.

So Perez is an illegal who could have been detained and deported just for that.  And he should have been arrested, detained, convicted and eventually deported for either of his first two DWIs.  But it’s a blue state, so he was able to go for the drunk driving hat-trick, and kill two innocent people.  But at least he was jailed and held for trial and eventual deportation then, right?

Have you not been paying attention?  Blue state.  Leftist judge. 

So he was released pending his trial. (Fortunately, Biden and Que Mala lost last November, so he was quickly picked up by ICE, and is no longer on our streets.)

So how did Dana cover this story?  First, she called Perez an “undocumented immigrant.” Because of course she did. 

Then she said that he was “at the center of an immigration fight between Trump and NJ’s Governor.”  Nice use of the passive voice there.  He’s not an illegal immigrant serial drunk-driving killer.  He’s just caught up in a fight between Bad Orange Man and NJ governor of indeterminate political persuasion.

But the part of her one-paragraph post that caused Dana to quickly delete her entire X account and flee into the night came next, when she claimed that Perez “had a largely clean driving record, despite prior DUI arrests.” 

Let that sink in.

Wouldn’t Dana make a great defense lawyer? 

“Your Honor, members of the jury, my client Mr. Bundy has met literally THOUSANDS of women in his lifetime, and he’s accused of murdering no more than a few dozen of them, tops.  I’d call that a largely clean dating record. I rest my case.”

Ugh.  We don’t hate the media enough, people.

But we’re getting there.            

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!

The Moral Confusions of the National Democrats (posted 6/5/24)

Today’s theme is moral inversion.

Not to be confused with cranial-rectal inversion, which is a common phenomenon on the left.  (See: “let’s defund the police so that crime will go down,” or “if a dude puts on a pair of ruby slippers and taps his heels together while saying, “I’m a girl,” he’s a girl.)

One example of moral inversion is the way national Democrats deal with the statute of limitations, which is the legal principle setting a time limit after a crime, during which charges must be brought.  It’s a reasonable rule, because as time goes by, evidence is lost, witnesses die and memories fade. 

Dems have provided several great examples of why a statute of limitations is necessary.  When the left wanted to stop Brett Kavanaugh from getting onto SCOTUS, activist/loon Christine Blasey Ford came forward to accuse him of raping her decades ago. 

Unfortunately for lovers of distorting the constitution, Ford was a little fuzzy on the details.  Details such as where it happened, and who else was there, and what town it was in, and what year it occurred. 

I’m not kidding.  She couldn’t remember the YEAR.  Which is all you needed to hear to know that she was full of (Adam) Schiff.  Because anyone who had any really bad experience in high school – never mind something as traumatic as being raped! – can tell you the year it happened. 

In fact, many people recall their teenage years mainly through the disasters: freshman year was when I broke my arm; sophomore year was when my folks got divorced and Beth broke up with me; junior year I totaled dad’s car and got chlamydia; senior year I voted for Bill Clinton.  Etc.

Of course, Kavanaugh wasn’t charged with a crime; the Dems were just trying to smear him to keep him off the court. 

But even though Ford turned out to be a lemon (ha!), the Dems were undeterred.  Last year the corrupt NY Dem party passed a law that temporarily got rid of the statue of limitations, specifically so that E. Jean Carrol ( I’m guessing that the “E” stands for either “eccentric” or “erratic”) – a fruitcake who makes Blasey Ford look almost high-functioning by comparison – could accuse Trump of sexually assaulting her almost 30 years ago.

Or maybe more than 30 years ago.  Because she too could not even pin down the year when the phony assault supposedly happened.  At one point she said that it was definitely a specific year in the 1990s because she remembers wearing a designer dress that came out that year.  Except that when someone looked it up, it turns out that the dress didn’t exist that year.  D’oh!

But never mind.  The Dems trashed the law, and got their false accusation turned into a civil conviction against Trump. 

And then last week, the Dems found a judge and DA so corrupt that they once again broke the law by charging Trump for mis-classifying business records – misdemeanors on which the statute ran out in 2019, if they had actually happened in the first place. 

But they zapped those dead charges back to life – much as they do with Joe Biden’s earthly remains before a public speech – and turned them into 34 transparently illegitimate felony convictions.

