Tag: israel

Feeling the Christmas Spirit (posted 12/23/24)

We’ve got a lot to be thankful for this Christmas season, not the least of which is the good news that has been coming out of Israel lately.  And sure, starting with Jewish stories might not seem to be the most Christmasy way to begin a column.  But God started that way too, and we Christians got one of the top two Testaments ever, plus our Savior out of that deal.  So I’m just sticking with what works.

Israel had a great year, if measured by their righteous smiting of their enemies, and compared to their horrific 2023.   Their highlights included the exploding pagers, then the exploding radios and walkie talkies, and also the killings of Hassan Nasrallah and Yahoo Sinwar, along with most of the leadership of Hamas and Hezbollah. 

In fact, the only disappointment from the Israelis came in October, when they carried out air raids and targeted strikes against Iran in the wake of the massive missile barrage Iran had thrown at them.   I had hoped they’d take out all Iranian nuclear sites, since the one existential threat to Israel — and the largest threat to the Middle East and beyond – would be the mullahs of Iran with nuclear weapons.

But in the two months since those strikes, I’ve realized how well that strategy worked.  Israel took out literally all of Iran’s air defenses and most of their ballistic missile program.  While I was hoping for more widespread destruction of Iran’s military and leadership, smarter analysts than me have pointed out that taking Iran’s missiles and air force off the map was a master stroke.

Iran is now deterred more than ever, because they know that the next time they start trouble, Israeli jets can strike Iranian targets with impunity.  And with greatly diminished missile inventories – and Israel’s demonstration in October that they can intercept the vast majority of missiles fired at them – Iran can hope for only a token show of force before they suffer devastating retaliation.

That still leaves the Iranian nuclear development threat. But even on that front, the Israeli strikes achieved more than they had appeared to at first glance.  Because a month after the strikes, Netanyahu officially confirmed that Israel had destroyed a key nuke research facility at Parchin.

The extra-sweet twist to that story: because Iran had been lying to the low-T anti-Semites running the UN that Parchin was a non-threatening, basically dormant facility, they are now unable to run to them whining that the Israelis took out the nukes that they had been insisting did not exist!

Oh, the savory delectability of a heaping bowl of Christmas hummus, glazed with a generous dollop of schadenfreude and served with a side of Nelson Muntz-ian HA-HA!   

A summarizing story from late November featured some perfect observations: “The U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), earlier this year warned that Iran’s nuclear program has largely run unchecked for the last six years, and it is believed to have increased its stockpiles of highly enriched uranium metals…. But IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi has warned that Iran’s nuclear facilities should not become a target as Israel ramps up direct operations against Tehran.”

And now, if you’ll allow me a moment to crack my knuckles, stretch my arms, and rotate my head back and forth to get the kinks out of my neck like a bouncer preparing to pummel an opponent, I’ll attempt the rare, four-“unexpectedly” paragraph:

After Iran has been lying about their nuclear program for years (UNEXPECTEDLY!), and the lefty squishes at the UN and the Biden administration had adopted a subservient posture to appease them (UNEXPECTEDLY!), Israel went Old Testament on the mullahs, which worked out well (UNEXPECTEDLY!).  (“Down goes Goliath!  Down goes Goliath!”) And then, with the prospect of Orange Hitler returning to power, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas “tail between his legs” Araghchi “said he was ready to engage in international talks.” UNEXPECTEDLY!

Meanwhile at home, MSM dissemblers are either getting fired or taking pay cuts to keep their jobs.   MSNBC’s already-low ratings have plummeted since the election, dropping by over 60%.  To put that in terms AOC could understand, they’ve lost more than half of their viewers.  That’s literally dozens and dozens of people!

Get ready for the most deserved scare quotes ever:  Their on-air “talent” has either been getting fired, or required to take less pay.  Stephanie Ruhle was offered a pay cut from her current $2 million, and rabid, racist, blonde-hair appropriator Joy Reid – “My culture is not your costume!” says my Norwegian-American smokeshow wife to the Joy-less one – will drop from $3 million.

Which raises the obvious question: How on earth were those two imbeciles earning over a million dollars in their lifetimes, let alone in a single year?!

But it gets worse: Boyish expert in getting everything wrong Rachel Maddow graciously agreed to a pay cut – remember: she does a single one-hour show per week! – from $30 million allllll the way down to $25 million.

While I might be a hilarious genius, I’m no math genius.  But even I can figure out a ratio of viewers to salary, when looking at Rachel Maddow.  (Who, by the way, recently received the most laughably back-handed compliment in history, from a NY Post story.  They called her “MSNBC’s most bankable star.”)

(Not since Jeffrey Toobin’s colleagues told him, “We’ve seen smaller,” has a compliment been so backhanded.)

Where was I?  Oh yeah, Maddow’s viewers-to-salary ratio. I would love to be on the network side of all of these salary negotiations, because they certainly have the whip-hand.  The toughest negotiations are the ones in which the employee has rare and marketable skills, and many suitors wishing to hire them.  Think of a top-notch pitcher who can throw in the 90+ mph range with a lot of control.  If his team doesn’t want to pay him, other teams certainly will.

Now look at Stephanie Ruhle.  Is anyone else on earth elbowing aside competitors to pay her $2 mil?  Or Joy Reid, at $3 million?  I remember my dad saying, when we came across a super-annoying person, “She looks like a long day.”  Well, who needs a low-IQ, racist, long day of a person that badly?

I mean sure, the warped and dessicated Ivy League system will line up for an anti-patriotic whitey-hater to hire and give tenure to.  But not at $3 million a year!   

On an unrelated note, after the new year starts, I’ll be negotiating with CO for an equally reasonable salary of $30 million.  But I’m willing to negotiate down to Maddow-level numbers, even though that pittance would be a devastating insult to me.  

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For the next week I’ll be enjoying my favorite rituals of the season.  I’ll be listening to some Christmas carols in brass, along with A Christmas Carol read by Frank Muller.  (No matter how many times I read him, Dickens endures, and gets better somehow.)  I’ll watch at least one or two versions of A Christmas Carol on tv, along with at least parts of It’s A Wonderful Life.   (If you like Dickens and haven’t seen it yet, I’d recommend a recent movie called “The Man Who Invented Christmas” which tells the story of his writing the Carol.)

We’ll go to a Christmas eve service, followed by supper with Karen’s two brothers and their wives.  After a peaceful Christmas day at home, we’ll go up to Tennessee to see my mom, sister and her husband.

Because I’ve been traveling so much, I haven’t had the chance to respond to the comments on my last several columns, but I was touched to hear how many of you have lost loved ones around past holidays.  I knew that my experience of losing my dad at Christmastime wasn’t unique, but I still got choked up hearing that for a handful of COers, this will be your first Christmas without a spouse or loved one.  You’ll be in the thoughts and prayers of many of us here, as you go through the first holiday (always the toughest one) with an empty chair at your table. 

I hope you all have a great Christmas, one in which you savor all you have, and take nothing for granted.

I couldn’t do better than to end with a pitch-perfect Dickensian toast that Dickens gives at the end of the movie I mentioned earlier.  “I wish you all many, many happy Christmases, and friendships, and great accumulation of cheerful recollections, and heaven at last for all of us.  In the season of hope, we will shut out nothing from our firesides.  And everyone will be welcome.”

Kamala’s Wheels Come Off, & Israel Continues On Its Roll (posted 11/1/24)

Could Bill Clinton be collaborating with Joe Biden to sink Kamala’s campaign? 

First there was his incredibly damaging statement a few weeks ago that Laken Riley would still be alive if her illegal alien murderer had been vetted and kept out of the country, which was greeted by an echoing cry of, “WTF?!!” from Kamala HQ.

And this week he goes to Michigan, just a day after Kamala almost sliced herself to ribbons by grabbing a sharp rod during a factory tour.  (“Can I touch that rod?  Can I TOUCH that ROD?  CAN I TOUCH THAT ROD?!”) (And yes, the Willie Brown jokes are basically writing themselves at this point.)

This time the old horn-dog said, “I don’t think it’s right to say that people have to vote for Donald Trump because the economy was better then.”  And the partisan crowd moaned.  Meanwhile, whoever is running Kamala’s campaign sent an urgent text to ol’ Handsy McGroperton: “Stop helping, Bill!”

Also could there be a funnier headline than, “Biden Bites Several Babies at WH Halloween Party?”  I mean sure, he’s probably just gumming them, which is repulsive enough.  But man o’Manischewitz, if Trump wins this thing it will have been the best campaign ever! 

Just think of the sound bites that should live in infamy: “Your supporters are garbage!”  “They’re eating the dogs; they’re eating the cats!” “Biden is biting babies!”  Oh, the humanity!

Meanwhile, in another story that should be devastating to Kamala’s campaign if it were only getting wider airplay, it turns out that a huge majority of the scumbags who were caught looting in the aftermath of the last two hurricanes in Florida were… wait for it… alleged salt-of-the-earth immigrants!

Unexpectedly!

And by “immigrants” I mean “Biden/Harris-enabled ILLEGAL immigrants.”  The NY Post has the story – and the stats – from the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office: of the 45 looters rounded up on various robbery charges, 41 were illegals.  41 out of 45! 

Another stat, which I’m unpleasantly surprised by, is that of another 196 people who “were caught in the area under suspicious circumstances and questioned by deputies but had to be released due to lack of probable cause,” 163 were illegals. 

