obama-library – Martin Simpson

I Love Foreign Tourists Who Appreciate America, but I Don’t Like Soccer, or Obama’s Ugly Library (posted 6/22/26)

I really like the positive blog postings from all of the foreigners who came to the states for the World Cup, and have been rhapsodizing about all the great things they’ve discovered about the USA. From the Waffle House to Buc-ee’s to the size of the country, the diversity of the landscape and the friendliness of the American people, they’ve been citing a lot of everyday things that we take for granted.

It’s especially nice to see our nation through their eyes after so many years of relentless negativity about America. The elites in Europe have been sneering at us even as they depend on us for their defense, and for many of the inventions, innovations and trade that have enriched their lives. Too many of the millions of illegals who have been coming here criticize everything about America even as they praise the home countries that they couldn’t wait to get away from.

And of course, way too many of our own citizens don’t appreciate our great country. Some because they went to college and were indoctrinated into the trendy leftist disdain for everything good, healthy and normal, and some because they’ve been spoiled, and take the blessings of living here for granted, as we all tend to do.

Against that backdrop of international disfavor and domestic carping and self-flagellation, it is incredibly refreshing to see appreciative visitors, wide-eyed with wonder and enthusiasm about everything they see as they travel across America.

On the other hand, I don’t like that some of these blogs are phony, or at least exaggerated, and driven by self-serving motives. I’ve heard that at least a few of them are AI-generated, and that many more are coming from bandwagons of people who want to promote their own causes or blogs. The latter makes sense, because with so many people getting into podcasting, people are always looking to find a way to get clicks and attention.

After the wild success of a few foreigners’ podcasts that have gone viral – Freddy from Germany is a particularly famous one, but you can quickly find a half-dozen others – it couldn’t happen any other way. Americans are a huge, mostly patriotic audience, hungry for acknowledgment of the beauty of our country and the virtues of our system and culture, and for the chance to tout our hometowns and states. So catering to that hunger would inevitably draw some inauthentic copycats.

But we shouldn’t let that dampen our enthusiasm. I wrote several months ago about a wholesome British couple with a blog in which they traveled around the South, reveling in how welcoming and engaging everybody was. They were taken to gun ranges to get a taste of our pride in the Second Amendment, on boat rides to see gators or do some fishing, and to local attractions and bars and restaurants of all sorts. And this was well before the World Cup visitors and the recent spate of pro-American travel blogs.

Our country and people are mostly awesome, and it’s good to be reminded of that. Especially because if we only watch the media, we can start to think that dysfunctional hives of malcontents – LA, Portland, Seattle, Chicago, NYC, etc. – are the norm, rather than the blessedly rare exception.

Oh, and I can’t leave this topic with one more thing I hate: soccer!

Sure, it’s great that so many foreigners came here to watch soccer, but got introduced to America’s greatness instead. But it would be even better if they were here in the fall, and had the chance to see real football, so that they could realize how lame soccer is. And then renounce it, and all of its foolishness.

The latest example of soccer’s imbecility came last week, when the world soccer community (shudder) went crazy because of one momentous, epoch-defining game. It was between Cape Verde (a small island nation off the coast of Africa, with around half a million people) and Spain, which is apparently a soccer powerhouse, and a favored contender in the tournament. It turned out that tiny Cape Verde wildly over-performed in its David vs. Goliath game.

It was a classic underdog story that transcends sports, and captures the public imagination. Like the Miracle Mets of 1969, or the Miracle on Ice Olympic hockey game when the US beat the Russians, or when an unknown Buster Douglas knocked out Mike Tyson.

And the breathless sports reporting reflected the instant-classic status of the contest. Headlines announced that “Cape Verde Pulls Off Historic Upset,” and that “Cape Verde Stuns Favorite Spain in Historic Contest,” and called it, “A World Cup Shocker.” One story began, “It may never get better than their first day at the World Cup for Cape Verde.” Grown Cape Verdian men were openly weeping with joy at the end of the game.

But before you wonder how tiny Cape Verde could defeat European powerhouse Spain, they couldn’t. And they didn’t. They tied.

I know what you’re thinking. “Martin, you hilarious, ruggedly handsome genius, only you could think up something as absurdly comic as an epic, heroic battle that ends in a tie! Are the Miracle Mets remembered because they achieved a tie in the World Series? Did euphoric chants of ‘USA! USA!’ cascade down on the stunned Russkies’ heads in 1980 because we tied them in the Olympics? Ridiculous!”

But no. I’m not making that up. They tied.

So your next thought is probably that that must have been one hell of a back-and-forth, edge-of-your-seat rollercoaster of a tie, where each team traded goal after goal, before finally collapsing in exhaustion. You’re probably guessing that the final score was something like 12-12.