So the Dems are happy to trample the statute of limitations when it serves their purpose.  But how do they regard the statute when it can be useful to them?  As the most sacred of legal principles, of course.

Enter addict, dead-beat dad, and dead-brother’s-widow-jumper Hunter Biden.  Among his many apparent crimes are some serious actions of corruption and bribe-taking from foreign governments, most of which implicate his corrupt dad (and our current Cadaver-in-Chief).

Those crimes would be relatively easy to prove in court, partly because of the mountain of evidence against him, and partly because a jury would have to believe many patently unbelievable things to acquit him. 

Things such as that a shady Ukrainian energy company paid him $80K per month purely for his expertise in Ukrainian energy – even though he couldn’t find Ukraine on a map, and all he knows about energy is that snorting a bunch of cocaine off a hooker’s rump gives you A LOT of it.

“So Martin,” you are not asking, because you already know the answer, “when is Hunter’s devastating trial on those serious crimes going to start?  I thought he was only facing relatively paltry gun and tax evasion charges.”

You’re right, of course.  Because Merrick Garland – and say what you will about the Chinless Cartoon Turtle Mitch McConnell, but he kept that creep off SCOTUS! – Toobin-ed his way through the first three years of Biden’s term. 

And just when he got around to considering the slam-dunk case against Hunter, wouldn’t you know it?  That pesky statute of limitations had run out. 

To quote the mobster who whacked Joe Pesci in Goodfellas, reporting the news to DeNiro:  “That’s that.  And we couldn’t do nothing about it.” 

So when it’s one of their guys, they use the statute to evade the consequences of their crimes, and when it’s someone from the other side, they misuse the statute to convict on non-existent crimes.

THAT’s moral inversion.   

Media figures and “journalists” are especially skilled at moral inversion.  Stories about the rights of women and girls to be safe from disordered men using their showers and bathrooms are called stories about “trans rights.” Abortion is called “women’s health care.”  Jill Biden is called a “doctor.”

Another recent example – which also fits perfectly into my column category of “you don’t hate the media enough” – comes from Mannheim, where a cop was stabbed to death.  Two of the MSM headlines were as follows: “Officer dies after being repeatedly stabbed in attack at anti-Islam rally in Germany,” and “Officer Stabbed During Attack at Far-Right Rally Dies.”

Now if you had the miniscule IQ or the gullibility of an Ivy League grievance studies major – or of AOC, just to pick a random juicy booty (her words, not mine) out of a hat – you might jump to a conclusion.  You’d focus on the key words – Germany, Far-Right, anti-Islam rally, cop gets stabbed – and figure that the Germans were reverting to aggressive form, and menacing the adherents of the Religion of Peace™

But nope!  The stabber turned out to be a radical Muslim from Afghanistan.

UNEXPECTEDLY! 

Also, Yay, diversity!

Tragically, the deceased officer died largely because when some Germans jumped on the terrorist who had already stabbed people, the cop and others yanked the Germans off of the terrorist, to protect him. 

After which he turned on the cop – who was holding down an innocent German at the time – and fatally stabbed him in the back.     

Ugh. Rather than end on that dark note, I’ll give you one final example of moral inversion, along with an example of how to think clearly.

Before I left for Colorado, the Iranian president – a mass-murdering jihadi sadist named Ebrahim Raisi – died in a hilarious helicopter crash in the mountains, along with several of his weird-beard co-religionist co-conspirators. 

The guy was called “The Butcher of Tehran.”  And not because he cheerfully provided the kind of tomahawk pork chops and ribeye steaks which all good meat-eaters appreciate. 

So how did NBC describe him in the sub-head of their story on the crash?  As “a hard-line conservative cleric.”  Because of course they did.  Because they suck.

And how did the Biden administration respond?  By issuing a State Department statement offering its “official condolences” for the death. 

To see how a government official should actually respond to the much-deserved death of a smelly terrorist leader, I refer you to Trump’s announcement of the death of ISIS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, whom our special forces – and military dogs! – raided and killed.

If you haven’t seen it before, you must watch Shane Gillis’ hilarious four-minute recounting of Trump’s epic, trash-talking speech that night.  The most famous line from it is that al-Baghdadi “died like a dog.”  But my favorite moment is one that Gillis highlights.

Trump acknowledged that Baghdadi likely had a suicide vest on, and talked about the way our special forces guys went in through a wall with a robot and military dogs.  “They used dogs… beautiful dogs.”