The disappointing part is that even in the free state of Florida, we’re still not detaining illegals just because they broke our laws to get here.  Even if there was insufficient probable cause to hold them for their looter-adjacent behavior, if they’re here illegally, they should still be deported!

Am I saying that all illegals found here, especially if they’ve committed additional crimes, should be summarily kicked out, possibly with the trigger finger on their right hands clipped off so that we can recognize them if they ever try to sneak back in again?

I’m not necessarily saying that last part for sure.  But – say it with me, Que Mala – I think we should have that conversation!

Okay, on to my long-delayed take on the latest out of Israel, which has been mostly a cavalcade of good news. 

In one area after another, the IDF has been making terrorists dead, and forcing their twitchy, involuntarily incontinent surviving comrades to run and hide, thus protecting the chastity of the region’s many herds of long-suffering goats. 

(“Bleat” means “bleat,” Achmed! Which is goat-talk for, “No means no!”)

(This message provided by RASA – Ruminants Against Sexual Assault™ — a 501(c)(3) organization.  Please give generously.)

I’ll get to some of the best missile/drone strikes in a minute, but first I must give kudos to an unusual attack on Hezbollah’s ability to finance their various Jew-killing endeavors. 

Since Western nations have been sanctioning Hezbollah’s more traditional assets (international bank accounts, etc.), they’ve been forced to keep a bunch of their ill-gotten gains in the form of paper money and gold, stashed throughout the territories they control.

On October 20th, IDF missiles destroyed one underground vault containing millions of dollars.  Then they cleverly announced that there is another such vault under the Al Sahel Hospital in Beirut which contains “as much as half a billion dollars in cash and gold.”  Their spokesman pointed out that, “This money could and still can be used to rebuild the state of Lebanon.” 

That is a brilliant move for several reasons: 

1. It freaks out the terrorists by providing more evidence of just how much the Israelis know about them and their every move. 

2. It incentivizes everyday Lebanese to both be pissed at Hezbollah, and possibly to stage a raid to steal that fortune back.  And if nobody is writing a screenplay for a heist movie – call it some Islamic variation on “Ocean’s 11” – they’re leaving money on the table. (I picture someone dressed in a sexy goat suit providing a honey-trap distraction to lure several Hezbollah fighters away from the hospital entrance they’re guarding.  Ooh, and a high-speed donkey-cart chase through the rubble-clogged streets of Beirut, possibly accompanied by the “Mission Impossible” theme song, if the producers can afford copyright!) 

3. It also incentivizes nervous Hezbollah creeps to possibly try to move the treasure, which would make them vulnerable to raids from other Lebanese on the road – another screenplay possibility! – and to spying Israeli drones which could follow and learn the new location it gets sent to, and also possibly to blow up that location as soon as the stolen money arrives.

But the wily Hebrews weren’t just playin 4-D chess with their heist-movie shenanigans; they’ve also continued to go all “Death from the Skies!” on the smelly terrorists with missiles and drone strikes.

They had already dropped a building on Nasrallah’s successor Hashem Safieddine a few weeks after he got the top job, while simultaneously taking out 24 other top Hezbollah villains, including the head of Hezbollah’s “intelligence” branch (oxymoron alert!), Ali Hussein Hazima.

Then, last Wednesday, Israel took out Mohamad Abu Itiwi with a missile strike.  Itiwi had a demon’s resume: commander of Hamas’ “elite” Nukhba force; personally responsible for “contributing to the deaths of a least 370 victims” during the cowardly 10/7 attack; led the infamous “bomb shelter slaughter,” during which his men tossed hand-grenades into a shelter filled mostly with women and children.

Most shamefully of all, he was also an employee of the United Nations, specifically their “Relief and Works Agency” for “Palestinian” “refugees” (UNRWA), which is just one of many corrupt UN groups through which our tax dollars have flowed to help the jihadis in Hamas.  (Until, in Itiwi’s case, October 23rd, when the IDF made the world a better place by giving him a ballistic enema.) 

Itiwi served one good purpose, which was to give Israel one more reason to officially kick UNRWA out of the country this week.  Of course that set off a round of wailing and gnashing of teeth from the “Peace Through Appeasement” crowd, thus proving Israel’s decision correct.

But wait, there’s more! 

The IDF has released video of many of their targeted strikes on Hezbollah strongholds throughout southern Lebanon.  (Which I enjoy watching with headphones on and “Enter Sandman” blasting.  Sleep with one eye open, jihadis!)

The most dramatic one shows a massive Hezbollah underground compound which stretched across two small hillsides and a valley between them.  When the munitions hit, at least 8 different spots explode upward, with geysers of debris and plumes of smoke rising from the valley and both hillsides.

Of course the biggest story of the last week was Israel’s air attack on Iran, in retaliation for the 180 missiles Iran fired at Israel at the beginning of the month.  Most of Iran’s missiles were shot down, and they collectively did very little damage to Israel, but that was not the case when Israel hit back.

They used 100 fighter jets to carry out three waves of attacks, focusing at first on Iran’s air defenses, and then on 20 missile and drone facilities.  I had hoped that they’d target Iran’s nuclear enrichment locations, but by taking out Iran’s air defense, Israel has left that step as an option for future strikes, should Iran not have learned the FAFO lesson that the IDF just gave them.    

By the way, leave it to the Jews to come up with a very cool Old Testament reference as a code name for their multi-wave air attack: “Days of Repentance.”  (That’s not as sweet as “Operation Grim Beeper.”  But I think that one was made up.)

They also got an added bonus from their attack, in the form of giving the Russians a black eye.  Hezbollah had bought and installed four Russian-made S-300 air defense systems.  Israel took one of them out in a retaliation raid on Iran this summer, and they took out the remaining three last week.   

After that raid, reports are coming out of Lebanon that many Hezbollah fighters are defecting or fleeing to Syria, which only makes sense.  Most of their chain of command are either dead or mangled, they can’t communicate because of the fear of groin-shredding communication devices, and their money stashes are getting blown up.

One typical morale-draining story happened last weekend.  The Hezbo commander of the Bint Jbeil Area (which I thought was on the planet Klingon, but apparently not) – Jafar Maatouk (I loved him in the Lion King!) – underwent SOMD (sudden-onset molecular disassembly) when an IAF missile hit him. 

The next day the new commander and his head of artillery – no names are given in the report, but I’m assuming they’re Curly and Moe – met the same fate.

So far no one has stepped up to become the new Grand Poobah of Bint Jbeil. 

Unexpectedly!  

Speaking of which, Hezbollah just announced who drew the short straw, and is now the new leader of their group.  He’s named Naim Qassem, and in every video clip I’ve seen of him, he looks really nervous.  (My Arabic is a little rusty, but unless I’ve missed my guess, “Naim” means “not” and “Qassem” means “for long.”)  

I swear that I wrote that last joke when I first drafted this column a few days ago. 

But great minds must think alike, because the guy in charge of the IDF gave a press conference in which he put up a picture of Qassem with the caption: “Temporary Appointment.  Not for Long.” 

Yes!  Don’t buy any green bananas, Naim.

Have a good weekend everybody.

Hamas delenda est!

Trump Trolls the Left, Walz Struggles with a Shotgun, and Sinwar Dies Like a Dog (posted 10/23/24)

I won’t bury the lede: Katie came home from the hospital yesterday!   As I’m writing this in the middle of the night in Florida, she’s sleeping in her own bed in Denver for the first time in nearly a month.

And all is right with the world! 

Speaking of which, in a secret ceremony yesterday Trump received his black belt in trolling, as the culmination of a week in which he crushed it at the Al Smith dinner, and then again as a temporary worker at a Pennsylvania McDonalds.    

The dinner demonstrated (again!) the gulf between Trump and Kamala as politicians.  Trump was at his roguishly charming best as he read his jokes skewering Walz and Harris, and playfully tweaked miserable Chuck Schumer for looking so glum.  He even managed to pull off some self-deprecating humor by mocking himself for his fabled giant ego. 

“Tradition holds that I’m supposed to tell a few self-deprecating jokes this evening.  So here it goes…. Nope!  I’ve got nothing.  There’s nothing to say.”

Meanwhile, Kamala showed her usual unerring talent for self-destructive boneheadedness by skipping the dinner.  But rather than just taking the “L,” she sent an uninspired and unfunny video that somehow made things worse. 

First there was her delivery.  (I’ve never seen such woodenness in my life.  And I’ve been to the Black Forest.) Then there were her lines.  (Utter pap.)  Then there was the celebrity comedian she persuaded to help her get through the video: Molly Shannon.

Yes, THAT Molly Shannon!

The one who was intermittently mildly humorous as a mid-level Saturday Night Live cast member. 23 YEARS AGO!  

A few days after the dinner, Trump did his stint as an honorary McDonalds worker.  And you can tell how well that went for him just by listening to the empty heads throughout the MSM losing their Schiff over it.

One after another, they whined about how stupid and pointless and offensive it was.  I saw a series of clips featuring outraged hacks from all the alphabet networks making the same hysterical objection: Trump’s entire McDonald’s visit was phony, and nothing more than a political stunt!

What?  You mean a billionaire former and future leader of the free world in his late 70s hasn’t actually taken up a lucrative second career as a fast-food worker?!  The hell you say!

But they’ve got a point, because there’s a slim possibility that Trump may just have made his visit to McDonalds as a political photo op.

