Politics – Martin Simpson

Fatal Empathy (posted 2/2/26)

I talked to an old friend of mine the other day. Regular readers have heard of him, because he’s one of a couple of lefties I’ve been close to for years.

Many readers from the CO site – which I’m still hoping to be able to revive with CO, so please be patient – have commented to the effect of, “How can you be friends with a leftist, after everything they’ve done and everything you’ve said about what they’ve done?”

Which is a rational question to ask. Though an even better question might be how can he be friends with me, after everything he thinks conservatives have done? Especially since lefties are usually pretty quick to cut off and cancel anyone on the other political side, IMHO.

The answer is that even though I think his politics are wildly wrong, and he thinks the same about mine, deep down we both know that there are some things more important than politics. I’ve known him for 40 years, and he’s got a good heart. I was godfather to one of his kids, and he introduced me to my smokeshow wife, and for that I will forever be in his debt.

I love him like a brother. A lovable but addled and confused brother. 😊

The reason I mention all that is that since our conversation, I’ve been thinking about the chaos in Minneapolis, and I’ve come to the conclusion that good lefties are wrong about immigration and ICE for two main reasons: they’ve misunderstood the law, and they’ve misunderstood and/or misapplied empathy.

Empathy first. The first time I heard the term “toxic empathy” was not very long ago, but it has become a hotly debated topic since then. At first glance, the concept would appear to be oxymoronic – how could “empathy” ever be “toxic?” But you don’t have to think very long to come up with tons of examples to prove that it often is.

Anyone who has been in or observed human relationships – watching one spouse enable another by making excuses for abuse; loaning money to somebody with a gambling problem; giving $20 to a homeless guy who uses it to buy the fentanyl that kills him; parents spoiling a child until he’s a 30-something basement-dweller – recognizes that reality.

The same negative results ensue on a political level, when government programs that are meant to help people actually incentivize bad behaviors that gravely damage the recipients. Giving women welfare benefits only if there is no man in the house produces sky-high fatherlessness, and traps them in dysfunctional dependence, which is an unmitigated disaster. Guaranteeing college loans to people to get worthless grievance studies degrees produces bitter 30-somethings with $200K in debt and a minimum wage job. Etc.

But aside from the toxicity issue, empathy is very often only selective, on both the right and the left. Some on our side empathized with the nonviolent people among the J6 protestors way more than we empathize with the non-violent among leftist protestors, because we basically agree with the former and disagree with the latter.

But the lefties in Minneapolis and around the country have taken that to an extreme, IMHO. I haven’t heard any lefties express empathy for Jocelyn Nungaray, Laken Riley, or any of the thousands of Americans who did nothing wrong, but were attacked or murdered by unvetted illegals. But they have been gnashing their teeth and rending their garments over illegals who broke our laws (including wife-beating human smuggler Kilmar), and legal immigrant citizens who were briefly detained to confirm their legal status before being released.

The elite leftists have used a cloak of lies to try to turn the five-year-old boy with the cute backpack into a tiny, photogenic victim of cruel ICE, claiming that ICE “arrested” him. The truth, of course is that ICE took care of the kid after they tried to take his criminal dad into custody, and the creepy POS fled, leaving the boy behind in freezing weather.

Yet the leftists condemn the ICE agents who cared for him, rather than the criminal dad who abandoned him. Unexpectedly!

Speaking of kids, it’s been widely reported that around 300,000 illegal children have been snuck in and given into the custody of others – some probably relatives or friends of their parents, but many fraudsters posing as their parents to improve their chances of getting in, and many others either cartel-associated or cartel-coerced people who facilitate the sexual and other abuse of those children.

Anyone who actually cares about kids has to be horrified by the prospect of a third of a million small, powerless victims of the left’s pitiless policy of opening the border to unvetted waves of uncontrolled immigration and human smuggling. And yet the elite left has been utterly silent about this massive crime.

And when Homan announced last week that this administration has located and rescued around 145,000 of those victimized kids, the silence of those who can’t stop virtue signaling about, “Won’t somebody please think of the children?!” has been deafening.

Not one word of celebration or relief. Not even a grudging “good job” from the armies of those who claim to be the champions of “undocumented” children.

Compare that to the tsunami of grief for Robin Good and Alex Pretti. I know that many good lefties actually do grieve for those two, just as I and many other conservatives feel some sympathy for the tragic ending that their own disordered ideology led them to. But I also know that many in the leftist elite are more than happy to exploit the deaths of those two for their own propagandistic political gain.

That much is clear from the way they’ve relentlessly lied about both cases. They claim that Robin Good was an innocent mother who stumbled into an ICE action, and died while trying to flee the murderous agents, through no fault of her own. (The truth was that she and her partner had trained at an organized anti-ICE boot camp, went there to illegally interfere with agents, and was killed in the process of committing multiple crimes, including driving her car toward an agent who had already been hit and dragged by one of her political co-religionists previously.)

They claim that Alex Pretti was a noble nurse, murdered by ICE agents for the “crime” of trying to help a woman they were victimizing. (The truth was that he was a repeated assaulter of ICE agents who went there to attack and interfere with their legal actions in a chaotic situation, and died in the process of committing multiple crimes.)

Ironically, misplaced and toxic empathy played significant roles in both of their deaths. Because one of the best examples of toxic empathy in government is the policy of going soft on crime, which both of the dead protestors had learned to expect.

Nationwide anti-ICE protests routinely violate a great many of our laws, and yet almost none of those in the mobs of protestors/agitators/rioters ever face legal consequences for their actions. They aren’t arrested, or if they are, they are quickly released with all charges either dropped, or reduced to the equivalent of a traffic ticket. (And that amounts to an actual reward, since they gain admiration and praise from their disordered companions for heroically “standing up to the fascists.”)

Thus the protestors – exhilarated by an intoxicating mix of political hatred and a sense of their own moral superiority and the righteousness of their cause – see some of their companions screaming at the LEOs, and throwing the first objects or fireworks at them. And nothing happens to them. So they join in, and things accelerate.

And soon, they end up believing that their opponents are basically powerless against them, and they will never face any consequences for their crimes, which they don’t even recognize or acknowledge ARE crimes.

That process ends with Robin Good dead, and her partner wailing, “Why are they using real bullets?!” (Anyone not drunk on an ideological fervor involving delusions of invulnerability can clearly see the obvious answer: When you attack armed LEOs and try to run over them with a real car, you can expect to catch a lot of real bullets.)

That process also ends with Alex Pretti’s death. If law enforcement had arrested him shortly before, when he committed multiple crimes at a previous protest (interfering with an arrest, spitting at cops and damaging one of their vehicles, then fighting with one of them), he would still be alive today.

But because he didn’t face an arrest 10 days earlier, he was emboldened to escalate his criminal behavior until he faced the end of his life 10 days later.

And ironically, the actions of his comrades also played a huge role in his death. One of their tactics has been to constantly blow whistles at an ear-splitting volume, which is obviously disorienting and extremely aggravating and even painful to the LEOs carrying out their legal tasks, as it is intended to be.

Because Pretti was carrying a gun – which he could legally do – to a legitimate law enforcement action where he intended to commit crimes – which he could NOT legally do – he had already put his life at great risk. In the ensuing confusion, when one of the cops saw his weapon and called out, “Gun!” things instantly escalated, as they must.

Tragically, one cop had already gotten Pretti’s gun away from him when other cops – because he was struggling with them (which one cannot legally do), and because they were almost certainly not aware that he no longer had his gun on him – shot him.

Typically, in that situation a cop will let the other cops know when he has removed and secured the weapon from the criminal. And it is very likely –to say the least – that the cop in this case tried to do that.

But because a mob of insurrectionist a-holes surrounded the cops and Pretti, blowing their deafening whistles, no one could have heard the information that would almost certainly have saved Pretti’s life.

And so Alex Pretti – just like Robin Good, and (as sad as this is to say) Ashli Babbitt – died, almost entirely because of his own reckless actions.

Next up: I’ve researched and will try to summarize the main legal issues underlying the anti-ICE and pro-illegal immigration wave that is sweeping the country.

Hamas (and Trantifa) delenda est!