But no. The game was scoreless! A zero burger! The “highlights” of the game would consist of several minutes of clips in which one team or the other got within a quarter-mile of scoring a goal…and then failed. The pride of Cape Verde and the indolent Spaniards played for 60 minutes – or however long a soccer bout lasts – and they scored the same number of goals together, as I scored by myself.

And I wouldn’t play soccer if you cut off both of my arms, and told me that that was the only sport I could ever play for the rest of my life.

So, yeah. You know everything you need to know about soccer if you just ask the question, “What would it take to achieve ‘the best it will ever get’ plaudits, and garner World War III-sized headlines in soccer?”

Because the answer is, “A scoreless freaking tie.”

In other news that I already wrote about recently, the Obama Library/Flak Tower/Ginormous Trash Compactor opened last week, and the ceremony was as obnoxious as the structure itself, and the man it honored.

First, because as the great Babylon Bee noted, “Obama’s library cruelly disenfranchises millions of black Americans by requiring photo ID for entry.”

(Just as we should never stop mocking Liz Warren’s forked-tongue fairy tales about her native ancestry, we should never stop mocking leftists who claim that blacks are incapable of getting IDs to prove their identity before they vote.)

Second, because the speeches were kicked off with that hallmark of hypocritical stupidity and lameness, the “land acknowledgment.” In this case, Valerie Jarrett – the grifter who is getting $750K per year to be a librarian at a library with almost no books in it – gave a shout-out to “the Nishinabe, the Council of Three Fires, the Ojibwe, the Odawa, and the Potawatami” who originally occupied Chicago, I guess.

I really wish that all Americans would start heckling anybody who gives a land acknowledgment in public ever again. Something like, “Give it back, you virtue-signaling hypocrites!” or “My great-grandpa was on the Council of Two Fires, before those Council of Three Fires jackasses stole the land from him. Boo!”

However, in this case, that wouldn’t work, because any Ojibwes or Odawans who might be wandering by and get offered the Obama Library land back, would take one look at that gigantic, ugly, inverted paper shredder and back slowly away with their hands out in front of them, saying whatever is Odawan for, “No way Jose! You can keep that monstrosity.”

Third, like you, I thought that Jarrett’s opening would be hard to top when it came to unsettling comments from the dais.

But that was before I heard Obama’s odd opening words: “Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battle station.”

Que Mala/Crockett, 2028!

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Architecture Corner, Featuring the Obama Library & the Trump WH Ballroom (posted 10/27/25)

I read a story in the Babylon Bee that the ominous Obama Library in Chicago will soon be completed – they phrased it as “it’s almost fully operational” – and I realized what any sane Chicago Democrats should have said several years ago, when the Bamster was commandeering acres of land and promising not to use too many public funds for this monstrosity: “It’s a trap!”

Am I suggesting that Chicago Democrats look like squid-creatures and sound like a phlegmy Bernie Sanders?

Well, I am not NOT saying that. But I was being hyperbolic, because I said “any sane Chicago Democrats.”

And that’s only Larry, who lives on Cermak Road in Berwyn. And he just looks very tired and beaten down.

Anyway, here’s a cautionary note to Larry, and every other resident of Chicagoland: you’ll know that Obama’s flak-tower of an architectural middle finger is almost completed. Because that’s when the eye of Sauron will flame into malevolent life atop the structure…and by then it will probably be too late to flee.

Speaking of architecture, I’ve noticed the Dems’ totally rational and appropriate reaction to Trump adding a ballroom to the east wing of the White House… and Great Googly Moogly, are these people desperate for something to lose their minds over!

They’re all howling about the unthinkable sacrilege of Trump altering a single stone or timber of the East Wing, which was hand-built by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and ten other signers of our Declaration of Independence! And I guess they have a poi—

Hold on. My crack research staff has just handed me a laminated sheet of information about the East Wing. Which, it turns out, was first erected (insert your own Bill Clinton joke here) in 1902.

Wait a minute. I was born in a year starting with “19,” and I went to public school before leftist goofballs infested our schools, so I know that none of the Founding Fathers were still around then. So let me read a little further…

Okay, hold on to your top hats. Because the East Wing was originally used “as an entrance for guests during large social gatherings,” and its “primary feature was the long cloak room with spots for coats and hats.”

Oh, the sacred coats and hats of people born in the same century as me! Won’t SOMEBODY think of the coats and hats of people born in the same century as me?!!

Reading further… the East Wing was expanded into a two-story building in 1942.