Unlike that time when Brigadier General Dukakis was caught leading his armored division around the training grounds in Michigan.  (It’s not called a “battleground state” for nothing.)  Or when Bill Clinton just happened to jog into a fast-food joint and grab a big Mac (and the closest waitress’ behind) for the cameras. Or when Que Mala and nanny-banger Doug stopped in at a convenience store to pic up a bag of Doritos.

Or when Tampon Timmy Walz was surprised to find a gaggle of press weasels who somehow coincidentally turned up in the same field where he was hunting pheasants. 

Luckily for said pheasants, Walz is not so great with the weapons of war that he didn’t carry when he didn’t go into war, so none of them were felled by the Great Beige Hunter that day. 

By the way, I think I speak for the entire pheasant-American community when I say that I’d rather be a pheasant directly in front of a shotgun-wielding Tim Walz than one of Tim Walz’s feet in his brand-new pair of unbroken-in waterproof LL Bean boots with the tag still on them. 

Because that guy has got “accidental-self-foot-shooter-off-er” written ALL over him.

The only thing funnier than watching Walz struggle to load that shotgun was watching a couple of leftist bubble-dwellers on MSNBC gushing over the new Harris-Walz merch: a hunting cap!  You could tell that they’d never met an actual hunter in their lives from the way they talked about hunting as if it were an exotic behavior of an obscure, just-discovered tribe from a remote island somewhere.

“This stylish hat is in blaze orange, which is apparently a color that hunters wear when they go about their mysterious ritual outings.  And we feel quite sure that putting “Harris/Walz” on this cap will greatly increase its desirability among so many deplorably toxic males who inexplicably like sports and women who were assigned female at birth and yet still identify as women, with the hips and the breasts and the off-putting lack of a prominent Adam’s apple.” 

And we wonder why they’re not connecting with male voters!

Speaking of self-destructive behavior, how about that Yahoo Sinwar and his ignominious death at the hands of the IDF last week?  I love everything about the way he was brought to justice. 

I love that he died trapped and helpless, without the comfort of his goat girlfriend.  I love that he was killed by three anonymous grunts who had only been in the IDF for a short time, before they happened across his path. 

I love that after those guys blasted the house he was scurrying through and injured him, they used a drone to fly into the damaged building to get the last video of him before they finished him off.   

And while I would have liked to see the IDF find and kill him immediately after October 7th, there’s some comfort in knowing that he spent the last year of his life hunted and increasingly desperate, living underground like a hateful, miserable little mole.  He got to see his entire army of Hamas terrorists getting skillfully taken out by the hated Jews, some in pitched firefights, but many in small groups, or even one at a time.

He got to watch Gaza subdivided and strategically searched and pulverized, his weapons stashes and fighter bases systematically discovered and destroyed, his miles of underground tunnels either flooded or blown up.  He cowered helplessly as everyone in the chain of command below him was killed or captured, and many of their hostages rescued.  He had to watch his evil allies in Hezbollah out-thought and out-fought, blown up by their own cell phones, then pagers, then radios.

He had to witness his entire life’s work thoroughly destroyed, knowing that there were no worthy successors to take his place.  All of his arrogant plans had been based on the mistaken belief that the Jews would never dare to fight door-to-door in heavily fortified Gaza, that they’d never be able to withstand political pressure from the anti-Semitic idiots in the UN and the garden-variety idiots in the Biden administration.

And in the end, he had to face his death with the taste of dust and ashes in his mouth, already badly wounded, slumped in a ruined living room chair, watching his enemy’s high-tech drone hovering nearby, recording his pitiful state to show to the world.  Even if he’d had a gun, or an unwounded hand to hold it in, he would still have been powerless to hurt the Jews who were controlling that drone.

But he didn’t have a gun, or an uninjured gun arm.  All he had left was a skinny piece of wood, and all he could do was make a pathetic, impotent attempt to throw it at the drone.

He missed.  And then he watched the drone float backwards and away, leaving him alone in a filthy, crippled house, knowing that in a few seconds his miserable life would come to a violent, painful end at the hands of his hated enemies.

As it should be.

Meanwhile, here at home it’s worth remembering that the IDF’s incredible string of successes has been achieved because they have resolutely ignored the advice, bullying and threats from Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

Biden/Harris told them not to risk civilian deaths in Gaza, and not to invade Gaza, and not to strike Hezbollah, because those would all only escalate the war.  They told the Jews to negotiate a cease fire that would have left Hamas and Hezbollah in power and stronger than ever. 

Who can forget Que Mala, lecturing the Jews that they shouldn’t go into Rafah?  She warned that such an invasion would lead to disaster, because she’d “looked at the maps.” 

By the way, it turns out that the demolished building that became the final resting place for Sinwar and his two bodyguards is located in… wait for it… Rafah!

UNEXPECTEDLY!           

Hamas delenda est!

On the Anniversary of 10/7, Terrorists Try to Replace Leaders Faster than the IDF Can Kill Them (posted 10/7/24)

Once again, events are happening too fast for me to keep up with.  The presidential campaigns are accelerating, the polls remain tight, and FEMA’s relief efforts in the wake of Helene are being badly bungled, in keeping with Biden-Harris’ sterling record over the last four years.

Meanwhile, my oldest daughter remains in the hospital in Denver – she’s making progress and doing well, and thanks for your continued prayers — and now it’s my youngest daughter’s turn to be in the path of a second storm in as many weeks.  Thankfully she’s on the Atlantic coast, and so Milton will likely be a tropical storm rather than a hurricane by the time it reaches her campus. 

Additionally, I’ve noticed a moment in the Vance-Walz debate that I’d over-looked before, and I also need to take some well-deserved shots at Que Mala’s beta-boy role-model husband, Doug Emhoff. 

But I’m going to have to save all that for a Wednesday column, because today is the anniversary of the evil attacks on Israel last October, and attention must be paid.

Regular readers know that I’m a big fan of Israel’s approach over the last several months: they’re ignoring Biden and the Democrats’ advice and input – everywhere and at all times a wise move! – and they’ve been pursuing terrorists with the wrath of an Old Testament God.  (Some might even say THE Old Testament God.) 

I admire the way they’ve minimized civilian casualties, achieving a civilians-to-enemy-combatants-killed ratio far lower than in any war in all of history, including the ones we’ve waged during our own country’s history. 

And I love the way they’ve mixed traditional arms and operations with high-tech tweaks, psychological warfare, and hilarious, intelligence-aided trickery to take out the top levels of Hamas and Hezbollah.  The latest details came out in a story this weekend, explaining how the weapons geeks in Israel had wired the explosive pagers such that an authentication message appeared on the screens of those pagers that didn’t detonate in pockets.

The authentication process to read the page required the users to touch two different buttons on both sides of the pagers, which meant that many of the terrorists who received the page had both of their hands mangled or blown off, along with being blinded if they were holding the pager close to their faces when they pressed those buttons. 

It’s almost enough to make you feel sorry for them, until you remember who they are, and what they did to end up holding those pagers in the first place.  

The frequency of Israel’s successes is making it hard to keep up with the latest news.  I remember that during the Iraq war, we made a deck of cards featuring the 52 top scumbags in Saddam’s regime.  As our forces advanced, we started taking playing cards off the table.

That wouldn’t work for Israel, though, because they’d be changing out cards faster than a casino trying to cool off a gambler on a hot streak at the blackjack table.  In just two air strikes – the one that took out Nasrallah and his deputies and the one the week before that – they wiped out the equivalent of three entire suits of cards.      

Each day I come across a story about the latest Hezbollah boss to assume rubble temperature.  These guys are dropping like old Soviet commies in the Reagan era.  We try to set up a phone call with Achmed Brezhnev, only to find out that he’s been replaced with Muhammad Andropov, and before Tony Blinken can catch a flight over to kiss his butt, he’s replaced by Hassan Chernenko. 

Last Wednesday, Israel located Khider al-Shaebia, the terrorist responsible for the rocket attack on 7/27 that killed 12 Druze children playing soccer.  Apparently al-Shaebia wasn’t carrying a detonating pager in his pocket on 9/17, because he didn’t get turned into the Queen of al-Shaebia that day.  So the IDF had to eliminate him the old-fashioned way: with an airstrike. 

The latest head of Hezbollah was Hashem Safi Al-Din, who enjoyed a tenure of 7 days in office before experiencing rapid molecular disassembly last Friday, courtesy of an IDF air strike.  Several of his likely successor candidates are high-ranking members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Fortunately, they were gathered around Al-Din when the clock struck Boom!     

At this point, I’d love to be a fly on the shell-pocked wall, observing a bunch of the remaining, twitchy Hezbo commanders meeting to decide the next leader.  I don’t know how they do that in the first place.  It’s not like they’ve got a phone chain they can use.  And I’m guessing that emails or zoom calls are out, too.

But however they put the word out, they somehow end up cowering around a folding table with one leg missing under a half-collapsed parking garage down a rubble-strewn alley.  I’m picturing it goes something like this:

Weird Beard #1: You’ve probably already heard that Muhammad Abdul Aziz was killed by the Jewish pig-dogs. 

Weird Beard #2:  Oh no!   How’d they get him?  Exploding pager?  Exploding radio?

WB#1:  Poisoned hummus.  (One guy starts spitting violently.)  What are you doing?

Spitting Guy:  I just ate some hummus. 

WB#3:  We ALL just ate hummus.  The Jews haven’t poisoned all the hummus in Lebanon.

WB#2:  Are you sure?  