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In Search of the Elusive “Moderate Democrat” (posted 1/30/26)

Over the last several years we’ve seen thousands of examples of the lunatic fringe of the left. And since they are so disconcertingly entertaining and easy to mock, they have naturally garnered a lot of our attention.

From the Jerry Springer-style minstrel show antics of Jasmine Crockett to the dead muskrat that Maxine Waters wears as a wig, and from the dude pretending to be Rachel Levine to the White Walker pretending to be Cherokee princess Liz Warren, the absurdity of fringe leftists helps sane people to see them coming from a mile away, and discount anything they say.

But one group has done more damage, and that’s the faux moderates, i.e. far leftists who pose as sane, non-threatening center leftists. The last two Democrat presidents have come from this group, for example.

Barack Obama famously gave a speech proclaiming that “there are no red states or blue states, only the United States,” and he promised to be a unifier who would bring about financial prudence and the end of racial tension.

Annnndddd… he governed as a leftist ideologue, exacerbated racial divisions, rammed through a government takeover of health care that began failing immediately, and doubled the national debt in eight years.

The late Joe Biden pretended to be a non-threatening moderate, and many gullible citizens voted for him specifically to avoid the wacky leftism of Beta O’Rourke, Spartacus Booker, Bill duh-Blasio, Bernie Sanders and Grandma Squanto Warren. (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

Annnndddd…then Biden’s team of embalmers and taxidermists governed as far left as Bernie would have.

That trend has continued to this very day. For two good examples I give you Tampon Tim Walz and Abigail “White Witch of the North” Spanberger.

Que Mala picked Knucklehead as her VP because… well, because she has absolutely terrible judgment. About every decision. All the time.

But also because he was supposedly the safest and most “moderate/normie” choice. She couldn’t pick another female or minority, because America would be rightly skeptical about a double-DEI ticket. She couldn’t pick Josh Shapiro because her base is made up of jihad-adjacent, raging anti-Semites. She couldn’t pick Mayor Pete because of the gayness.

I know. She wanted to avoid the gay, so she ended up with… Jazz Hands? (See “terrible judgment, every decision, all the time” above.)

Once Walz was chosen, the Democrat PR machinery clanked into motion. “Walz is a football coach. He’s a military man, with decades of service in the Guard. When he’s not hunting, he’s fixing cars, and being “Minnesota Nice’.”

Annndddd…because God exists, and He loves us, we dodged that bullet. And in the year since Trump took office, we’ve gotten tons of evidence of how devastating that bullet would have been if we hadn’t dodged it.

Because it turns out that he knows nothing about football. (You don’t “call a pick six,” you dope.) Or about hunting. (That’s the wrong end of the shotgun to hold, and the shells go in there, and that’s an Elmer Fudd hat, not a codpiece.) Or about cars.

Or about – I’m just guessing here – heterosexuality.

He’s only “Minnesota Nice” if that phrase means “prone to demonizing conservatives as Nazis and law enforcement as the Gestapo.” And his “military” career consisted of spending decades at least a continent away from any war, and then quitting the minute he was supposed to lead his unit in an actual war zone.

And as soon as Trump started to actually try enforcing our laws and constitution, Walz has stoked the insurrectionist flames like the most nihilistic, wild-eyed revolutionary since Lenin. (If Lenin had been as effete and incompetent as he was evil.)

But Albino Spanberger might be the quintessential example of the faux moderate.

She was elected as Virginia governor in November as the model “centrist Democrat.” While fringe lunatics like Commie Mamdani and Jay “I want to see GOP children murdered in their mothers’ arms” Jones were getting elected mayor of NYC and AG of VA respectively, Spanberger was pitched as the anti-Mamdani.

When conservatives pointed to the far-left candidates – Mamdani, Jones, that crazy wench who ran on an “I hate Christianity, country music and the South” platform in NASHVILLE(!) – as the extremist future of the Democrat party, smarter Dems held up Spanberger as the shining counter-example.

“She won as a centrist in a purple state! Forget the Crocketts and the Squad and the communist whack-jobs, Abby is the moderate, Great White Hope for the Democrat future! (Well, they didn’t say “Great White Hope.” But she’s certainly a super-white hope.)

Annnndddd…her first day in office she started pushing the most far-left, radical agenda that Virginia has ever seen.

She reversed Youngkin’s EO 47, which committed VA law enforcement to cooperate with ICE in deporting the worst criminal illegal aliens in their jails. She proposed reducing minimum sentences for serious crimes like – I swear I’m not making this up – manslaughter and rape.

And she doesn’t just love actual rape. She’s also quite a fan of the financial kind, because she proposed a raft of new taxes on nearly everything, from deliveries and hotels to guns and ammunition, and a more than doubling of the top state income tax rate. She wants to guarantee “free” (i.e. provided by Virginia taxpayers) education to illegals.

And she wants to do everything possible to ensure crooked elections, including allowing voting over the internet (!), extending the time to receive late mail-in ballots and “cure” faulty ones, and making it ILLEGAL to hand-count ballots!

And she wants to change Columbus Day to “Indigenous People’s Day.” (Insert your own Liz Warren joke here.) (#neverstopmocking)

In other words, Spanberger’s entire campaign was a lie.

Unexpectedly!

The moral of the story is clear. With the possible exception of John Fetterman, there is no such thing as a moderate Democrat anymore. And tragically, medical science has not yet devised a way to induce a stroke in every elected Democrat, so that at least some of them would come out of it as reasonable humans. (Sure, many others might die in the process. But isn’t that a risk we should be willing to take?)

There are only communist/socialists, extreme-left Democrats, and far-left Democrats. And any Dem who calls herself a “moderate” is – as I may have mentioned in a previous column – an evil, scummy liar.

Vote accordingly, America.

Hamas (and Trantifa) delenda est!

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Minnesota Madness (posted 1/28/26)

Thanks again for all of your kind wishes at my mom’s death; I really appreciate all of the texts and emails I’ve gotten, and love you all.

At the risk of intellectual whiplash, I turn from the passing of my amazing mother who is now in a much better place, to the turning of Minnesota into a much worse place, thanks to a motley assortment of malevolent, violent, lying communists.

As I’ve had a chance to catch up on the news for the last several days, I keep getting surprised by something that should not surprise me: yes, the radical left are inveterate liars, but it boggles the mind that even after so much practice, they are still so freaking terrible at it!

Consider just a few examples among many.

Over the last five years, they’ve never stopped yammering about how horrific insurrection is, and how it creates an existential threat to our democracy, and the perpetrators must be tracked down and hammered with the harshest penalties the law will allow.

And by “insurrection,” they meant a couple of hundred unarmed idiots fist-fighting with cops at the capitol for a couple of hours, killing no one and (as far as I know) seriously injuring no one. Also, a thousand or so Midwestern grandparents walked through the building, took some selfies, and then left within a half hour or so.

But now we’re seeing an insurrection going on for months, in real time, every day. And if January 6^th was an insurrection, then THIS one is an ultra-mega-super-duper insurrection, carried out by massive, armed mobs, working in coordination to attack LEOs who are enforcing our constitution and laws.

So naturally, those same lefties are shrieking at the top of their lungs and demanding that the insurrectionists be harshly put down with all the force the State can muster.

HA! I kid because I love.

Of course they’re supporting the insurrectionists and demonizing law enforcement. Because: evil scummy liars.

They’re also saying that entering the country illegally is not a crime, and that when Trump claims that it is, he’s Hitler. Never mind that Obama gave many speeches saying the same things – we can’t tolerate people coming here illegally, and they should all be deported.

Or that Bill Clinton left the loving embrace of a gullible mistress long enough to read the same message from his teleprompter, before running back to resume “polling the electorate” as soon as the cameras were off.

The same creeps also celebrated when unarmed Ashli Babbitt got shot to death by a mediocre cop when she was crawling through a broken window into the capitol building. The leftists said she got exactly what she deserved.

For the record, and because I hate double standards, I will also say that she did a very stupid thing that day, and that even though her death was tragic, she was primarily responsible for her own death.