And then he mocked Baghdadi, praised our troops and our dogs, and then mocked Baghdadi some more.

THAT’s how you announce the death of a terrorist!   

On a related note, I can only hope that the IDF is deploying dogs in Rafah right now.

Beautiful, Jewish dogs.     

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!

Law and Order Stories (posted 4/15/24)

Today I’m concentrating on stories involving crime and punishment.  So I’ll start in Chicago. 

Unexpectedly!  (For those of you scoring at home, that’s the earliest I’ve managed to work “unexpectedly!” into a column.)

I regularly watch videos channels featuring coverage of armed confrontations between criminals and cops/security guards/civilians, to pick up tips on situational awareness and to be entertained. (I find stupid criminals and stupid politicians to be continually battling for the top spot in a “human folly” competition.)

Among my favorite such channels are Donut Operator, Active Self Protection and Code Blue Cam.  Those sites shine a light on bad and incompetent cops – there seem to be a lot of obese cops on the job, and many who don’t appear to have won top grades for firearm safety, for example – but most of the encounters reveal the kind of dangerous idiots cops have to deal with every day.

After watching hundreds of those videos, I would say that the over/under on “number of police commands ignored and/or defied before getting shot by cops” has got to be around 85, at least.  If I had a dollar for every such command not complied with – “turn off the car, step out of the car, keep your hands where I can see them, drop the knife, drop the gun, don’t stab that K-9, put down the hooker, Hunter” – I’d be Elon Musk. 

Anyway, this first one is not just a stupid criminal story; it’s also a “you don’t hate the media enough” story.  Because here is the media’s account of the encounter between Dexter Reed (26) and Chicago police in late March: Reed – a budding entrepreneur who wanted to launch a clothing line – was a loving, funny and all-around great guy.  Look at these smiling pics of him at his graduation! 

The Washington Post story opened with him telling his mom that he was going for a ride, then says that he “was killed that same day” when cops fired at him “96 times within 41 seconds.” Virtually every MSM story says that the cops stopped him for not wearing a seatbelt, and the synopsis of those stories is a stark narrative: “racist cops execute angelic black guy in hail of gunfire because he wasn’t wearing a seatbelt.”

The reality of the situation, you will not be shocked to learn, was just a little bit different.  Fortunately, the officers involved had body cams on, which you would think would make the creepy MSM hacks slow their roll on the lying.  But… nope!

Reed came in on the “under” in terms of defied commands: the first cop to encounter him as he rolled his window down asked him what he was doing and he said, “Nothing.”  Then he rolled his window half-way up.  The cop told him “Roll the window down” three times (spoiler alert: he did not roll his window down), and then told him to unlock or open his door 8 times (spoiler alert: he did neither). 

The reason he ignored so few commands is that he opened fire on cops after only 11 ignored commands.  He hit one cop in the wrist, before multiple cops opened up on him in an impressive display of “tumultuous conduct.”  MSM reports first said he was shot “more than 100 times,” then said that the cops “fired 96 times,” though that number apparently counted the 11 shots that he fired at them in that total.

Oh, did the MSM not mention that he fired at cops first, wounding one of them?  Or that he had previous convictions that precluded him from legally carrying a gun, and that he was “out on pre-trial release” (bail, schmail!) involving earlier gun-related felonies?  Or that most of the cops who fired at him were black, as was the cop he shot and wounded?

No? Isn’t that strange?

To be fair, the WaPo DID report that he shot first.  <Kinison filter: IN PARAGRAPH 8!  OH! OHHHH!! >  (In other words, they literally “buried the lede!”)    

Of course, this is a political story as much as it is a crime story.  Our MSM desperately needs another George Floyd story to stoke hatred in the nation.  They are dying to be able to trumpet the case of decent, innocent black folk gunned down by the vile forces of white supremacy. 

And yet the demand for such stories so outstrips the supply that they are reduced to trying to make angels out of career criminals who are justifiably shot or killed in the act of committing violent crimes.  (Trayvon  Martin was bashing his victim’s head against concrete when he was shot.  Michael Brown was assaulting a cop and fighting to get his gun when he was shot.  Breonna Taylor was standing beside her drug-dealer boyfriend when he shot at cops who returned fire, killing Taylor.  George Floyd himself was a career criminal whom the coroner’s report proved died of an overdose. Etc.) 