What the–? My dad was alive then! Sure, he wasn’t to live in a house with indoor plumbing for another 4 years, but still, that just means that the Simpsons were poor, not that it was old timey days, from whence existing, august buildings must be preserved at all costs.

Okay. Upon further reading, it turns out that the East Wing has basically been an office building for many decades. And that it has never had the historical resonance and importance of the central White House, or even of the West Wing. (There’s a reason that when some Hollywood libs wanted to make a series about the important goings on in the WH, they named it “The West Wing,” rather than the East Wing.)

“Yeah, but still,” say some shameless partisan lefties. “Nobody should be able to just make big alterations to the White House, willy nilly!”

I guess they mean, except when FDR added a theatre to the East Wing in 1942. Or when the West Wing was added, or when Truman oversaw a massive, near-gut renovation of much of the WH. Or when Jackie O added a Rose Garden, or when Nixon added a bowling alley, or when Obama added a basketball court.

Try to bring any of that up to your average MSNBC talking head, and they’ll likely jam their fingers in their ears and say, “What gives Trump the right to replace a structure that was built when Martin Simpson’s dad was still doing his business in a hole in the backyard of his family’s shanty in Marseilles, Illinois? Is nothing sacred to that barbarian?”

First, that seems a little unnecessarily and personally insulting. Because we Simpsons were just as God made us. Sure, we were working dogs and not show dogs. And yes, we put the “lump” in “lumpen proletariat.” But that’s no reason to look down on us, you fancy, elitist lefties, with your electric garage door openers and your flush toilets!

Second, I’d go a little easy on the “White House is sacred” theme, if I were a Democrat. Because too much of that talk might make normal folks think of some answers, once you’ve asked, “Why can’t Trump treat the WH with the kind of reverence that past Democrat presidents have treated it?”

You mean like when JFK used the WH swimming pool (and Jackie O’s bedroom) to gain carnal knowledge of teenage aides (not to mention pimping them off to his cronies)? Or when Bill and Hill installed a cash-operated turnstile in the Lincoln bedroom, selling a night there for donations from rich leftists?

And that’s not to mention the oral-service cubby that Bill installed under the Resolute Desk, nor the firehouse pole that he installed for half-naked interns to slide down and disappear just before Hillary stomped into the Oval Office.

Hey, wait a minute. Something just occurs to me. You don’t think that the Dems think that Trump wants to do with the ballroom what their past presidents have done with the White House?

Has no one told them that the “ball” in “ballroom” doesn’t mean what it meant for JFK and Slick Willie?

Yikes! They would have to be pretty dumb to believe that, right? On the other hand, in the last three elections, these people voted for Cankles McPantsuit, Joey Gaffes and the Cackler. So…

It’s all starting to make sense. Leftists see the old walls coming down – and by “old” they mean “from 1942” – and if their TDS has already advanced to a similarly devastating point that Al Capone’s syphilis reached late in his life (look it up), they assume that Trump is running around in a bulldozer, wearing a hardhat emblazoned with “Make America Great Again,” destroying American tradition just for the joy of it.

Which is a ridiculous fear. Because we all know that that’s YOUR thing, lefties. When you’re not burning American flags or trying to remove big chunks of the Constitution, you’re tearing down statues of Founding Fathers, and Grant and Lincoln. (When we tear something down, it’s not historic, and we’re going to replace it with something better.)

Anyway, have no fear, because the Translucent Tecumseh – Elizabeth Warren herself – is on the case! (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

One might think that Liz would be mad about the new ballroom because until now, large gatherings at the WH have been held outdoors, in tents. (Insert your own “Liz Warren loves teepees” joke here).

Or possibly that she’s angry that taxpayer dollars will be spent on a facility that Trump will enjoy himself. Except that he has arranged for the renovations to be funded by private donors, at no expense to the public. And except for the fact that the ballroom will be used by subsequent presidents – leaders like Presidents Vance, DeSantis and Rubio, God willing – and will no doubt come to be an accepted, useful and even admired facility in the future.

But never mind all that. Because Liz has her deerskin dress over her head about this, and is not to be deterred. (#neverstopmocking) She has vowed to “launch an investigation into the contracting and approval process” for this unconscionable improvement to the White House.

And never mind that she is in the minority party, and as such has as much chance of launching a canoe as an investigation. (#neverstop)

And never mind that the last time she conducted an investigation, she only succeeded in proving that she was 99.99% Caucasian, and therefore whiter than my smokeshow Norwegian/English wife, who is known throughout north Florida for both her alabaster skin and her complete ignorance of how to use a tomahawk or a bow-and-arrow. Just like Wampanoag Warren. (#neverever)

So good luck with your investigation, Lizzie!

Hamas and Trantifa delenda est!