(They all look at each other uncertainly.) 

WB#4:  I thought Muhammad Abdul Aziz got killed when his scooter exploded.

WB#1:  No, that was Abdul Aziz Muhammad.  He died last Thursday.  We’re talking about Muhammad Abdul Aziz.  He was halfway through a romantic dinner with his goat bride when he pitched down face-first in his bowl of hummus.

WB#5:  I thought he was blown up when he knelt on an explosive prayer rug?

WB#6:  No, that was Mohammad Aziz Abdul, last Friday.  The hummus thing was this Monday.

WB#2:  Are you sure?  Because I thought—

WB#1:  Okay look.  For the last time, here’s the rundown:

A week ago Friday, Hassan Nasrallah got a building dropped on him, along with a half-dozen other Nasrallah cousins and brothers, two of his brother’s-in-law, and his father-in-law.

On Saturday, Muhammad Suleiman was named as his replacement.  When he went to his brother Abdul Suleiman’s house on Sunday to announce the good news, a ring doorbell that the Jews had installed two months ago blew his head off. 

Abdul became the leader, but on Wednesday he used a q-tip that Mossad had coated with napalm, and his head caught fire.

Hassan Suleiman was elected on Thursday, but on Saturday he found—

WB#5 (snapping his fingers and pointing): The kosher cobra in the toilet!

WB#1 (sighing): Yes, the cobra in the toilet.  Then Hassan Abdul took over, and he stayed in his house until Wednesday, when someone slipped a copy of the Beirut Post under his front door.

(The men in the circle looked at each other.) 

WB#3: Self-igniting newspaper?

WB#4: Poisoned newsprint ink?

WB#6: Oh, I know!  The paper had the transcript of a Kamala Harris interview, and halfway through reading it he shot himself in the head because he couldn’t stand it any more?          

WB#1 (shaking his head):  Exploding eyeglasses, courtesy of Shin Bet Optometrists.

Then it was Abdul Aziz Muhammad on the scooter on Thursday, then Muhammad Aziz Abdul with the detonating prayer rug last Friday, then Muhammad Abdul Aziz with the poison hummus on Monday.

WB#2:  So now who’s up? 

Everyone looks at everybody else, then most of them stare at their sandals, or at the ceiling, or out into the alley, whistling softly.

WB#1 (pulling out a bunch of straws, snapping one off, then mixing them up and holding his hand out with their ends sticking out) Everybody pick one.

They all choose with shaking hands, and Muhammad Muhammad Aziz pulls the short one.  He sighs deeply, while everyone bows their head to him and calls him “Sheik.” 

MMA: Great.  Let me ask one favor though.  Whatever you do, when you are setting up the seating chart for my funeral, don’t seat my goat wife anywhere near my goat mistress.  They do not get along, and I don’t want trouble.    

And, scene. 

On this somber anniversary, I wish fitful sleep, haunted dreams and swift justice for the Iranian government, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis.  For the Israelis, I wish good luck and good hunting, and the return of the remaining hostages.

Hamas delenda est!

Israel Goes Michael Corleone on Its Enemies, and J.D. Vance Shines in the VP Debate (posted 10/4/24)

Before I get started, thank you all so much for your kind words and prayers for Katie!  She is continuing to improve, if not as quickly as we’d all like. 

I’ve learned something new about surgeries and the human body.  It turns out that after intestinal surgery, your bowel needs to “wake up” before you can eat solid food and get everything going again.  Apparently every patient is different in this respect, and generally speaking, the more the surgeons had to handle your intestines and work on them, the longer it takes to get to the post-surgery “waking up” part.

Katie said that her surgeons “pulled out and handled my entire bowel before throwing it back in,” which is why she’s not yet been able to start eating normally again. 

I didn’t appreciate her word choice there – I would prefer “…before lovingly and gently putting it back in place” over “throwing it back in” – but she has been decreasing her pain meds and moving around more.   We’re just waiting for everything to wake up.

So now I’ve learned that my daughter has at least one flaw: a drowsy bowel.  (And no, if you’re thinking of starting a garage band and are looking for a name, I do not recommend “Katie and the Drowsy Bowels.” Even though it does sound sort of cool.)

Speaking of drowsy bowels – I know: very graceful transition – how about that Joe Biden?  Even though he’s shuffled off this mortal coil, he’s still keeping his unblemished “wrong about every foreign policy decision he’s ever made” losing streak.

This time he’s very concerned that Israel has been taking down terrorists like Ted Kennedy knocking down rum-and-Cokes at an open bar.  He once again called for the Israelis to grant the terrorists a cease-fire.  You know, like the ones we gave Hitler in April of 1945, and the Japanese in Hiroshima and Nagasaki that August.   

Biden has perversely made Trump’s prediction from 2015 come true: In his eyes the Jews are doing too well lately, and he’s saying, “No! Please!  We’re tired of winning. It’s too much winning!”  

Within a couple of days of Hassan Nasrallah’s death – reportedly via many 2000-pound “bunker buster” bombs – the IDF also took out Nasrallah’s brother-in-law, as well as hitting another building where Hashem Safieddine, who is now presumed but not confirmed dead.

Hashem – his friends called him “Hash,” which is what he hopefully looks like now – was a cousin of Nasrallah’s, and one of the senior leaders most likely to be his successor.  Which appears to be a temp position, now that Netanyahu is ignoring Joey Gaffes, and is busily engaged in a carnival game of “whack-a-turban” with the leadership of Hamas and Hezbollah.

It is darkly comic to see hapless Antony Blinken trying to negotiate with what one news report called “the remnants of Hezbollah.”  Who could he possibly even be talking to?  I doubt that anybody who was anyone in Hezbollah’s higher ranks is still answering his phone, even assuming his answering hand is still attached to his body! 

Which means that Blinken is likely standing around near a mosque, talking to the first Tom, Dick or Achmed who will give him the time of day.  That’s what Biden’s vaunted diplomatic strategy has come to: the lead guitarist for the unknown band “Ablinken” (I’m not making that up), “negotiating” with a slow-witted, one-handed assistant goat-wrangler who is now the highest-ranking surviving member of Hezbo terrorist union Local 157. 

I love it!  A few months ago, Netanyahu was fighting for his political life.  Now he’s Michael Corleone, settling all the family business as he attends his nephew’s bris. 

Mohammed “Moe” Green gets shot through his glasses by IDF commandos.  The Mossad traps Hezbo’s top drone guy in a revolving door and then beeps the exploding pager in his pocket.  Shin Bet catches Abdul Tattaglia in bed with a goat and machine-guns them both. 

Two Israeli soldiers dressed like Muslim Virtue Police gun down Bilal Barzini on the steps of a Sharia Court-house . 

Nasrallah himself (played by Abe Vigoda in a keffiyeh), when confronted by a senior IDF commander, says, “Tell Bibi it was only business.  Jihadi business.  Can you get me off the hook?  For old times’ sake?”  And the commander says, “Can’t do it, Hassan.”  And then leaves the building right before the bunker buster hits. 

And now the weird beards running Iran are apparently as imbecilic as the former leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, because they fired 180 missiles into Israel, hitting very little, but giving the Israelis the justification (as though they didn’t already have it) to go simultaneously high-tech and Old Testament on their evil arses.

I can’t wait to see what Israel does next.  But if I were working at an Iranian nuclear facility or missile battery, I’d consider calling in sick, like Carlo when Sonny was set up for the toll booth massacre.   

One other positive development was the reaction of many Lebanese and Syrians when the Jews whacked Nasrallah: they were passing out candies and celebrating in the streets!  I’m sure that doesn’t mean that all of those people are enlightened Jeffersonian democrats and philosemites.  They might just be a different brand of Muslim, glad because some of the “bad” Muslims got the crotch-detonating pager treatment.

But still, I was reminded of the mobs of Gazans celebrating on October 7th.  They were celebrating and spitting on the corpses of poor Jewish girls whom their horrible co-religionists had raped and murdered, and then paraded through their streets.  So good riddance to them, and good luck to the Syrians and Lebanese.

In domestic news, I was thrilled with J.D. Vance’s debate performance! He did everything I’d wished that Trump would do in his debate: kept his cool, stuck to specifics, and parried every attack on Trump by citing his record, and then reminding viewers of Kamala’s record.  He also came across as empathetic, sensitive and positive, thus giving himself the best chance to persuade any female voters who are still persuadable.

Walz was better than Kamala – the lowest of low bars – but was still bumbling and gaffe-prone.  Even viewers who were only passing through an airport and didn’t hear him call himself a knucklehead – fact check: true! – got a visual of his bug-eyed awkwardness. 

The moderators were once again biased hacks, though not as thoroughly awful as David Muir and Linsey Davis.  I’m more convinced than ever that I was right in my columns a couple of weeks ago: future debate moderators should just be time-keepers, and stay out of the way.

It’s infuriating to see some “journalist” cutting off the candidates with comments like, “I want to move on” and “There’s a lot more to get to.”  We don’t care what you want, Teleprompter Reader.  No one’s voting for you, and you’re not the candidates’ parents!

They once again fact-checked the GOP candidate, even though they had agreed not to fact-check either side, and their “fact check” was once again wrong.  When Vance called the Haitians in Springfield “illegal immigrants,” Margaret Brennan jumped in to misleadingly condescend:  “Just to clarify for our viewers, [the Haitians in Springfield] have legal status.”