Democrat voters in Chicago have elected one Dem mayor after another for over a century, and they’re getting what they voted for, good and hard.  Their last mayor – Lori Lightfoot — was the most racist and disastrously incompetent ever. 

But in 2023, when the voters had dumped Lightfoot in the primaries, they said, “Hold my malt liquor, and watch this,” and elected the truly egregious Brandon Johnson.  A recent scathing news story about Chicago’s continuing deterioration contains the most damning sentence ever: Johnson “has managed in just 11 months in office to make former Mayor Lori Lightfoot look competent.” 

Ouch!  That’s right up there with, “makes Sheila Jackson Lee look like an astrophysicist,” or, “makes AOC look like a valedictorian.”

By the way, the other candidate in last year’s Chicago run-off was another lefty Dem named Paul Vallas.  Vallas was running with a huge weakness – he’s white, in a city where the vast majority of Democrat voters are whitey-haters – and Johnson won pretty easily.  Vallas was also competent…in a city where that is frowned upon.

When the Dexter Reed story broke, Vallas posted, “DON’T SHOOT COPS.  When you shoot at cops, let alone wound one, they are going to shoot back and not count the bullets.” 

Words to live by. 

Or to die by, I guess.  Well done, Chicago voters!

But Chicago is facing stiff competition in its striving for the title of the most crime-ridden city.  Another contender is St. Louis, one of many Dem-run cities described as being in a “doom loop” of high crime, tax flight, business failures and empty buildings. One stark example is the former AT&T building, which at 44 stories is the third tallest building in town. 

It sold in 2006 for $205 million; it recently sold again, this time for $3.6 million.  D’oh!

“How could this have happened,” you are not asking, because you already know.  And yes, it turns out the last GOP mayor of St. Louis left office 75 years ago. 

Today, St. Louis’ mayor is a real peach named Tishaura Jones.  (If you read that name and thought, “white supremacist?” turn in your Cautious Optimism badge and ID, because you are officially suspended pending further investigation.)

Last month Jones joined a “coalition of black mayors against crime in the US.”  Because as one of those mayors put it, “Many of these leaders come from the communities most affected by crime, so they have a unique perspective on solving it.” 

Jones certainly has a unique solution for the owners of gas stations and convenience stores who have been plagued by crime in her lawless city.  And before you can ask:  No, I am not making the following quote up. 

Saith Tishaura, “How can we hold the business owners accountable?”    

That’s right.  She runs a city, and oversees a police department, whose job is to stop criminals from preying upon – among others – the owners and customers of gas stations and convenience stores.  Her city and her police department are failing miserably. 

So naturally, she’s blaming the business owners!  (Coming soon, the Tishaura Plan to Prevent Rape: We must hold women accountable for getting raped!  Her talking points will include, “Why are you putting on makeup, and dressing attractively?  And going outside of your house at night?  And also in broad daylight?  Not to mention at dusk, or dawn?”)

Before you declare that that might be the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard, let me take you to San Francisco, where a Democrat brain trust has come up with another “unique solution” to businesses going broke in their city: make it illegal for stores to close! 

Got that?  They are proposing a law that “mandates that grocery stores will be required to give a six month notice before they close their doors permanently.” They will also be required to “find a replacement store so as to not disrupt access to essentials for residents.”

Good lord!  How do those morons think that this will work?

Store Owner (SO): “I’ve been bleeding cash for years, and I can’t do it anymore.  I’m closing my store.”

San Fran Dem (SFD): “You can’t do that.”

SO: “What?”

SFD: “It’s illegal to close your store.”

SO: “What?”

SFD: “Your customers need the goods you sell.”

SO: “Half of our customers are shoplifters, because you won’t arrest them.  Half of the other half are tired of long-jumping over banks of human feces because you won’t keep the streets clean, and the other half of that half are in the hospital with hep C or a flesh-eating disease they got from filthy needles they fell on as they were poop-jumping.  Because you won’t keep the streets clean.”

SFD: “You can’t close.”

SO: “How are you going to stop me?  I’m broke.

SFD: “We’ll fine you.”

SO: “What?!  (speaking very slowly) I… am… broke!”