Of course, leftist creeps all over Minnesota and the media are wailing when any of their violent co-religionists end up in Ashli Babbitt’s position. It’s way more stupid and dangerous to do what Robin Good, Alex Pretti and thousands of violent leftists are doing every day – attacking ICE agents, ramming them with cars, shooting fireworks (and in a few cases bullets) at them, etc. – than to do what Babbitt did.

And yet they are holding up Good and Pretti as heroes, and encouraging many more morons to join them in self-caused deaths. Because: evil scummy liars.

But it’s not just violent stupidity. It’s also routine, garden-variety stupidity.

Do you remember the main talking point of dimwit Hakeem Jeffries and dozens of elected Dems during the fall shutdown? “The GOP is lying that illegals are getting Medicaid or other welfare benefits, because it’s illegal for them to take such benefits.”

(Because if there’s one thing that we know above all else about illegals, it’s that they would never do anything…illegal?)

Hakeem and those same scumbags now: “Cutting off billions in Medicaid and SNAP and welfare housing benefits will cause starvation and death among the millions of illegals who depend on those benefits…which we swore 7 minutes ago that none of them were receiving.”

D’oh! Say it with me: evil scummy liars.

I must admit that I’ve gotten some schadenfreude-tastic fun out of watching some of the more absurd of the leftist imbeciles being on the receiving end of an industrial sized can of karmic whoop-ass.

How about the two evil wenches who bit two different LEOs? One of those is in danger of losing a finger, and the two morons have been arrested and are facing a possible eight years in prison.

The only thing surprising about that story is that after watching a lot of those lefty female rioters, I thought that the only thing any of them were biting were either pallets of Lil’ Debbies, or dozens of comically oversize turkey legs.

And did you see the portly idiot who grabbed a flash-bang grenade and tried to throw it back at the cops? When the inevitable happened – hilariously! – she ran back toward her comrades, screaming and holding her injured hand up. Then, when she got within camera range of them, her drama-student instincts kicked in, and she fell to the ground, wailing.

This dope apparently didn’t understand the “BANG” part of “flash-BANG!”

On the bright side, at least the Marxist mope didn’t flash us. Which would have been horrific and PTSD-inducing.

Speaking of drama queens, my favorite recent LARPing narcissist is self-identified Antifa member Kyle Wagner.

If you haven’t seen him, he looks exactly the way you would expect him to look: facial and neck tattoos, and two giant gauges in his earlobes in what I call the “I am totally unemployable” appearance package. He also has described himself as a “master hate-baiter,” which is SO close to being accurate.

In an incendiary video he made several days ago, he wore a black t-shirt with a vulgar slogan on it, and a blue bandana around his neck, and he spoke with all the drama and bombast you’d expect from a guy who lives in mommy’s basement but fancies himself a revolutionary hero.

He stared into the camera and delivered a monologue about how leftist women need to realize that brave menfolk like him need to risk their lives to stop the Orange Fascist’s storm troopers: “We can’t end this without good men in the streets, armed and ready to protect innocent people from being gunned down by these massed murderers, these fascist occupiers. I need boots on the ground and I need them prepared to do what needs to be done so that this does not cost more innocent lives. We do not have any more time to let this drag out. I know it sucks, but this is the Iron Front.” Then he actually saluted, and said, “Vive la Resistance.”

Okay, Captain Keyboard.

He posted a second video a little while later, in which he said that he cannot legally possess a firearm, but told others with guns to “show up.”

First, I wonder why Admiral Earlobes has been banned from possessing a gun. Second, is this brave warrior actually going to let a fascist law keep him from carrying a gun anyway? Third, is he really going to urge others to enter the fray with guns while he stands on the sidelines and tries to flirt with any female rhinoceri who might be attracted by self-dramatizing cowards?

The answer to that last question was answered in short order. Because as soon as his video came to the attention of fascist overlords who might do something about it, he posted another video saying that, “they’re going to silence me.”

Quoth the brave leader of men: “I am basically on the run now. You know, I have safe places and I have evacuations planned out, but, the way things are going, I’m going to have to be very resourceful, and that’s going to take support. As I’ve said a million times, I am going to stay in this fight to the bitter end. I’m not gonna run away, but I will need some help.”

Is that not beautiful? At the first hint that there might be consequences for his idiotic posing, this wuss tries to squeeze some money out of gullible leftists who might fall for his act.

And that ending is chef’s-kiss perfect: “I’m fighting to the bitter end! I’m not gonna run away!”

Says the guy who hits “send” on his video, and then immediately runs away.

By Monday afternoon, brave Kyle Wagner of the Fightin’ Minnesotans had pulled down all of his social media accounts. And I know you’re disappointed, but his Venmo that he had used to solicit donations is no longer available.

Second verse, same as the first: Evil scummy liars.

Hamas (and Trantifa) delenda est!

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More Lies, Fraud and Insurrection from Minneapolis (posted 1/16/26)

Okay dammit, I’ve got a few more thoughts on Minneapolis before I move on.

I swear I’m trying so hard not to write about Minnesota in every column, but much like Michael Corleone in the terrible third Godfather movie, “Just when I think I’m out, they pull me back in.”

Or, to paraphrase, they are really flooding the zone with stupid, and I can’t avoid at least pointing that out in passing.

On Wednesday night, violent a-holes in Minneapolis attacked ANOTHER ICE agent.

Unexpectedly!

This time the bad guy was an illegal who fled in his car, wrecked that, and then fled on foot. When the agent caught up to him, he turned and fought. When two other illegals in a nearby apartment saw what was going on, they charged out with a snow shovel and a broom handle, and started beating the ICE agent. The illegal target then grabbed the shovel, and started beating the ICE agent.

Then – FINALLY! – the ICE agent shot the guy in the leg. After which all three illegals went back into the apartment and barricaded themselves inside. More ICE agents arrived and ended up getting them out and arresting all three of them.

That’s what happened.

Here’s the NYT lede for that story: “Federal Agent Shoots Immigrant in the Leg in Minneapolis, one week after an ICE officer killed Renee Good in city.”

No mention that the “immigrant” was an ILLEGAL. No mention that the illegal was fighting with the agent, or that two other illegals joined in that fight. Just an agent, going around shooting immigrants.

A freshman writing for his high school paper could fix that headline: “Illegal Attacks ICE Agent, gets shot, one week after Renee Good hit ICE agent with her car, got shot.”

Say it with me, people: We don’t hate the media enough!

Also, I noticed something in this story that I haven’t seen anyone comment on: the agent actually shot the illegal in the leg.

Ignorant lefties who have watched too much tv and don’t know a gun from a gunny sack are always asking, “Why don’t police just shoot a suspect in the leg?” And now, when an ICE agent actually did that, the left is still whine-screaming about it. You just can’t please some people.

On the other hand, you can definitely please other people, like me, and (I’m guessing) most of you reading this right now. Because if the ICE agents start listening to us, the next time three illegals bring a shovel, a broom handle and their fists to a gunfight, we will be very pleased indeed if the ICE agents will shoot them. And not just in the leg, and not just once.

Meanwhile, a new fraud story came out of Minneapolis yesterday, and you’ll be shocked to learn that those damn Swedes are at it again.

HA! I kid. It’s the Somalis. Because of course it is.

It turns out that $700 million dollars in cash has been sent back to Somali through the Minneapolis Airport over the last 2 years. And that’s only the amount that was “flagged,” which I’m guessing means that the money was disclosed or found, but then still allowed to be shipped out.

I’m also guessing that that money was way less than the full amount sent out, unknown and unflagged. The story notes that that much cash, if it was all in $100 bills, would weigh 7.7 metric tons. Through one airport!

This phenomenon needs to be considered in context of two other recent discoveries: the $8 billion dollars of fraud (at least!) committed by Somalis in Minnesota, and the official stats from the Center for Immigration Studies that as of December 2025, 81% of Somali households in Minnesota are on welfare.

Rumors that the other 19% own daycares have not been confirmed.

But c’mon, man.

Logically, if Somalis have committed that much fraud and received that much welfare, there is no way they got their hands on that much cash to send back to Somalia legitimately. Not to mention that at least some of that taxpayer-provided money has gone to support Al-Shabaab.

Which is not some delicious dish involving skewers of meat, but a hateful jihadist terror group.