Vance handled it perfectly.  As soon as he started to correct her, both moderators interrupted him and tried to move on, but he wouldn’t let them.  He kept speaking until they had to momentarily shut up.  He pointed out that they had broken their promise not to do fact checks, and then accurately destroyed the faux fact check. 

He correctly said that the Haitians came illegally, and then used the CBP-1 application to file an asylum claim and then, “be granted legal status at the wave of a Kamala Harris open border wand.”  As he pointed out how different that was from going through the legal immigration process, the moderators realized he’d just pantsed them on live tv, and frantically cut his mike. 

Perfect!

I don’t know where this race stands, because there are contradictory polls everywhere, and the average of all polling shows the race tied.  That’s a depressing thought, but my gut instinct is to guess that Trump’s at least a little ahead.  Though it’s only a guess, I will cite two bits of evidence.

First, Kamala has been her terrible self in a series of recent interviews.  Her rambling, word-goulash answers (“word salad” is a too healthy and positive metaphor for the verbal dog’s breakfasts that she has been serving up) aren’t getting any better. 

You can always tell when she learns a new word or phrase, because she immediately starts beating it into the ground.  We all know “see what could be, unburdened by what has been,” and “in terms of…” and “dreams, aspirations and ambitions.”  Last week someone gave her a notecard with the word “holistic” on it, and she went on a compulsive, Tourette’s-like seizure of  holistically holistic holisticality.   

In her recent talk to a bunch of athletes – huh? – she rolled out one of her old favorites, which she must think makes her sound tough: “I eat ‘no’ for breakfast!”

And Willie Brown for lunch.

Okay, that was beneath me.  Withdrawn.

By the way, I am pleasantly surprised that her handlers have been putting Que Mala out there as much as they have over the last couple of weeks.  They have to know how terrible she is at speaking, and they’ve gotten her into a dead heat by hiding her completely. 

In fact, my main argument for Trump debating her again was that she otherwise won’t say another word in public between now and election day, thus hiding her total vacuity in a way that she wouldn’t have been able to in a debate.  But she’s actually been fielding some pitched softballs in interviews, and somehow still managing to miss the balls and hit herself in the head with the bat.

And I know what you’re thinking when you heard ‘softballs’: “Ooh, Martin’s going to talk about Doug Emhoff now.” 

And I am.  But not until my Monday column. (Consider yourself teased.)

The only rational reason I can think of for the Dems putting her out there is that they must have some internal polling that shows that Trump is ahead of her.

Which brings me to my second and last point: the cross tabs in the polling don’t make sense.

Nearly all polls show the overall race within the margin of error, but they also show Trump doing substantially better than he did in the past with important sub-groups of voters.  For example, he trailed Biden in 2020 among Hispanics by 34 points, but is only down to Kamala with them by 14. 

The same goes for a lot of groups: blacks, young people, independents, etc.  In every case, Trump is doing markedly better with each sub-group than he did in 2016 or 2020, yet he’s supposed to be in a dead heat with the electorate as a whole.

He was never going to get votes from hard-left Dems.  (Fun fact: after the Biden self-immolation/train-wreck debate in June, 20% of viewers said that BIDEN WON!  Those people are un-freakin’-reachable.)  But he certainly hasn’t lost any of his base. 

So either the internals are accurate and Trump is ahead overall, or the internals are all wrong and the overall race is really tied.  Either way, the left is going to try to cheat, so we need to get out our vote and aggressively poll watch.

The bottom line:  I won’t be able to relax until Katie is home and fully recovered, and Trump has won the election. 

And I’m praying for both! 

Hamas delenda est!

Israel Ends a Great Week, & CNN and Massachusetts Beclown Themselves (posted 9/20/24)

Well, here it is: my fifth consecutive column in one week. 

Many people said it couldn’t be done, and that I shouldn’t even attempt it.  “Sir,” they said to me, “It can’t be done.  Not do-able!”  (How’s that for just a light dusting of a Trump impression?)

But it’s Friday, and by the time this column is finished, I’ll have produced almost 9000 words of high-quality snarkery in one week. That’s a little more than 32 Gettysburg Addresses-worth! 

And Lincoln didn’t manage a single “terrorists have carnal relations with goats” jibe, even though everybody knows that you’re supposed to open a speech with a joke.  That’s Public Speaking 101.  (And it probably explains why his speech received very few laughing-face emojis, and he had to settle for the title of “Great Emancipator” instead of the more coveted, “President Hilarious Genius.”)

Of course, I’m not saying that taken together, my columns this week are 32 times better than the Gettysburg Address.  But I’m not saying that they are NOT 32 times better than the Gettysburg Address, either.  History will have to be the judge.

And I don’t envy History its very difficult choice.

Anyway, just when I thought I’d wrung every possible laugh out of this week’s cascade of Jewish secret agents – “The name is Bond, Schlomo Bond.  And I take my Manischewitz shaken, not stirred” – giving Hezbo terrorists the best prank calls ever – what with the hand-putations, the high-powered Lasik procedures, and the ballistic circumcisions – I saw CO’s iconic post:

Shabbat Kaboom 

Man I wish I’d thought of that one! 

How did I miss it?  There’s no way I’ll be able to top that.

Wait.  How about “Yom Kaboom?”

“Blast Hashanah?” 

“The Eight Days of Hannu-kaboom?”

No, forget it.  Too derivative.  The moment is gone, and CO has stolen my thunder.

I haven’t been this upset with him since he called me a diva, and said I was getting a big head.  Can you imagine?

I stalked right back to my trailer and locked myself inside.  Then I had one of my people tell one of his people that I’d only come out and write another column after I received two dozen long-stemmed roses and a sincere apology. 

Ah, who am I kidding?  We all know two things about CO: ladies dig him, and men can’t stay mad at him. 

Anyway, while I was fixated on Hezbollah members receiving the scariest phones calls since the famous one in the Muslim horror film “The Syria Scimitar Massacre” (“The call is coming from INSIDE the mosque!”), Democrats were still doing stupid things in this country.

I have time for two examples.

This week a freak-show panel on CNN was discussing what a dangerous, Hitler-y existential threat Trump is and how someone should really rid them of this meddlesome ex-president with a firearm of some kind.  (I’m loosely but accurately paraphrasing.)

Their latest bit of evidence was that Trump recently described how he talked to the Taliban leader, whom he called “Abdul,” about what would happen to him if he killed any American troops.  (He gave the guy a satellite picture of his house, which sent a clear message: if I want to talk to you, I’m going to skip the pager step and go straight to a Hellfire missile.)

So the CNN mouth-breathers barked and yapped about what a racist hack Trump is, saying something like, “he couldn’t even remember what the Taliban leader’s name was, so he just picked the most idiotically cliched Muslim name he could think of: Abdul.  What a xenophobic dope!”   

Annnnnddddd… it turns out that the Taliban leader’s actual name is… wait for it… but you don’t really have to, do you?…. ABDUL!

That’s right.  Nobody on a tv show – surrounded by technology which would allow them to instantaneously find out what the Taliban leader’s name is – could be bothered to instantaneously find out what the Taliban leader’s name is.

Great job, MSM hacks!  You’ve done the nearly impossible, proving that you are actually even lazier than you are stupid!

Our final story of leftist moral idiocy comes from Massachusetts (Unexpectedly!), where a week ago, a small group of people held a pro-Israel demonstration in Newton.  A 31-year-old named Caleb Gannon – he was wearing a pro-Palestine pin and a covid mask, so you know he really has his act together and is firing on all cylinders – noticed the demonstration from the other side of the street.  

So he crossed the street and calmly engaged the pro-Israelis in a respectful and substantive dialogue.  The end.

HA!  I kid.  He actually started screaming, “You’re sick!  You’re supporting genocide!” and then raced across the street through traffic – tragically, he was not hit – and violently tackled 47-year-old veteran Scott Hayes from behind.  Because: compassionate leftism!

Gannon wrestled with Hayes on the sidewalk, punching and trying to choke him, until Hayes pulled out his legally carried pistol and shot Gannon in the abdomen.  It was a clear-cut – and recorded from several angles! – example of self-defense.  Gannon survived, thanks in part to the first aid administered by members of the group he’d just attacked, including Hayes. 

“Has Hayes been given a ticker-tape parade, Martin, or just a key to the city for his heroic actions?” you might be asking.  But not if you’re as smart as I think you are. 

Because this is Massachusetts, and as a reporter explained, they don’t have a “stand your ground” law.

They apparently have a “watch helplessly while a hateful leftist freak charges you and knocks you to the ground” law.  

So Hayes was immediately charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon and violation of a constitutional right causing injury!  Supporters quickly raised $5000 to get him out on bail, and then another $250,000 for his legal defense.

Gannon was not immediately charged with anything (like the guy he attacked was!), but after a public outcry, he was also charged with assault and battery later.

It turns out that Gannon’s social media is full of posts condemning Israel and not Hamas for October 7th, and responding to American Jewish college kids complaining that they’ve been attacked on their campuses by the radical “tent-ifada” Hamas imitators by saying, “good, Zionists should feel unsafe everywhere.”

So stand by for the Massachusetts media’s forthcoming statement that, “We may never know what motivated Gannon to attack the pro-Israel group.” 

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to begin my refractory period after this historic 5-column week by taking a little medicinal bourbon and sleeping for 12 hours.   

Hamas delenda est!