SFD: “Okay.  We won’t fine you, if you find another store to take your place.”

SO: “What?  How am I supposed to do that?

SFD: “Persuade them.”

SO: “Oh yeah.  I’ll just tell them that the street we’re on looks like a zombie apocalypse, the store is crawling with meth heads and shoplifters, the cash flow is negative, the taxes are astronomical, and the labor pool is a bunch of pot-head grievance study majors who will sue you if you don’t use their made-up pronouns.” 

SFD: “That reminds us.  The new mandatory minimum wage is $75 an hour.”

And, scene. 

Okay, once again this will be a three-column week, because I’ve barely scratched the surface of crime-and-punishment stories. See you on Wednesday!

Hamas delenda est!

Deadspin Dies, Stupid Criminals, & Celebrations of Excellence (posted 3/15/24)

First up today is Schadenfreude Corner:

You might remember the leftist sports site Deadspin because of its senior writer Carron “Karen” Phillips.  He’s a lovely little whitey-hater who managed to work race into many of his stories over the years, culminating five months ago when he smeared a 9-year-old Kansas City Chiefs fan as a racist for wearing “black face” at a game.

Of course the kid wasn’t wearing black face; he was wearing the team colors, both red and black.  He was also wearing an Indian headdress, which allowed Phillips to go for the vaunted “racial arsonist two-fer,” accusing the kid of “[finding] a way to hate black people and Native Americans at the same time.” 

You don’t have to search Phillips’ entire oeuvre to see if he has ever expressed outrage at a certain albino-adjacent Massachusetts Senator who has parlayed the actual use of “red face” into a lucrative academic and then political career.   (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

Because of course he hasn’t.  Besides, he doesn’t think that kid was “hating” Indians any more than he was “hating” blacks.

The idiotic leftist fixation about Indian sports mascots has always driven me crazy.  Everybody knows that you pick sports mascots because of their positive qualities. 

That’s why teams with animal mascots pick animals admired for their strength or ferociousness; you’ll see tons of lions, tigers and bears, but no weasels or skunks.  Bird mascots include eagles, hawks and ravens, but no pigeons or vultures.

And the same goes for human mascots, obviously.  Minnesota didn’t pick the Vikings because they hate big, blond white guys.  Towns didn’t pick Oilers, Packers or Steelers because they despise working stiffs.  And the “Pittsburgh Pedophiles” didn’t narrowly edge out “steelers” in a naming competition!

So the many Braves, Chiefs and Indians in sports are compliments, not insults.  And even though I can see that “Redskins” may have been a little much, I think Washington screwed up by not just re-naming the team the Warriors.  They already had an iconic helmet with a big “W” on it, for crying out loud. 

Where was I?  Oh yeah.  Carron/Karen Phillips is a racist jerk, and Deadspin is a woke enough outfit that they hired and supported a jerk like Phillips. 

Aaannnndddd… this week Deadspin was sold, and every staff member there was immediately fired.

HA!  I can only hope that there is a factory that makes racist dog whistles and is looking to hire a tester, because Carron/Karen would love that job.

Except that he’d get fired within a week, since every single sound he ever hears sounds like racism to him.

So learn to code, Carron!         

In the “Stupid Criminals” category, I bring you the tale of New Yorker Sheldon Johnson, a career criminal and drug dealer who was sentenced 25 years ago to 50 years in prison, for what news reports coyly describe as “attempted murder and assorted other offenses.”  

Because Johnson committed his crimes in New York, where the Democrats in charge spend most of their crime-fighting energy on trying to send Republican presidential candidates to the electric chair for taking out giant real estate loans and then paying them back with interest, he appealed to Alvin Bragg and Governor Hochul for clemency.

In his letter to Bragg, his first paragraph demonstrated how he has taken full responsibility for his crimes: “I am a product of systemic racism; intergenerational incarceration.  A product of trauma, the school-to-prison pipeline and crack-era Reaganomics.”

Got that?  His grandpa went to Alcatraz in the 1930s, and then when Johnson was a freshman he took a left out of the cafeteria and instead of heading to Biology he got into the prison pipeline, plus Reagan got elected. So what chance did poor, young Sheldon have?

Naturally, Hochul gave him clemency and let him out last May.  He got a job as a counselor for at-risk teens in the Queens public defender’s office, and received fawning attention from the usual leftist suspects, who touted him as a great success story. 

