Tag: elon-musk

Before I get to my main topic, I have to note that on Saturday, CA Gov and featureless-plastic-crotch-having human-Ken-Doll Gavin Newsom (D)elinquent, declared a “state of emergency” for brush clearance due to wildfire danger. 

Which came as a much-appreciated warning to the residents of Pacific Palisades…except that the brush around their houses has already been cleared. 

By an enormous fire. 

Which also consumed their houses. 

Months ago.

Newsom would be a big hit in farm country, where I grew up.  He could walk up to farmhouses and holler through the screen door.  “Your horse escaped two days ago, and he’s just been seen three counties away.  So close your barn door immediately!  You’re welcome.”

And then he could try to make it off the property before the farmer or his wife could load the shotgun with rock salt.     

As you may have noticed, I’ve been having some fun lately mocking many of the government workers who have been getting laid off or fired, and deservedly so, including the treacherous deep-state “resistance” types, and corrupt leadership in the FBI, the military and elsewhere.

In Friday’s column, I mocked the disordered pervs at the NSA who spent their work hours on message boards talking about their polycules (don’t ask), the joys of castration (please, don’t ask!) and how good it feels to have one’s an*s lasered (for the love of all that is holy, DON’T ASK!!)    

But reader Jon Michael Watson – thanks for sharing the column, Jon – made a good point.  He said that while it is “proper that these lost and fallen gov’t employees are no longer sucking up taxpayer dollars,” many government workers are good people doing good work, and are getting tarred with the same brush.  (I paraphrased a bit, but I think I fairly summarized his meaning.)

Jon’s point is well taken, and worth remembering.  We all know that our national debt is unsustainable, and deep spending cuts are going to have to be made to avert a future economic collapse.  But those cuts are going to hurt some real people, and it’s a bad look to be gleeful about everybody losing their jobs.

“Martin,” you might be saying, “aren’t you being a hypocrite by saying that, especially after your world-class, hilarious send-up of the NSA kink ring last Friday, which should probably win a Nobel Prize for political humor, if only there were such a thing?”

First, who am I to fly in the face of public opinion on that second part? 

But re: hypocrisy, I plead guilty to a lesser count.  Is there such a thing as misdemeanor-level negligent hypocrisy?

At my sentencing, I would raise some extenuating circumstances to try to mitigate my sentence.

First, the corrupt legacy media has promoted a disgusting double standard about layoffs that enrages many of us normal folks.  When Biden killed the Keystone pipeline and the border wall on his first day in office, over 50,000 blue-collar American workers lost their jobs, and the MSM wrote zero stories sympathizing with their plight.

When some workers vented about their lost jobs, the Dem talking heads and elitist j-school snobs told them to “learn to code.”

But now those same dishonest hacks are running one story after another about every fired government employee trudging into the parking lot carrying a cardboard box.  And they’re casting every one of them as assiduous martyrs who were just about to find a cure for cancer, or else arranging for a parachute drop of food that would have saved starving orphan amputees in a Third World country that you couldn’t even find on a map, you ignorant capitalist pig!

Whereas I am at least trying to point out that there’s a difference between government employees doing legitimate work, and covens of polymorphously perverse loons who “work” from home. 

If by “work” you mean “organize leagues to play rectal laser tag.”      

By the way, that reminds me of Three Fundamental Life Rules that rank just below the 10 Commandments in their usefulness:

1. Never play pool for money with a guy who carries his own cue in a custom case. 

2. Never try to scatter a loved one’s ashes into the sea if the wind is blowing toward you.

3. There are no winners in rectal laser tag.

Where was I?  Oh yeah.

In all seriousness, I think the Trump team should be sympathetic to most people who lose their jobs because of the necessary cuts that are coming.  They can still expose and troll all of the idiotic DEI boondoggles and corrupt waste, but if they look gleeful about normal workers getting fired, they’ll do unnecessary political damage to the cause.

I’ve seen a few early signs of this in my own life.  About three weeks ago, my wife got an email saying that her job is being looked at as one that might be going away.  She works with a regional team of health professionals focusing on treating and preventing the spread of TB; because her work is funded only partly by our state, and the rest by the CDC, some job losses may be in the offing.

In the big picture, this is almost certainly a good sign for our nation.  Because while we hadn’t wiped out TB the way we had polio or smallpox, by around 50 years ago we’d contained it to a very small number of outbreaks and cases.  The resurgence of TB in recent decades has been coincident with large numbers of illegals crossing our borders.  If Trump is able to deport the lion’s share of illegals, the threat of TB will recede, and the feds will need to spend less on fighting it.  Again: a good thing for the country.

But yes, it would be more convenient for us if my wife’s group continued to work to counter outbreaks until the deportation process succeeds, and her job is made (happily) unnecessary.  She was already planning to retire in two years, by which time we would have paid off one of our rentals and the majority of another.  If her job does end this year, she would lose the income of her two final, highest-earning years, which would be less than great.

But we both know we are very lucky. We have saved enough and are close enough to retirement that the loss of two years’ salary will cause a little pain, but nothing like the upheaval and stress that younger and less financially stable workers will experience.   

Of course, we are happy Trump voters and love what he’s doing, but it’s also easier for us to support Trump and DOGE’s necessary efforts, because we see the big picture, and our sacrifices will be relatively minor ones.   But we shouldn’t overlook the fact that the great, long-term benefits are going to produce some pain and disruption in the short term.  And that it’s natural for even Trump supporters to sour when necessary job cuts hit them.    

Because we in CO Nation are decent people – and also because we want to do well in the midterms and in 2028! – we should be careful not to let our joy over the downfall of DEI, deep-state bad actors, and biological males stomping girls in sports, bleed over into celebrating the collateral damage caused by our long-delayed need to cut our shamefully bloated federal government and national debt.  