More Explosions in Lebanon: This Time it’s Radios & Walkie-Talkies (posted 9/19/24)

You’re not going to believe this, but this is my fourth daily column in a row, and I’ve got another one holstered and almost ready for tomorrow.  Which means I am in the midst of pulling off the unthinkable: the fabled 5-column week!

I’m like a clutch receiver at the height of his powers, on 3rd-and-6 with the game on the line: you can’t stop me, you can only hope to contain me.

One of my contacts in the Trump campaign told me that the big guy just heard about this, and said, “Five columns?  I heard that, and I said, ‘A five column week?!’  This is like something nobody’s ever even thought of. People are saying it’s unprecedented.  No precedent for it!  First his great advice on debating, then his instant classic “Muhammad Dangerfield” bit, and now this?  I need that guy in my cabinet.  He’s just fantastic, right?”

How do you know that that quote is authentic, and didn’t come from Joe Biden?  Because it didn’t end with, “Pause.  Repeat the line.” 

I took a nap yesterday, right after reading about the Iranian diplomat who lost both of his eyes to an exploding pager, and the last thought in my mind before falling asleep was, “What would an Iranian diplomat be doing with a terrorist’s pager?”

You can imagine how my subconscious mind works, since you’ve been reading how oddly my conscious mind works.  So… yep.  My first thoughts when I woke up were, “Does this mean that Iranian diplomat is just a Ranian diplomat, now?”  (Boom!  Missing eye joke when you least expect it!) (He never saw it coming, either!) (I’m here all week, people.)

By the way, I’ve been reading all of your comments this week, and I appreciate them.  But I haven’t had time to respond to them.  Because I may not have mentioned this, but I’ve been turning out another solid gold column every 27 minutes over here!

Still, I appreciate your kind words, and thanks.

Just when I feared that Tuesday’s pager-palooza in Lebanon might be inducing a dangerous redirecting of my blood flow that threatens to last for more than four hours, a sequel appears, this time involving walkie-talkies (or as they’re now being called, “talkies-no-longer-walkies”) and radios!

Who knew that jihadis listened to radio?   (“Hey, cool camels and kittens, you’re listening to your 50,000-watt blowtorch out of downtown Beirut – the station with all the ululatin’ – and you knoowww our call-sign: K-BOOM.  It’s another wacky, Death-to-Israel Wednesday!  Fifth caller gets a signed copy of Hassan Nasrallah’s biography, “Mein Kampf? Me Too!”  Now sit back and listen to the Madrassah Boys, and their remake of the infidel surf group’s “Little Deuce Coupe!”  “She’s my little goat bride, you don’t know what I’ve got.  Well, I’m not bragging, Hamid, so don’t put me down, But I’ve got the sweetest she-goat in this one-camel town, I met her on a Monday in the neighbor’s barn, and soon we were talkin—”  BOOM! (then static)

You see what I did there?  It’s my version of the Mossad mind trick.  They implanted explosive devices in the ears of terrorists, and I just implanted an ear worm in your head.  Because right this minute, those of you old enough to remember the Beach Boys are bobbing your head and softly humming to yourself, “She’s my little goat bride, you don’t know what I’ve got.” 

Sorry about that.

This story just keeps getting better and better!  Imagine you’re a black-hearted little Hezbo anti-Semite.  All you’ve ever wanted to do is stuff women into bee-keeper outfits, toss gay guys off roofs, and kill unarmed Jewish civilians.  But on Tuesday your dad (Muhammad) and your uncles (Muhammad and Muhammad) and your grandpa (Muhammad) and even your cousin Joey – he’s always been an odd one – all answered their pagers, and no one’s heard from them since. 

Which reminds me of an old joke:

A young Muslim is seeking a divorce.  (He should have known the marriage was doomed right from the wedding vows, when the imam asked his betrothed if she takes this jihadi to be her lawfully wedded husband, and she just bleated and continued chewing on a tin can.)  But he doesn’t know marital law, so he looks for a local attorney.

He comes across a firm that sounds promising: “Muhammad, Muhammad, Muhammad & Muhammad, Esquire.”  So he calls, and someone picks up.  (This joke takes place before all the phones in Lebanon went ballistic.)

Voice on phone: “Hello, Muhammad and etc.”

Jihadi: “Can I please speak to Muhammad?”

Voice: “I’m sorry, he was droned last week.”

Jihadi: “Well then, can I speak to Muhammad?”

Voice: “He’s in Qatar until Thursday.”

Jihadi: “Then let me speak to Muhammad.”

Voice:  “He’s hiding in a ‘freedom tunnel’ and defecating into a bucket all afternoon.”

Jihadi: “Okay, can I talk to Muhammad, then?”

Voice: “Speaking.”

Back to the young Hezbollah would-be terrorist: What’s he supposed to do now?  His older brother (Muhammad) and his second cousin once removed (Muhammad) thought they’d found a work-around to communicate: two cups connected by a very long string. 

But in the middle of a conversation about murdering elderly Jews in wheelchairs, one of them said, “Hey, wait a minute.  This isn’t string.  It’s primer cord!  You filthy Je—” And… KA-BLAM!

Rumors that Nasrallah and Yahya Sinwar are now training a small flock of carrier pigeons have been confirmed.

Meanwhile, in a secret lab hidden deep beneath Mount Sinai, three guys in yarmulkes are gathered around a fourth, who has just put down a soldering iron.  He steps back, holds up a small metal band that would fit around a pigeon’s leg, and says, “Gentlemen, I give you the C4-DEADS.”

“Ooh,” one of them says.  “The C-4 Detonating Explosive Avian Delivery System? Nice!”

Next up: Shin Bet is working on a plan to make it so that if two terrorists cup their hands around their mouths to yell to each other across a rubble-strewn street, their fingers explode.

And, scene.

Oh, another layer of sweet irony in Pager-Gate just occurred to me. 

In the decades since 9/11 – memo to Que Mala: that day was just a tad bit worse than January 6th, you moron – terrorists throughout the Middle East and Afghanistan have been using cell phones and pagers to send signals to detonate roadside bombs and IEDs.

I bet they did not see this “Reverse” UNO card coming!

I cannot get enough of this story!  As Billy Edd Wheeler might say, I’m happy as a pig in slop right now.  (How’s that for an abrupt transition?)

Who’s Billy Edd Wheeler, you may be asking, if you don’t know as much about high-brow culture as I do?  He’s the songwriter with the most country music songwriter name ever, and he just died yesterday at the age of 91. 

Among other great hits, he wrote the most concisely evocative description of divorce ever, in Johnny Cash’s hit, “Jackson: “We got married in a fever, hotter than a pepper sprout./We’ve been talking ‘bout Jackson, ever since the fire went out.”

(Taylor Swift has written 3,261 songs, and all of the meaning in all of them put together can’t match that one couplet.)

He also wrote one of the strangest songs ever, for Kenny Rogers: “Coward of the County.”  (It’s about the darkest subject, and yet treated so bizarrely, and put to such a jaunty tune.)  

If you’ve never taken a piece of advice from me before – and if so, see how your life is turning out?  That’s on you. – take this one:

Use “Duckduckgo.com” (NOT commie Google) to search “Norm Macdonald and Adam Carolla discussing Coward of the County,” and then listen to some 24-karat comedy gold! (I really miss Norm!) It’s two parts, and it’s worth it.

In fact, they also do a hilarious break down of “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town.”  And I’m just a simple, country doctor of literature and not a psychiatrist, but if you don’t think that’s funny, you are clinically insane.

In fact, if you listen to those two gems and don’t agree that your life has been improved by at least 1%, I will happily refund all the money you’ve put in my PayPal tip jar at Martinsimpsonwriting.com. 

What’s that?  You’ve never put anything in my tip jar?

I’m slowly turning away from you now…

RIP, Billy Edd

Not so much, Hezbollah terrorists.

Hamas delenda est!

Paging Hezbollah: There’s a new “Feel-Good Story of the Year” Leader in the Clubhouse (posted 9/18/24)

For those of you scoring at home, this is my third column in as many days, and I’m writing one for Friday, too.  I know what you’re thinking, and yes, I gladly accept the thanks of a grateful nation. 

Speaking of guys who are crushing it at life, how about those Israelis?  I thought they’d peaked for this week on Monday. 

Ooh, let me start this story a different way: 

Once upon a time, there was an Iranian-funded underground Hezbollah missile production facility near Masyaf, Syria.  (And yes, many Middle Eastern town names are apparently translations from Klingon.) But that was on Sunday, when Israel started hitting Syrian military sites in the area with very distracting air strikes.   

On Monday – as the local Syrian fighters were peeking their heads out, checking on the condition of their fellow jihadis and their goat girlfriends — Israeli special forces bad-asses fast-roped down onto the missile facility from a helicopter.  They killed 13 fighters, stole a bunch of intelligence documents, and then set explosive charges and got back into their helicopter, taking off and banking away as the missiles intended for Jew-killing blew up behind them. 

And if they weren’t blasting some eerie shophar music from under-mounted speakers as they streaked across the desert back home, they left some terrorist-intimidating money on the table!

So that was Monday, and already it was a great week.  But then… Man o’ Manischewitz!  On Tuesday, pagers started going off all over Lebanon. 

And I don’t mean “going off” as in beeping and words scrolling on a screen, but “going off” the way a hand grenade goes off.  Only much, MUCH funnier!