Aaannnnndddd… a week ago police responded to a wellness check call at the Bronx apartment of Collin Small.  The cops found Johnson in Small’s apartment.  They also found Small’s torso and feet in a garbage bin, and his legs, arms and head in the freezer.

They took Small to a hospital, where he’s listed in stable condition.

HA!  I kid.  He’s dead. 

The cops arrested Johnson and started an investigation that found, and I quote, “Smalls and Johnson were in Sing Sing prison at the same time, and it is believed that there was animosity between them.”

Good lord, I hope so!  Because if Johnson murdered and dismembered Small and they were besties, I don’t want to know what Johnson would do to someone he felt animosity for!

“Okay, Martin,” you may be saying to yourself, “you’ve established that Johnson is a criminal. But is he a truly stupid criminal, as your entertaining new column feature suggests?”

Oh ye of little faith.  I hadn’t gotten to the part about how Johnson got caught yet:

First, Johnson killed Smalls in an apartment building, with a gun.  And no, the gun was not equipped with a silencer.

In fact, several neighbors reported hearing two gun shots, followed by a man saying, “Please don’t, I have a family!” followed by several more shots.

The building superintendent then checked security camera footage and saw a man walking in and out of the apartment multiple times, and changing clothes each time.  For one trip he wore a plaid golf cap and pushed a plastic, wheeled storage bin. 

For the next trip he wore a different jacket and a fisherman’s hat – because nothing is more common than a guy in the Bronx following his golf outing with a fishing trip – and carrying two bags.  (News reports don’t specifically describe them as “foot-sized bags,” but I think we know.) (And ditto on the “torso-sized storage bin.”)

On the third trip he wore a puffy coat, sunglasses and a blonde wig.  (I hope Bragg has added a second-degree cultural appropriation charge for that wig!)

Yet even though he’s a master of disguise, the superintendent somehow figured out that something was up, and called the cops.

So great job, New York Democrats!  If you’d kept Johnson inside, Small would be alive today.

I mean, unless he was foolish enough to take the subway, in which case he probably would have been shoved onto the tracks by a violent psychopath and dismembered anyway. 

So just never mind.

Finally, I have two entries for my “Celebrating Excellence” category:

Two weeks ago, a Senate Bill signed by Ron DeSantis last year went into effect at my alma mater, and UF ended all contracts with DEI vendors, closed its DEI department and fired all staffers who were employed in DEI positions. 

As a liberal arts professor for 30 years, I cannot tell you how difficult that is to believe.  As far as I know, it’s the first time a university DEI department has been shut down anywhere in the country. 

I know that many schools will continue to fight this, especially after DeSantis is out of office, and he is certainly hated by many academics all over the state right now.  But if you can judge a man’s character by the nature of his enemies, DeSantis has given conservatives one more reason to admire him.

Man, I hope we can have that guy as our president some day!

But we don’t just find excellence in humans like the best governor in the nation.  We also find it in our animal friends.  And no, I’m not referring to Cassie the Wonder Dog and her much-deserved place in the Canine Hall of Fame.

I’m referring to the site of a Scottish shepherd, “Seanthesheepman,” which I recommend you all check out.  Regular readers will remember that one of the highlights of our trip to Scotland last summer was a highlands visit with a shepherd and his amazing border collies.  Sean is not the same guy we saw, but his site is great. 

It features his great Scottish accent, lovely highlands scenery, and a lot of cool Scottish sheep.  But the stars are the collies, and they are gorgeous and brilliant.  Some of my favorite videos feature a dog-cam – a camera mounted on the dog’s shoulder to give a dog’s eye view as he trots and sprints around the countryside. 

If I ever need a quick pick-me-up, there are several videos that will always do the trick.  There’s the edited coverage showing Hillary supporters going from ecstasy to agony on election night in 2016, and videos of great music, and ones showing servicemen and women homecomings, and surprise twin birth announcements.

But there’s nothing quite like watching a dedicated dog sitting stock-still on an ATV seat one second, and then on a signal, leaping off and tearing across a field in a graceful blur.  They’re obviously doing what God made them for and men trained them for, and I’m convinced that watching them is good for your spirit and your blood pressure. 

Have a great weekend everybody!  

Hamas delenda est!