Plus, at least one Somalian married her brother to commit immigration fraud, and should be denaturalized and deported immediately.

So if you’re keeping score at home, the most common career of Somalis in Somalia appears to be piracy at sea. Until yesterday, it appeared that the most common career of Somalis in America is piracy on land.

And now it turns out they’re also very good at piracy in the skies.

Next up: Somalis stow away on one of Elon’s rockets to the space station, and… wait for it… Somali pirates in space!

In light of all of this, I wish the GOP would start accurately describing what the ICE-attacking mobs and sanctuary cities are doing as insurrection. Because the leftist politicians, media figures and foot soldiers are by definition “rising in revolt, rebellion or resistance against civil authority or an established government.”

So we need to go full court press against insurrectionist sanctuary cities and states for the next 10 months:

1. Demand that their courts and jails hold illegal detainees for ICE to pick up.

2. Charge the top politicians who refuse to do that with whatever federal crimes are most serious: obstruction, dereliction of duty, insurrection, whatever.

3. In the meantime, cut off all federal funding to those cities and states for any purpose that can be even tangentially tied to illegals.

My ultra-conservative heart tells me to do that directly and across the board: Since illegals are receiving food benefits, cut off all SNAP funds; since illegals are illegally receiving schooling, cut off all K-12 federal funds; since illegals are illegally attending colleges, cut off all college loans and funding. Since they are illegally getting housing benefits, cut off all housing funds.

But my crystal brain – better than a crystal ball, and more strategic than my ultra-conservative heart – suggests a better way to go about this. Because the dishonest Dems and their collaborators in the MSM would say that we were denying innocent Americans in those states the funds that they should rightly be receiving.

So instead of cutting off all funds to those states and cities, I suggest that Trump announces a new plan with a public statement along these lines: “We don’t want to do this. We hate it. But those states are screwing their own citizens by taking benefits away from them and giving them to illegals. And the residents of all non-sanctuary states and cities – which are the majority of the country – do not consent to having their money taken from them and then given to illegals in corrupt sanctuary cities and states.

“So we’ve studied the numbers, and have determined how much money they’ve been illegally giving to non-citizens, whether through SNAP funds, housing benefits, educational benefits, etc. For example, we’ve determined that Minnesota receives $30 billion in SNAP funds annually, and gives $10 billion of that to illegals. [I’m making these numbers up to make the point.]

“Starting now, we’ll be giving the $20 billion Minnesota needs to give SNAP benefits ONLY to American citizens. We’ll do the same with federal funding in every other category. This will give voters in every state the chance to tell their leaders how they want that money spent. If they are happy to lose their apartments and have their kids go hungry while tax money pays rent for illegals and feeds them and their families, so be it.

“Again, we will continue to fully fund the states so that they can support their American citizens. If they want to re-direct much of that money to illegals, that’s up to them, and to you, their voters.”

The beauty of this plan is that it would put the blame directly where it belongs: on the leftist politicians and activist groups who are ripping off American taxpayers for the benefit of illegals.

I think this would be an easy and popular argument to make to the American public. I’d point to a precedent from the 1970s. During the oil crisis when gas shortages started popping up, the feds said that since driving slower conserved gas, the national speed limit should go down from 70 to 55 mph. When some states balked at that, the feds stopped highway funds for those states until they complied.

And that wasn’t even to force them to obey a law they had been breaking. Speed limits weren’t in the constitution, and states had always set their own. It wasn’t illegal to allow people to drive 65 or 70. The feds just didn’t like it, and decided that they knew what was best.

And if you can withhold funds to force states to make their citizens drive slower, you can sure as hell withhold funds to force states to stop breaking federal laws, and stealing billions from the taxes paid by citizens of all other states!

I’ll end on a historical parallel that I’ve noticed.

Small Frey, Jazz Hands and hundreds of protestors have been screaming at ICE to get out, saying they don’t want them here. First, that’s not how any of this works, as they would know if they’d ever read part of the Constitution called The Supremacy Clause.

Second, they sound exactly like some of their co-religionists from 165 years ago, when another bunch of Democrat insurrectionists told the federal government the same thing, as they attacked Fort Sumter. “Stay of out of Charleston! We don’t want you here!”

Today they’re calling face-tattooed gang bangers, child molesters and murderers “our neighbors.” Which proves that they’re even dumber than the Democrats of yesteryear, who were at least smart enough to not try to sell the public on the lie that they were concerned about their black “neighbors.”

They were also more honest.

Because screaming, “We won’t let you have our property!” might sound more jarring, but it’s a lot more true than today’s Dems calling foreign criminals “our neighbors”

Hamas (and Trantifa) delenda est!

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Renee Good is Dead Because of Elite Leftist Liars (posted 1/12/26)

The Minneapolis ICE shooting has been on my mind this weekend, as I imagine it has been on many of yours. I was already doing some research on crime and punishment in red vs. blue areas last week, when Renee Good ended up getting shot.

And yes, there is an understood (herself) in between “getting” and “shot.”

And I know what some of you are thinking, and yes, I actually do some research and write about serious topics once in a while. It’s not all “Pelosi is a mummy” and “Wow, is Liz Warren ever translucently white!” jokes around here. (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

I’m going to return to some more general “why can’t leftists make sense about crime” ruminations in future columns, but for now, I’d like to throw out some thoughts on what has gone so aggravatingly wrong in Minneapolis.

To do so, I’m going to draw some connections to the Sovereign Citizens (SC) movement. If you don’t know anything about SCs, you can search that topic, and find tons of videos of them having aggravating but hilarious run-ins with cops. But I’ve got to warn you: the videos are addictive, and it’s easy to slide down the rabbit hole and end up watching several hours of them before you know it.

To summarize, sovereign citizens believe – often at the urging of scammers selling kits and documents that push the SC delusion – that by declaring themselves SCs, they can exempt themselves from any state or federal laws which they find inconvenient or objectionable.

The most common such laws are traffic and driving laws, which is why the vast majority of SC videos capture the entertaining lunacy that ensues when police pull over an SC, usually because a sovereign doesn’t believe he needs to register or insure his car, or have valid license plates or a driver’s license.

A typical confrontation involves a sovereign citing a skewed take on an obscure or misunderstood law – they refer to Black’s Law Dictionary a lot, along with maritime law, English common law, international law, and every law but the law of unintended consequences. (I.e., you don’t intend to get yanked out of your car, tased and cuffed, but – spoiler alert – that’s exactly where your psychotic blathering is going to take you.)

When a cop asks for license and registration, a sovereign will explain that the cop has no jurisdiction over him, and that he’s not driving, he’s “traveling,” and thus doesn’t need silly things like a license, plates or registration. He asks for the cop’s name and badge number, but won’t identify himself, and always asks for him to call a supervisor.

The process starts with, “I’m Officer X, and the reason I pulled you over is that you’ve got a homemade cardboard ‘plate’ instead of an official state license plate on your car.” Depending on the cop’s patience and toleration for nonsense, the process ends anywhere from 4 minutes to a half-hour later, with the cop having to break the dope’s window, pull him out and arrest him.

In many cases, pepper spray or a taser is involved, and in my favorite cases, a cop will allow his K-9 to apply some dental persuasion – after endless warnings that the perp is going to get bit – to get the jerk to comply.

But he never complies!

Until after a Good Boy or Girl latches on and engages in a spirited bout of “yank the moron back and forth,” at which point the sovereign screams, “What are you doing?! He’s biting me! What’s going on? Why are you doing this?!”

Good times.

I bring this up because until Trump got re-elected and millions of leftists started systematically resisting and attacking ICE and other LEOs who are enforcing our immigration laws, I’d thought of sovereign citizens as a tiny, fringe group of dysfunctional humans with no effect on society, other than providing some entertaining YouTube videos.

But over the last year it has dawned on me that many people on the unhinged yet mainstream left have a lot in common with sovereign citizen nutjobs. Specifically, sovereigns demonstrate four behaviors that leftists also display:

1. Sovereigns are great purveyors of self-serving double-standards. They demand that a cop comply with every demand they have – identify yourself and your badge number; call a supervisor; prove your jurisdiction – while refusing to comply with any request from a cop (license, registration and insurance, step out of the car, etc.).