It seems that in recent months, terrorist leaders in the area had noticed that when many of their colleagues and underlings were on a cell phone, they had a tendency to get a spontaneous, drone-assisted colonoscopy courtesy of Mossad Mobile Phones.  After which their fighting effectiveness declined precipitously.  

So the leaders came up with a brilliant plan: let’s buy 3000 old-school pagers, and distribute them to all of our terrorist brethren throughout Lebanon.  They can’t be traced like cell phones, and if they were good enough to coordinate weed sales throughout NYC in 1990, why couldn’t they be used to coordinate Jew murdering in Allah-ville in 2024? 

Hilariously enough, they’d forgotten the third most famous rule in foreign policy, right after “Don’t invade Russia when winter is coming on,” and “Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line”:

“Never screw with a nation that has more Nobel prize winners than your nation has unmolested goats.”

It’s a cliché because it’s true. 

So somewhere between the pager factory in Taiwan and the filthy Hezbollah HQ in Lebanon, some clever Hebrew hackers get hold of the 3000 pagers and equipped them with the latest upgrade in detonating communications software. 

It was like the old Jewish vaudeville routine of putting a little charge in a cigar to make it explode.  Only much, MUCH funnier! 

Oh, to be a fly on the wall in the jihadi Costco warehouse where the pallets of pagers were being unloaded!  I picture a couple of flunkies slicing the packing tape on pager boxes, making small talk: 

Flunky 1: “How’s the missus, Bilal?”

Flunky 2: “Very content.”

Flunky 1: “You’re a lucky man.  She is one attractive ungulate!”

Flunky 2: “You too have done well for yourself.  Your Fatima has very shapely hooves.  And her coat? As white as the infidel Senator Elizabeth Warren!”

Flunky 1 (nodding modestly): “Hashtag ‘we must never stop mocking her,’ am I right?”

Then a middle manager comes in and gathers a crowd of jihadis around a long row of pallets.  “All right men, distribute these to everyone in your chain of command.  Make sure that they keep them on their persons at all times, preferably attached to their hip or in a pocket, close to their groin.  When the beeper sounds, have them hold the pager in their dominant hand, and look directly at it from a very short distance, to see the message.”

There probably aren’t any comedy clubs in Beirut, but if there are, I’ll bet Muhammad Dangerfield is facing a tough room right now. 

“It’s great to be here, you’re a wonderful crowd.  I’ll tell ya, I don’t get any respect from Nasrallah at all.  The guy hasn’t even talked to me in days.  (raising his hand) Has anybody else heard from him lately?  Show of hands?” (awkward silence, as angry weird beards stare sullenly at their bandaged stumps)  Oh, right.  Too soon.”

“Hey, things have been hectic at work, haven’t they?  I mean it’s only Tuesday, but this morning, pagers were blowing up all over the office.” 

Heckler: “Boo!  Get off stage!”

“My brother-in-law, he’s no prize either.  He got a message today asking him if he’d like to change his long distance carrier to Sprint.  As in ‘Sprint away from this pager as fast as you can!”

Heckler: “You are not funny man.  Go away now!”

“I’ll tell ya, he’s not doing well.  His beeper went off, and he lost his new robe and his old pronouns, if you know what I mean.”

And, scene.

Man, I love this story!  It’s such a masterstroke, tactically and morally.  There could not be a more satisfying way to strike evil people than to trick them into maiming themselves.  And this “Trojan pager” move has – for one, shining moment – solved the age-old dilemma of how to fight terrorists imbedded in a civilian population without killing tons of civilians.  And all without putting IDF soldiers at risk!

Every person with one of those phones proved his guilt and invited his just punishment, simply by possessing it.  And other than one or two innocents who might have been standing next to daddy (assuming daddy is a murderous scumbag) when he got his message from Jehovah, every person killed or wounded is part of a self-selecting surgical strike.

This ingenious move is going to bear fruit for a long time.  The terrorists had only gotten the pagers in the first place because their communications networks had been severely compromised.  Now they’re going to be frozen in place, and completely paranoid.  The only way to send messages will be by courier, and IDF drones can look for anybody running down a street with a missing hand or a scorched groin, and blast away. 

Between the PTSD, the career-ending wounds, and the recovery time necessary for those who can recover, thousands of evil killers have been taken off the board.     

Congrats, bravo, and l’chaim, IDF! 

And now, more than ever…

Hamas delenda est!

Feel-Good Stories: Bibi kills it, DEI Struggles, Israel Takes Out Some Bad Guys (posted 7/31/24)

Our politics lately is so full of knaves, grifters, pathological liars and fake Indians (#wemustneverstopmockingher) that following it can dent the optimism of even the best of us.  Mocking the bad guys takes some of the edge off of that for me, but it also helps to focus on the many positive stories that are happening all the time, too.

Here are a few of those stories from the last couple of weeks:

Bibi Netanyahu’s speech to our congress last week was moving and inspiring, and perfectly emblematic of the courage of a people who gave us the story of David and Goliath.  After the atrocities of October 7th, the Israelis have made great sacrifices to minimize their enemies’ civilian deaths as they wage a war every bit as righteous as our fight against the Nazis and Japanese in WWII. 

And for that they’ve been slandered and lectured by leftists — in the press, in the UN, and in much of the West generally.  They’ve endured condemnation for responding “disproportionately,” and have been told that they must unilaterally cease fire, leaving their hostages in slavery and Hamas terrorists in control in Gaza. 

And then when Netanyahu comes to address the congress of his great ally, the president and VP and around 50 Democrats shun him and boycott his speech.  And the one anti-Semite who does show up is Rashida Tlaib, sufferer of the worst case of “resting jihadi face” in the world!  And the slogans on the stupid little ping pong paddle sign she was holding up were as tough to look at as she is.

And still Bibi was able to give that speech.  If you didn’t watch it yet, you should.  He pointed out and honored some of the battle-scarred Israeli heroes, and the young woman hostage who was rescued by the IDF and reunited with her dying mother, who feared that she would never see her again. 

The kind of moral clarity he displayed is bracing, and its virtue even more impressive when contrasted with the shameful reactions of many of our pitiful elected Democrats.  I love knowing that when a nation is threatened by evil enemies, there are still brave citizens around who will rally to their country’s defense.   

In other good news, we appear to be winning many battles in the culture war. 

Just a few short years ago, the defund the police movement was sweeping across our nation, and DEI propaganda was a dominant force in academia and in most of the corporate world.  But now the “defund the police” mobs have been routed nearly everywhere, including even in deep-blue states and cities, and you can’t find a nationally important Democrat who supports that disproven and delusional cause.   

DEI is just as clearly in retreat, too.  Universities in several states – Florida, of course, and most recently Alabama, among many others – have gotten rid of their DEI emphasis and are dismantling their DEI departments and terminating or reassigning their DEI employees.  In the leftist enclaves of the universities, this is a nearly miraculous development!

Within just the last month, giant corporations including Tractor Supply, John Deere and Microsoft have also all explicitly renounced DEI.  The latter used some sweet corporate-speak to announce the falling axe, with euphemistic phrases such as “[DEI programs] are no longer business critical or smart as they were in 2020.” 

In a perfect world, they would admit that such policies were NEVER smart, and they sure as hell were never “business critical!”  But a win is still a win.

Tractor Supply and John Deere were even more blunt, admitting that they’d screwed up their priorities and insulted their customers, then apologized, and then laid out the specific steps they were taking to completely eliminate DEI from their operations.

The fact that companies like that – whose products are bought disproportionately by straight males with a Liz Warren-esque complexion – had been putting their employees through idiotic diversity training and racial struggle sessions in the first place shows how far the DEI rot had spread!

I was raised in Midwestern farm country, and I never heard a farmer, grain elevator worker, or farm equipment salesman involved in a heated discussion of pronouns.  No fights in a detassling crew ever included the words, “You’re gonna acknowledge your privilege right now, or I’m gonna whip your arse!”   

In fact, no detassler on his first day of work ever challenged a farmer by saying, “You’re telling me to pull the tassles out of the plant because that’s the male part.  But what if that corn stalk doesn’t identify as male?  Won’t misgendering the crops make the harvest inedible?”

Even prominent Democrat pols now implicitly acknowledge the danger that DEI poses to their plans, by trying to defend the concept while simultaneously denying that it has influenced any of their candidates. 

When MSM talking heads howl that it is horribly racist to say that DEI is responsible for Ketanji Jackson being on SCOTUS or Que Mala being their candidate – even though Biden openly said he was making a DEI pick in both cases, by choosing only from among black females for those positions – they give the game away. 

Being called a DEI hire is now clearly recognized as an insult, and that’s a good sign for our culture.

Finally, to prove the main point of this column, as I was finishing it I was interrupted by the news that Israel has just given a big ol’ “ballistic Shalom” to top Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr. 

(Have you noticed how the names of these terrorists often sound like insults?  “You’re nothing but a damn Shukr!  Why don’t you go fuad yourself?”)

On Saturday, Shukr masterminded the Hezbollah missile strike on a soccer field in Israel, killing 12 Druze children.  And I’m sure that made him feel like a bad-arse jihadi warrior, bravely taking on those soccer-playing kids from the safety of his home in Beirut.

Annnnnndddddd cue the transition card and the French-accented voice-over from Sponge Bob:  “Three days lay-ter…”

…an Israeli drone flew over Shukr’s shack and fired three missiles that collapsed the building on his evil head, before shooting some video of the chaos and then flying away, pumping out a couple of jaunty verses of “Hava Nagila” as it departed.