We should be as empathetic and kind to our fellow citizens who lose their government jobs as the leftists were callous and condescending to the pipeline and border wall workers who lost theirs. 

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get to work on this Wednesday’s column lambasting Hamas and sticking it to Jake Tapper.

Hamas delenda est!

I poured a concrete slab behind our house today.  After nearly 40 years in Florida, we lost power for longer than a day twice this year, so I’m breaking down and getting a generator.  Hence the need for a slab for the generator to sit on.

I rented an electric concrete mixer and bought twenty-seven 60-pound bags of concrete, and after spending some time over a couple of days digging out a ton of roots, putting in some rebar and putting together wooden forms, I was ready to pour. 

Before you can ask how many people I had helping me, I’ll refer you to my wife’s oft-repeated observation that I am a stubborn Appalachian-American, and that I still think I’m 27 years old.  Partly because that’s how time works, and partly because if you saw me with my shirt off, you’d say, “That guy looks like an Olympic athlete.  What is he, 27 or 28?”

Anyways (dammit – AOC has gotten into my head with that!), while the job would have gone pretty easily with two or three guys, I figured, “Hey, I’ve got the strength of ten men – because my heart is pure – and I’m an Ameri-can, not an Ameri-can’t.  So I can knock this out solo.”

My first clue should have been that as I loaded the bags of concrete into my 22-year-old pick-up, the rear end sank noticeably low, and the back tires bulged out in an alarming way. Like Jerry Nadler without a suit jacket on. 

It turns out that I hadn’t really done the math on how much twenty-seven 60-pound bags of concrete weigh. 

Yeah, I know NOW.  1620 pounds.  That’s like 3.3 cast members of the View!

Before you can ask, yes, I now have myself a fine new cement slab.  And yes, Cassie the Wonder Dog’s paw print is preserved in the southwest corner of that slab.

However… now I’m on muscle relaxers.  Which have made me drowsy and a little dopey, and I’m not looking forward to getting up tomorrow morning.

I’ll still do it (see the aforementioned “Ameri-can” reference above), with the assistance of some Vitamin M. (Motrin.)  But before I took the magic pills, I’d already drafted part of a mid-week column. 

So let’s all play a game of, “Can I tell which parts Martin wrote on muscle relaxers?”

First off, in Trumpkrieg™ news, weeping and gnashing of teeth could already be heard in Dem circles as the name was being taken off the USAID HQ building a few days ago.  But the wailing got even louder when a Trump spokesman announced the new tenant who would be moving in.

The old USAID building will soon be the new home of… wait for it…US Customs and Border Protection!

Cut to me, re-enacting the Meg Ryan diner scene in “When Harry Met Sally.” 

Even though we may be reaching the “too much winning” threshold, I still need stories like this to be turned into powder form, then put into a spoon with a drop of liquid, then heated up and drawn into a syringe.  And then

Injected. Straight. Into. My. Veins!

Scott Jennings recently pointed out – to a bunch of pouting dopes on CNN – that Trump has been capturing the “80” position on many political issues in which public opinion breaks down to 80/20.       

Closing the border, deporting illegals, re-criminalizing crime, keeping males out of female sports and locker-rooms – all have disproportionate popular support. Even on small issues like paper straws (nobody likes them!) and getting rid of daylight savings time, Trump has the winning side. 

His job is made a lot easier by the fact that the late-stage-TDS-suffering Dems have been eager to jump on the “20” position with both feet.

It’s hard to remember this, but after Trump’s debate with Biden – the one that went so badly for the Cadaver in Chief that it knocked him out of the race entirely – 20% of viewers said that they thought that BIDEN won it! 

Those are the geniuses who are sitting around sucking on disintegrating paper straws, while smiling at videos of male boxers punching females into next week, and sympathizing with face-tattooed gang-bangers as they block traffic on interstates while protesting with giant Mexican flags.

Normally, one would expect that a politician would have a harder time cutting government spending, because while many people see that as 80/20 in the abstract, they change their mind when specific cuts are identified.  That’s always been frustrating for conservatives, and it’s a big reason why government has always gotten bigger.

But Trump may be able to turn this issue in his favor too, because four factors have changed recently:

1. Our national debt has been metastasizing for years, but now we are frighteningly broke.  When Obama took office, all of the debt accumulated from George Washington to George W was $10 trillion.  In 8 years, Obama doubled that to $20 trillion.  (Si, se puede!) Trump added to that (especially during his last year/Covid), and Biden super-charged it, and now we owe $36 trillion.  That can’t continue, and more people might be willing to face our debt denial.  

2. The Dems have lied so much, so shamelessly, and so badly, that nobody trusts anything they say about the benefits of USAID-style, deep-state spending, or what it is supposedly going for.

3. The scope of the USAID revelations have surprised many people.  We now know more about the narrowness of the special interests who have been getting the money: non-binary whittling dwarves in Micronesia; a slam poetry contest for Mongolian throat-singers in Tajikistan; “Anti-White Hate Fest ’24!” put on by racial grifter Ibram X. Kendi (real name “Henry Rogers”), and a Go-Fund-Me to get Sunny Hostin electroshock therapy to try to get that misfiring noggin of hers back in working order.

4. The total tax burden made up of all of these fiscal straws is finally to the point that we’re getting as sway-backed as Cankles Clinton, just trying to hold up under the weight. 

So most of us are now ready to toss off the Micronesian dwarves and the Mongolian throat-singers, and we’ll try giving Sunny a free kick in the head to see if that helps with her neural sputtering. 

And with all due respect, Henry Rogers/Kendi, you can kiss our non-racist white arses.

Hogg/Warren, 2028!