Similarly, leftists demand that cops show them warrants, or stop detaining an illegal to explain to every leftist bystander exactly what the legal basis for their action is, even as they continually refuse to follow legal commands of cops to back off, stop interfering, etc. They demand that all LEOs be unmasked, while they insist that they themselves be allowed to commit crimes while masked.

2. Sovereigns have a simple-minded, delusional kind of magical thinking about language that is weirdly fascinating to watch. They act as if they can prevent a cop from doing his job just by reciting incantations. If they say that they are “traveling, not driving” or that their car is actually “a ‘conveyance’ under maritime law,” or that they are not engaging in “commerce,” all traffic laws cease to apply. If they repeat “I do not consent” to any order a cop gives them, the cop must let them go.

Similarly, leftists think that a man calling himself a woman makes him a woman, and that calling a baby in the womb “a woman’s body” makes it so. They think that calling illegals “undocumented citizens” makes them legal, and citizens. They think that slapping a sign on their own backs that say “PRESS” or “MEDIC” gives them unhindered access and control over any crime scene.

3. Sovereigns fancy themselves as experts on the law and their rights…and then proceed to demonstrate that they are Crockett-level stupid. They insist that a cop has to call a supervisor if they request one. (He doesn’t.) That a cop can’t make them get out of their car. (He can.) That impeding an investigation or resisting arrest aren’t crimes they can be charged with. (They are.) That identifying as a “sovereign citizen” means something. (It doesn’t.)

Similarly, ICE resisters believe that legally detaining a suspected illegal is “kidnapping. (It isn’t.) That taking them to a detention center where their identity and legal status can be confirmed is “disappearing” them. (It isn’t.) That a mayor or governor can defy federal law and prevent federal law enforcers from doing their jobs, and can arrest them if they do. (Aw hell no!) That calling yourself a “legal observer” means that you can disregard legal commands and hinder ICE actions. (Nope!)

4. Finally, sovereigns’ special brand of idiocy usually results in some great FAFO moments, which is what initially drew me into watching way too many SC videos. Over and over again, a cocky sovereign starts out recording himself while he lectures the police about how he doesn’t have to obey any laws, and ends up in cuffs, coughing on pepper spray and crying like a little beeyotch about how he doesn’t understand what’s going on.

And before last week, radical leftists have provided many examples of schadenfreude-tastic entertainment. I remember watching a guy screaming at the cops, only to catch a bean-bag shotgun load in the groin, not to mention the idiot dancing around in an inflated dinosaur costume, until a cop squirted some pepper spray into the air vent in the costume, and he started staggering and flopping around like Joe Biden trying to step over a sandbag.

But Renee Good’s case demonstrates the tragic side of the predictable results when mobs of imbeciles attack and harass law enforcement doing their jobs. She was apparently as delusional as the most addled sovereign citizen, imagining herself as a brave iconoclast, resisting the false authority of an illegitimate legal system.

In reality, she was a brainwashed AWFL, steeped in hatred of authority, and cosplaying as a resister of fascism. She had gone through some half-assed training and identified herself as a “legal observer” — which carries as much weight as “sovereign citizen” – and she and her “partner” inserted themselves into a legitimate law enforcement action, intending to impede it.

A second wave of bystander videos show that she used her car to block the street, while her partner got out to record what I imagine they both thought was going to be some self-dramatizing social-justice-warrior street theatre. She was there, obstructing for at least 3-6 minutes, at one point rhythmically honking her horn and dancing in her seat, narcissistically flouting the law and goading the cops.

And she ended up orchestrating her own tragic death.

For a great overview of the legal issues involved, check out a veteran prosecutor’s RedState article titled, “Minneapolis Is Not Even a Close Call.”

I wish the elite leftists who have been egging on their foot soldiers would read that, and stop adding fuel to the fire, because I think they’re clearly responsible for the growing conflicts that resulted in Renee Good’s self-destructive foolishness. By preaching that ICE are fascists and that fighting them is a moral good, they delude them, and shield them from a healthy sense of guilt and shame – or at least a basic sense of self-preservation! – that might otherwise have dissuaded them from the illegal path they took.

Because threatening that ICE agent’s life by driving a 4000-pound vehicle toward him was not the first crime Renee Good committed that day. When she drove to the scene of a legal law enforcement action, blocked the road and began a series of actions intended to draw more protestors/resisters, she interfered with law enforcement, a felony when accompanied by other illegal actions.

Actions such as disobeying lawful orders and resisting arrest, which she did when she refused to comply with cop’s orders to get out of her car. (The SCOTUS case that said you must get out of your vehicle when a cop tells you to is called Pennsylvania vs. Mimms…which I first learned about while watching sovereign citizen videos.)

Uninformed leftists who defend Renee Good driving toward the cop say that she wasn’t trying to hit him, but only to get away, which does not help her case. First, because the law says that her intention is irrelevant, if her actions caused a cop to reasonably believe that she was going to hit him (which he did, because she did). Second because “trying to get away” is fleeing/eluding, another felony.

If the leftist politicians and media figures who claim to care about the leftist ICE resisters weren’t manipulating them for their own political purposes, they’d tell them the obvious truth: Our immigration laws were democratically and legitimately passed, and they state that anybody who came here illegally has committed a crime and is subject to deportation. Any agency or personnel who are enforcing those laws are behaving legally, and it’s a crime to try to impede, harass, interfere with or stop them. So don’t do it!

Because the best way to stop being stupid is for stupid to hurt.

Good parents know this; slapping a toddler’s hand when she reaches for the stove is better than letting her touch it. Good governments know it too. An early arrest and some time in the county jail, or picking up garbage on the side of the highway is better than a slap on the wrist and then years in the state pen after you graduate to major felonies.

I’m thrilled that the administration is flooding Minnesota with 1000 more LEOs, because this kind of ongoing, slow-motion insurrection can’t be allowed to stand.

And because we’re way past the “play stupid games, win stupid prizes” phase.

We’re now at “play illegal games, win an early grave.”

Hamas (and Trantifa) delenda est!

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Minnesota, Mamdani and Maduro, Oh My!(posted 1/9/26)

We’re not even 10 days into the new year, and the elite lefties have already given us enough material to mock them about until Arbor Day, 2028. Consider just the three examples of the cascading lawlessness in Minnesota, Mamdani’s horrific start as NYC mayor, and the Democrats’ towering hypocrisy about our incredible capture of Maduro and Mrs. Maduro.

By this time, you would have thought we’d be aware of all of the possible scandals that could come out of Minnesota. However, as the third Wise Man said when he arrived late to the manger, “But wait! There’s myrrh!” (Terrible dad joke? Check. Still hanging on to Christmas? Check.)

I am so happy to see the White House sending a whole team of fraud investigators from the DOJ to Minnesota. Not just because it’s always satisfying to see some bad actors get what’s coming to them, but because as the revelations of systemic waste and criminality grow, there will be an impetus to apply the same scrutiny to the vast corruption throughout our federal and state governments.

And that process has the potential to do a world of good.

It’s hard to believe how easy it was for Nick Shirley to pull out one or two pieces from the Somali scammer Jenga tower, which then immediately caused the accelerating collapse of the whole rotten mess. And as a former English prof and recovering grammar nerd, I still can’t get over the beautifully evocative symbol of the multi-billion dollar fraud: the sign for the “Learing Center.”

I’m not immune to the occasional typo myself; regular readers will have spotted one or two in my columns from time to time. (It’s no excuse that I do most of my writing after midnight, nor that medicinal bourbon is sometimes involved.) (Or is it?) But still, a mistake in an email or an internet post is one thing.

A glaring error in a professionally printed sign is another. Some Somali had to get hold of a computer – probably provided by a corrupt NGO called “Empowering our Neighbors, LLC” at the low, low cost of $1.2 million to taxpayers. Then he had to try out several different names, finally landing on the generic-sounding “Quality Learning Center.”

Except that he wrote it as, “Kwalitee Learing Centaur.”