(Yes, I love the scene in Apocalypse Now where Duvall leads the helicopter attack while they’re playing “Ride of the Valkyries” to frighten the Viet Cong.  And I love the idea of Israeli fighter jets or drones screaming in low over terrorist bases while blasting a shofar.)

And THEN, as I was putting a few final touches on this column – “ballistic shalom” doesn’t just pop into your head on a first draft, people – I was preparing to post this at around 3:30 a.m.  Because I never stop working for CO nation. 

Does that mean you should hit my tip jar at Martinsimpsonwriting.com? 

Probably.

Where was I? 

Oh yeah.  Just before I posted, I took a quick look through the headlines and saw “Israel Takes Out Top Terrorist in Air Strike in Iran.” 

I started to move on, until I remembered that Fuad achieved room temperature in Beirut.  What’s this about Iran?

So I read the article, and lo and behold, the Israelis got a two-fer within 12 hours, taking out an even bigger terrorist piece of merde, Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh not long after he arrived in Tehran.  There is no info yet on how they killed him, but I bet the details are hilarious.

It’s been a tough stretch for terrorist scumbags lately.  Most of Hamas’ fighters are either dead or cowering in tunnels and pooping in buckets.  Then Iran’s leader decides to take a ride in the mountains on a rickety helicopter and turns into hummus on a hillside.  Then the Iranians pick a new top weird beard, and Ismail comes to town for the big celebration, and…

Like I said, there are a lot of great things going on, if you just look for them.

Defund the police is dead, DEI is dying, Fuad is flattened and Ismail got Is-nailed.        

Say it with me, CO nation…

Hamas delenda est!

The MSM Tries to Cover for Kamala, Schumer Beclowns Himself, & Karma Gets An Anti-Semitic Olympian (posted 7/29/24)

Once again trying to keep up with the news last week was like trying to drink from a firehose. 

I know what you’re thinking: “If we didn’t know what a refined gentleman Martin is, that sounds like a setup for a hilarious Willie Brown joke.”  And maybe it is.  But as you know, that kind of thing is beneath me.  So let’s not act like children, people.

By the way, I just re-watched the two-minute clip from the debate when Trump and Biden talked about golf.  And for the rest of my life, whenever I’m feeling a little down, I will watch that clip and feel the healing balm of laughter.    

Trump’s advisors had obviously coached him up to not over-reacting or show too much irritation, and he did a pretty good job of maintaining a poker face throughout.  But the one thing that put him over the edge was hearing Biden say that he was a 6 handicap.

Trump’s expression – groaning and turning his head away – was comedy gold, followed immediately by Biden changing his handicap to an 8, while Trump shook his head and sarcastically said, “Yeah.  Never.” 

Then Trump gave the coup de grace: “I’ve seen your swing, Joe.  Let’s not act like children.”

I’ve used that line half a dozen times in the last month, including in a friendly argument with my wife.  She was reminding me that I’d promised to give Cassie the Wonder Dog a bath, and that she was not smelling so great.  Technically, she was right, but I could see that Cassie was offended.

So I said, “Honey, I’ve seen your swing.  Let’s not act like children.”  And it worked perfectly.  Karen was completely confused, and I laughed and put out my fist, and Cassie gave me a paw bump and trotted out of the room at my side. 

That’s the closest I’ve come in 35 years to winning a marital argument.  So thank you, President Trump.

Anyway, the Obamas endorsed Kamala on Friday, so now the die has been cast, the Rubicon has been crossed, and the pooch has been screwed.  

I don’t think that even the Democrat party could flip-flop again if her numbers go south, and try to switch in a new candidate at the convention.  So we can all now officially train our fire on Que Mala.  (By which I mean, we can all now tell the truth about her.)

We still need to stay focused, because she starts with an enormous propaganda machine and a mountain of cash in her corner, and the MSM will lie to sell her as outrageously as they lied to sell Biden.  But between her own awkward incompetence and being saddled with Biden’s terrible record, she is clearly beatable. 

In the meantime, her “honeymoon” is providing some dark humor, as we watch the MSM beclown themselves with one blatant lie after another: 

“She wasn’t a DEI pick!” (Even though Biden himself said that she was.)

“She wasn’t the border czar!”  (Even though we can post dozens of MSM headlines saying she was, and we can watch the séance with Joe Biden when he gave her the responsibility for the border.) 

“She’s an exciting, dynamic leader, who has earned her way to the top!”  (<cough> Willie Brown <cough>)

The best and cringiest moment came from poor Chuck Schumer – a hollowed-out husk of a man at this point, though I’m not sure that he was ever much more than that – rolling out her announcement.

In a performance worthy of a “Worst Actor in a Political Farce” nomination, Schumer mimicked enthusiasm, while reading a groan-worthy and unconvincing script, which I swear I am not making up:

“President Biden’s selfless decision has given the Democratic Party the opportunity to unite behind a new nominee.  (Here he began pumping his fists very unconvincingly.) And boy oh boy, are we enthusiastic!” 

Yes.  Biden’s “selfless” “decision.”  You know, like when the Godfather had Luca Brasi hold a gun to that band leader’s head and told him that either his brains or his signature would be on the contract. 

And the bandleader said, “I have selflessly decided to sign this contract.”

Also, nobody in all of human history who was actually enthusiastic has ever had to say, “Boy oh boy, are we enthusiastic!”

Then Schumer said, “So now that the process has played out from the grassroots bottom up…”

Yes.  Because nothing says “grassroots, bottom-up campaign” like a political puppet having a series of closed-door meetings with party bosses and big donors over 36 hours and then emerging as “the people’s choice!”  

“…we are here today to throw our support being Vice President KAMALA HARRIS!” 

And then he actually clapped.  All by himself.  In a room presumably full of Dem party hacks and journalists.  (But I repeat myself.)

After an excruciating several seconds of sad, one-man applause, Schumer dropped his hands and acknowledged the toxic-level of cringe, saying, “I’m clapping.  You don’t have to.”  When the crowd laughed at Schumer’s awkwardness, he finally said, “It’s a happy day.  What can I say?”

How about, “Please accept my deepest apologies for the mortifyingly dishonest kabuki theater I’ve just engaged in.  I’ve shamed myself, my party, and my family.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I will retire from public life forever.” 

But nope.  He just stood there in a room full of spineless sycophants, who couldn’t even bring themselves to sycophant. 

I wish I could have been there, because you know what I would have called out. “We’ve seen your candidate, Chuck.  Let’s not act like children!”

But Schumer had still not hit rock bottom, because two minutes later, before turning the microphone over to Hakeem Jeffries, he made one more attempt to use some flailing arm gestures and faux-rousing rhetoric to elicit some reaction from a captive audience who appeared to be as dead as Joe Biden:

“Today…we begin our next chapter, and it will be our best yet!  Vice President Harris will beat Donald Trump, and [awkward fist pumping with each emphatic word] Become. The. Next. President. Of. The. United. States. Of. America!”

Then he actually looking pleadingly toward the first row, waving his hand back and forth, and plaintively saying, “Applause?”  When not a single person responded, he quickly said, “Hakeem,” and stepped aside, looking like the picture you’d see in a dictionary beside the words, “flop sweat.”   

Ouch!  Tough room, Chuck!

If this bunch of lackeys and sell-outs can’t even be tased into some fake applause, the next four months are going to be entertaining.

There are a lot of good-news stories that I wanted to talk about, but this column is already getting a little long, so I’ll save those for a Wednesday column, and choose just one schadenfreude-tastic story to end with.

This one happened at the Olympics, where a Muslim athlete from Tajikistan named Emomali was matched against an Israeli in a judo competition.  And you’ll never believe it, but the Muslim was a big a-hole to the Jewish guy.

Unexpectedly!

Emomali won the match, and afterward he snubbed the protocol of shaking the Israeli’s hand. Instead, he stalked off, saying, “Allahu Akbar” and giving the Islamic “finger of Tawheed” gesture, which is making a fist with only the index finger raised, symbolizing the Islamic belief that, “There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet.” 

And then, because God exists, and He is hilarious, Emomali next faced a Japanese guy, who picked him up and slammed him backwards onto the mat.  When Emomali reached his left arm out to try to break his fall, it bent in a direction it wasn’t supposed to, leaving it dislocated, and Emomali crying in pain on the mat.

I couldn’t help but think of Shane Gillis’ hilarious impression of Trump’s news conference announcing the death of Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi: “We could hear him crying.  I said, Abu, don’t cry.  ‘Crybaby Baghdadi,’ that’s what we were all calling him.”

Meanwhile, Emomali’s defeated Israeli opponent advanced to the next round, because the Algerian Muslim who had been scheduled to fight him forfeited the match, rather than compete against a Jew.  (Unexpectedly.)     

If I could go back in time and see only one Olympic event, it would have to be Emomali doing his impression of a backward-bending chicken leg on the mat. 

Oh no, wait.  I’d go to the 1976 Olympics, and find Bruce Jenner, and say, “Bruce, I’m from the future, and I’ve got to warn you about a terrible, terrible decision you’re going to make in about 40 years!”

But if I could go back in time and see two Olympics, my second choice would be to pop back to this weekend to see Emomali going, “Allahu Ak-OW! OW! OW!”

And as he was being taken off on a stretcher, I’d show him the “Finger of Simpson,” which is very similar to the “Finger of Tawheed.”

Except that it does not involve the index finger.

Then I’d say…

Hamas delenda est!