Fortunately for him, he was able to hire a copy-editing service – probably provided by a corrupt NGO called “Literacy for our Neighbors, LLC” (that’s another $1.2 mil from the taxpayers). And they cleaned up “Quality” and “Center,” but missed “Learing.”

When he took that verbiage to a sign-making business – “Empowering Signs for our Neighbors, LLC – which is located in a 180 -square-foot store-front in a six-business strip mall across from the railroad tracks. (Amount billed to the taxpayers from those six businesses in 2025? $214 million.)

And because the workers there have been in this country for 10 years but still speak only in the series of clicks, whistles and glottal pops of Somali, nobody caught the missing “n.”

Annnddddd…a multi-billion dollar fraud ring collapses, and leftist, race-hustling crooks in Minnesota get to lear a hard lesson!

And that’s not to mention the latest disaster, with the foolish woman losing her life trying to run down the ICE agent. Which was the predictable outcome of unhinged leftist media, politicians, and activists brainwashing gullible people by screaming, “ICE is the Gestapo! Enforcing our laws is fascist!” for the last several years.

What did they think was going to happen?

But just when you thought no leftists could be crazier than the Minnesota leftists, Zorro Mamdani took the oath of office in NYC and said, “Hold my Koran and watch this.”

And he hired a recidivist criminal to advise him on crime, and a raging anti-Semite (I know: which one?) to take charge of choosing personnel, and he started an initiative to allow disgruntled tenants on welfare to go after landlords whom they don’t think are giving them their money’s worth for the zero dollars they are paying for rent-controlled apartments.

And for the leader of this “fix housing problems” unit, he chose a loon named Cea Weaver, who has more red flags than a May Day parade marching past Lenin’s tomb in Moscow.

First are her eyes. Look up “crazy eyes” in a dictionary, and right there is a picture of Cea Weaver.

Second, right before she got appointed, she started deleting all of her past social media with both translucently white, bony hands. (This gal is so white she makes Liz Warren look like Idi Amin.) (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

Third, because that’s not the way the internet works, some of her old posts and videos starting coming out. And…yikes!

Turns out she really hates white people, which makes her as self-hating as those secular Jews carrying pro-Hamas signs at Ivy League protests. She said that home ownership is racist and white supremacist. She said that she wanted to “impoverish the white middle class” and that her goal is to “decrease the value of real estate.” (Finally, a leftist political promise you can believe!)

My favorite quote of hers is a juicy morsel of malignant misanthropy encased in a thick crust of academic-speak: “For centuries, we’ve really treated property as an individualized good and not a collective good,” and in the future we will transition to treating it as a collective good under a model of ‘shared equity.’ [That] will mean that families, especially white families, are going to have a different relationship to property.”

Translation: Your “different relationship to property” means that you won’t have any of it anymore.

Usually, this kind of zealot has fire in her belly, and can’t wait to get into power so she can immediately start grinding her capitalist enemies to dust beneath her. But not Cea.

Because when a reporter stopped her and posed a few questions to her outside of her Brooklyn brownstone – in an area that white interlopers like herself have gentrified, by the way – she cried and ran back into her home.

I’m not making that up. She literally burst into tears and fled into her house.

But the star of the show – make that the sh*t show – is Mamdani himself, who gave what had to be the creepiest inaugural address ever. He doubled down on all of his socialist rhetoric, and produced the chilling sound bite about how he is going to replace “the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.”

That sound you hear is George Orwell – and 100 million victims of communist “warmth” – rolling in their graves.

Which brings us to Trump’s theatrical raid on another purveyor of collectivist warmth, the Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro. The raid itself was so spectacular – script by Shane Black, directed by Michael Bay, with the working title, “Mission Impossible 12: Grabbing Maduro!” – that even the most partisan Dem couldn’t criticize it.

So they immediately moved on to throwing every possible criticism at the wall, to see what sticks. “It’s illegal. It’s a kidnapping. Maduro is the legitimate president. What’s going to happen next? Why didn’t the raiders capture the 47 people below Maduro on the commie flow-chart?” Etc.

There are actually legitimate questions and a lot of uncertainty about what the aftermath will be. But rather than be serious statemen and raise those objections, the Dems couldn’t help but act like clowns, and reveal their own double-standards and hypocrisy.

Like Cryin’ Cea Weaver, they don’t seem to recognize that the internet and videotape exists, and you can’t run away from past statements you’ve made.

Statements like Joe Biden’s (RIP) tweet from June of 2020: “Trump talks tough on Venezuela, but admires thugs and dictators like Nicolas Maduro. As President, I will stand with the Venezuelan people and for democracy.”

That one aged like milk, didn’t it?

Or how about the fact that the Biden administration removed sanctions on Venezuela in 2023 in exchange for Maduro’s promise that Venezuela would hold free and fair elections. Annnndddd… nope! After Maduro lost in 2024, he just stayed in power and started persecuting Venezuelan opponents.

Thwarted by the real world as they so often are, on Biden’s way out the door last year, he and the Dems put out a $25 million bounty for info leading to the arrest or conviction or Maduro.

So they were hoping that some mercenaries, or possible Jason Bourne or Reacher, would raid Maduro’s base, capture him, and spirit him away to the US to stand trial. But when Trump did just that, the left raced to begin the caterwauling.

Which was hilarious, because just like in the raid on the Iranian nuke sites, the action was over before the usual suspects could even make their signs, hit the streets, and start with the chanting.

Still, it was fun to watch unemployed leftist ne’er-do-wells (When will they do well? Ne’er!) put down their anime furry porn and stop in the middle of their latest piercing to rally on the streets against the evil, genocidal bombing of Venezuela.

Annnndddd…the bombing is over!

It was also very entertaining to watch AWFLs and other nonbinary white guys protesting and weeping for the poor Venezuelans, on a split screen with scenes of thousands of wildly celebrating Venezuelans in city streets all over the world.

It’s a cliché because it’s true: Trump’s superpower is getting his opponents to take the “20” side of every 80-20 issue, and to defend the indefensible.

So to recap, here are the groups and individuals the Democrats have rallied on behalf of since Trump has returned to office: human-smuggling, wife-beating gang member Kilmar; narco-terrorists in Miami Vice boats speeding toward America to profit from poisoning and murdering Americans; judges who blatantly violate laws to help illegals evade our law enforcement; a trust-fund puss who shot a CEO in the back like a coward; leftist trans-adjacent mentally ill or evil people who murdered Charlie Kirk and Christian school kids in two separate massacres; comically transparent Somali land-pirates; and a vicious leftist dictator who they were vociferously condemning 28 minutes ago.

Great job, lefties!

Hamas (and Trantifa) delenda est!

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We Don’t Hate the Media, or Tim Walz, Enough (posted 1/8/26)

First note: I am going to have an announcement about the possible return of some version of the Cautious Optimism site soon, so stay tuned.

Second note: I drafted most of this column Wednesday morning, before the ICE agent in Minneapolis fired on the woman who interfered with an ICE raid and hit him with her car, in the aftermath of which Tim Walz added a new, pathetic chapter to the story of his terrible behavior during his entire political career.

I’m filing this column under one of my recurring categories: We Don’t Hate the Media Enough.

Consider this: the Somalian fraudsters in Minnesota haven’t come up with any new scams that we know of over the last couple of years. They’ve just continued doing the industrial-scale fraud that they’ve been doing for the last couple of decades, since they gave up ocean-going piracy for land-based piracy.

And Tim Walz isn’t any more implicated in the utter incompetence and negligence – or more likely, blatant corruption, with all of the billion$ of fraudulent taxpayer ripoffs – than he was 18 months ago, or 16 months ago, or 13 months ago.

But 18 months ago he became Que Mala’s nominee to be one heartbeat away from the presidency. And 16 months ago he was campaigning hard for that office. And 13 months ago he was on the presidential election ballot in all 50 states, and ended up getting the votes of tens of millions of Americans. (Addled, unwise Americans, sure. But still. Americans.)

And for all of that time, the nationwide legacy media and journalists – the vaunted Fourth Estate; the guardians of our liberty; the crucial and necessary speakers of capital “T” Truth to capital “P” Power; the beneficiaries (along with all of us) of the cherished first amendment to our Constitution – did not write or speak one word about the tsunami of fraud that surrounded and enveloped Tim Walz, from his twinkle toes to the fingertips of his jazz hands.

And then one 20-something kid with a Mr. Microphone and a $100 video camera from Best Buy spent one afternoon walking around and showing Somalian fraud-atoria in grimy buildings with misspelled signs, and asking dead-eyed scammers where the kids were, and getting only a series of clicks and whistles, followed by, “No habla ingles. You go now!”

And before he could say, “That’s Spanish, not Somalian,” the doors to the fraud parlors were shut in his face.

And that kid, with his budget of 12 dollars and a bus pass, did what our finest J-school grads and the billion-dollar institutions propping them up could not and would not do: he told the truth about the corrupt leftist machine running Minnesota, and by implication, the truth about Tim Walz.

“But maybe the MSM just focused on more important stories, in their rigorous vetting of Walz?” you’re not asking, because you’re not as dumb as Jasmine Crockett.

Because: nope.

Do you remember what the MSM told us about him, and his background? He was a regular guy, a man’s man who coached football, and hunted, and bravely served our country in the National Guard, where he gained valuable combat experience.

Except… when he tried to do a photo-op in his new hunting vest and Elmer Fudd hat, he struggled with his shotgun like AOC struggled with the SAT. He looked like he had never even seen a shotgun before, let alone fired one.

And when he talked about football, he sounded like…I don’t know, Pete Buttigieg talking about football. (Remember when Walz mentioned “calling a pick-six?”)

And as a regular guy raised correctly in the Midwest, I can tell you that none of my regular guy friends ever flounced around like…how can I put this delicately?… an over-eager, leotard-wearing cast member in a huge Bob Fosse dance number.

And his time in the National Guard – where he did serve, and God bless him for it – did NOT involve any front-line combat. Or even rear-echelon proximity to combat. Or even being within the penumbras or emanations of the nearest theatre of war wherein combat might conceivably have broken out.

In fact, after decades in the Guard, when it actually came time for the unit he was supposed to lead to go into combat, Terrible Timmy immediately retired from the Guard, leaving his troops to be led by someone else.

But of course, we learned none of this from the legacy media, because they did everything they could to portray him as the exact opposite of what he really was, and is. And the only possible defense they have is that by August of 2024 they were absolutely exhausted.

After all, they’d spent years covering for Joe Biden: ignoring his corruption; hiding his son’s status as a crack aficionado and bagman who funneled Chicom and Ukrainian oligarch cash to the Big Guy; pretending “Dr.” Jill was a doctor, and 9% inflation was hunky dory, and that all of us regularly trip over sandbags and fall up staircases and poop on the Pope.

Then they had to turn on a dime and start pretending that Que Mala was erudite, and smart, and competent. And that was no easy task.

Then she drops Tampon Tim in their laps, and gives them their marching orders: Take this lunatic weirdo and make him look like a normal, Midwestern dude’s dude, so we don’t get completely wiped out among male voters.

The rest was history, and the corrupt, soulless, existentially dishonest MSM came dangerously close to lying Jazz Hands and the Cackler into the White House only 14 months ago.

For that, we can never hate them enough.

And so, I suggest that we say to Tim Walz, and the armies of over-paid, moral homunculi in the mainstream media – in the words of thousands of Somali scammers who have now gone to ground all over the Mogadishu-St. Paul area…

“You go now!”

Hamas (and Trantifa) delenda est!

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Dems Get out of the Gate Quickly in 2026 (posted 1/5/26)

Well, the elite Democrats are starting off 2026 the same way they ended 2025: as condescending, creepy hypocrites.

Under “condescending,” behold the wonder that is Larry Sabato. You may remember Sabato because he’s the University of Virginia politics professor who founded the Center for Politics, which is laughably described as “nonpartisan.”

But you probably don’t. Because who cares?

On the other hand, he is a near-perfect representative of our arrogant, educated, elite pundit class. He’s highly educated, and even though he has nothing but disdain for regular people, he touts his Center as “work[ing] to promote civic engagement and participation.” But I would argue that he’s no smarter than I am.

He has a lot political opinions, and is happy to yammer on about them. So do I. He has a BA, an MA and a PhD. So do I. He was Phi Beta Kappa. So was I. He was a Rhodes Scholar. I…wasn’t. He got his PhD from Oxford. I…didn’t. He has a earned a ton of money and a very high media profile by writing about politics. I…

Look, let’s not get hung up on these meaningless comparisons. Because everybody is different, and I have other, more impressive qualifications in my CV than he does. For example, was Larry Sabato a four-time runner-up for People magazine’s Sexiest Man of the Year? (Screw you, Patrick Dempsey, Chris Evans, Idris Alba and George Clooney!)

My wife is hotter, my kids are better, and my Wonder Dog outclasses his low-IQ little stripper dog like the ones that several of the Kardashians probably carry around in their purses.

Ok sure, I don’t know anything about his wife or kids, or if he even has a dog. But I said what I said, and I stand by it 100%.

Anyway, Larry Sabato couldn’t even get 48 hours into 2026 without proving that he is a condescending jerk. The proof came in his response to a statement by the new anchor of the CBS Evening News, someone named Tony Dokoupil.

On New Year’s Day, Dokoupil started his tenure with an on-air mea culpa, acknowledging that most Americans don’t trust the legacy media any more. “On too many stories, the press has missed the story. Because we’ve taken into account the perspective of advocates and not the average American. Or we put too much weight in the analysis of academics or elites, and not enough on you.”

To which all reasonably perceptive Americans said, “Duh!”

Even though CBS has a lot to atone for, and the only rational response to Dokoupil’s message is, “We’ll believe it when we see it,” we should still allow ourselves to be pleasantly surprised when CBS makes even a baby step in the direction of doing the right thing. Acknowledging reality and admitting fault is a good way for them to start a new year.

But Sir Lawrence of Sabato begs to differ. Because he immediately pushed his metaphorical glasses to the end of his nose and dialed the snoot factor up to 11 in a tweeted response to Dokoupil: “Absolutely! You wouldn’t want ‘academics and elites’ who have actually studied a subject to outweigh the off-the-cuff opinions of village idiots.”

[Sidebar: In this one response, Sabato showed himself to be the polar opposite of the late great William F. Buckley (peace be upon him), who famously said, “I’d rather be governed by 300 names drawn randomly from the Boston phone book than by the faculty of Harvard University.”]

Got that? If you disagree with Larry Sabato and his ilk, you’re a village idiot!

In case you’ve forgotten the lofty goal of Larry’s Center at UVA, I’ll repeat it: “working to promote civic engagement and participation.”

And obviously, the best way to accomplish that is to smear any dissenters as pitchfork-wielding mouth-breathers. “Listen up, morons! You’re all idiots, and your uninformed opinions are crap. So ‘engage with civics’ by bowing down to me as I lecture you on your wrongness, and then get out there and ‘participate,’ by voting exactly the way we experts tell you to!”

That level of clueless narcissism is hard to comprehend. Sabato’s job for decades has been to eat, drink and breathe politics. And yet, in the Year of Our Lord 2026, he can still unselfconsciously and unironically tout the opinions of “academics and elites who have actually studied a subject,” as if we’ve all just woken up from a deep, decades-long, magical sleep.

After all, medical elitists like Dr. Fauci and Dr. Scarf – I don’t remember her name and won’t waste the time to look it up, but you know who I’m talking about – “actually studied” communicable diseases for years.

Annnnddddd…they said covid came from delicious pangolins that untermenschen ChiComs gobbled like circus geeks devouring live chickens; and that masks would stop the spread; and that the vax would keep you from getting it; no, the vax and then 18 more boosters; and that six feet of distance would keep you safe; and that you could attend screaming mob protests of St. George Floyd’s death safely, but going to church would kill you.

And intelligence elites spent a lifetime actually studying intel and disinformation.

Annnnddddd… 51 of them swore that Hunter Biden’s laptop – which contained hours of video of Hunter Biden snorting crack off of the behinds of hookers of many nations, along with Hunter Biden’s emails proving that he was a bagman for ChiCom apparatchiks and Ukrainian oligarchs, and that he kicked up 10% of his illegal bribes to “the big man” – was actually a Russian fabrication. And that the non-existent Trump pee tape existed, and was proof that he was a Moscow-ian Candidate.

And our leftist policy experts assured us that the border couldn’t be closed without radical new legislation, and that illegals weren’t getting SNAP benefits or Medicaid, and that the Somali Learing Center was a world-class educational institution, well worth the $8 million per student cost.

And our leftist media experts assured us that Jen “Circle Back” Psaki and KJP were geniuses, and that the act of a male declaring himself a female magically turns all of his Y chromosomes to Xs. And that Joe Biden was mentally sharp, with the physical vigor of an Olympic triathlete gold medalist whose strongest events were stair climbing and long-jumping over sandbags.

But you don’t have to look to the army of lefty elite “experts” who have been relentlessly wrong or lying about everything all the time. You can just look at the King of Elite Academics: Larry Sabato.

In addition to all of his academic credentials, Sabato started a website to make political predictions, and he modestly named it, “Sabato’s Crystal Ball.”

Because of course he did.

Annnnddd… Sabato’s Crystal Ball has been about as accurate as a Magic Eight Ball.

Unexpectedly!

In 2016, Sabato predicted a Cankles McPantsuit blowout win against Trump by an electoral vote count of 322-216, almost the exact opposite of what happened. He also missed the House and Senate majorities.

He got 2020 “right,” when Joey Gaffes won in the Most Legitimate Election Ever™. (That was the one that hinged on 11 million Democrat voters who had never been seen before November of 2020, and who have never been seen since.)

But you’ll be shocked to know that he wrongly predicted that Que Mala would win the Electoral College (and the presidency) by 14 EC votes, when as we all know, she got wiped out by nearly 100 EC votes.

Because God exists, and He loves us.

So if I’m reading the record correctly, the Village Idiots went 2-1, while Sabato went 1-2, with a big asterisk in front of the 1.

Accordingly, if it’s all the same to you, Larry, you can keep your Crystal Ball, and I’ll rely on my Crystal Brain, along with my Magic Eight Ball.

Which I just asked three questions:

1. Is Larry Sabato half as smart as he thinks he is?

2. Can a randomly chosen village idiot out-think Larry Sabato?

3. Can Larry Sabato distinguish his fundament from a hole in the ground?

And I got, “My sources say no,” “You may rely on it,” and, “Reply hazy, try again,” respectively.

Would you look at that? The column’s already over, and I only got to “condescending elite Dems.”

So “creepy” and “hypocritical” Dems will be my topics next time.

Hamas (and Trantifa) delenda est!

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Looking Forward to the New Year (posted 1/1/26)

I love New Year’s Day. It comes in the middle of the 12 days of Christmas, during a long break spent with family; there is good football to watch; and I savor the chance to look back at the past year, and forward to the new one.

In my last column I looked back at some highlights and lowlights of 2025, but the year certainly ended with all kinds of stupid. Consider those cheese-eating surrender monkeys the French, for example. They have a famed national celebration every New Years Eve in Paris, with huge crowds on the Champs-Elysees and a gigantic concert, followed by fireworks at the Arc de Triomphe at midnight.

Except for this year. Because it is now too dangerous. The French government no longer feels it can keep its own citizens safe in its capital on a national holiday. A police statement alluded to “unpredictable crowd movements” as one cause for worry.

You know, like when the church parking lot gets crowded on a Sunday at noon, or when lots of Gator fans descend on the stadium an hour before kickoff. You can never be too careful when you’ve got crowds. Especially the kind which are prone to moving around.

So the French canceled their concert, and replaced it with a pre-recorded video broadcast. Because nothing says, “Let’s celebrate this significant moment!” like… reruns.

There will still be fireworks, but officials “urged people to watch from home.” Because there is no better way to appreciate the visceral experience of immense colorful explosions filling the sky and cacophonous blasts you can feel in your chest than…to watch it on a tv screen.

The evasive banality of these official French government pronouncements demonstrate that they believe that some things are better left unsaid. Especially when those things involve mobs of violent practitioners of a certain Religion of Peace™ whom the French have been allowing into their country for decades now.

Annnnddddd…no more celebrations, Frenchie! Watch it on tv.

Meanwhile, here at home we have geniuses like Eric Swalwell, who is now running for California governor. And if California Dems vote him into office, they’ll deserve the reign of error, flatulence and unguarded pillow talk with ChiCom honey traps that will ensue.

Swalwell’s latest campaign promise is a doozy. He is pledging to arrest ICE agents and take away their driver’s licenses.

You read that right. ICE agents – the rare federal employees who actually have a proper constitutional job to do and are actually doing it correctly – will not get away with enforcing our laws on Swalwell’s watch. Following in the footsteps of the seditious six – who told our military that they shouldn’t follow illegal orders, and then couldn’t point to any such orders they’ve been given, because those orders don’t exist – Swalwell tried to cover himself by using the weaseliest of weasel words.

To wit, “And if they commit crimes then they’re going to be charged with crimes, if it’s falsely imprisoning people, if it’s kidnapping, if it’s assault and battery, they’re going to be held accountable.”

That kind of vacuous statement might work for the motley collection of AWFLs, sufferers from blunt force head trauma and CTEs, and non-English speakers who make up the Democrat voting base in California.

But the rest of us know that of course ICE agents committing those crimes would be charged with those crimes. We also know that they are NOT committing those crimes. Because detaining and then arresting people who broke our immigration laws isn’t “falsely imprisoning” them, and taking them off the street and legally holding them prior to deportation isn’t “kidnapping” them.

And “assault and battery” is what happens to my ears and brain when Eric Swalwell starts talking on tv when my remote is not within arm’s reach.

The driver’s license threat is especially rich. When normal Americans think “problems with driver’s licenses in California,” they think about foreigners who just got here two weeks ago, and were issued voter’s registration paperwork and a CDL, despite the fact that they don’t know enough English to read road signs, or spell “CDL.”

Maybe Swalwell thinks that the total number of driver’s licenses is a fixed amount, and he needs to start confiscating licenses from American citizens who are enforcing our laws and keeping us safe, so that he can give those licenses to every Juan, Achmed and Apu with a hankerin’ to climb up behind the wheel of a 15-ton 18-wheeler and start flattening sedans and SUVs like JB Pritzker trampling people between him and a buffet.

Where was I?

Oh yeah. Looking forward to the new year.

I don’t do hard-and-fast resolutions, but I do like to set goals, and I’ve got a lot of items on my own personal bucket list that still need to be checked off:

First, of course, I’d like to get the CO website up and running again.

I’d like to fast-rope down from a helicopter just in time to prevent a crime from happening, or stop a useful idiot from talking a naïve young person into voting Democrat.

I’d like to dive into a body of water with a knife clenched between my teeth.

After being a four-time runner up, I’d like to finally win a People Magazine’s Sexiest Man of the Year award.

I’d like to win a Nobel Prize, just so that in my speech I could work in a Pelosi mummy joke, a Cherokee Liz Warren joke (#wemustneverstopmockingher), and a Pritzker dirigible joke.

I’d like a law enforcement agency to require me to register my hands as lethal weapons.

I’d like to be at a public event where I could interrupt an idiot making a land acknowledgment by standing up and yelling, “Either give the land back or shut your yap, you insufferable, virtue-signaling D-bag!”

But enough about me and my personal goals.

Politically, my over-arching resolution would be for us conservatives to wield the power the voters gave us as aggressively as the Democrats always do when they are in power. Even if we don’t lose the House in November, time is fleeting and there is a ton of work to do, so we need to make hay while the sun shines, on many fronts:

1.Do everything possible to speed up deportations, and encourage illegals to self-deport. Crack down on all benefits that serve as magnets for illegals: stop them from getting Medicaid funds, food stamps, illegal employment and college funding. Defund the NGOs who have been conduits for money for themselves, and to enable illegals to get here and stay here.

2. Use the power of federal money to incentivize insurrectionist “sanctuary” blue cities and states to obey federal law or suffer the consequences. Take highway funds away from states who illegally issue any drivers’ licenses to illegals; take federal matching funding away from states who have been using those funds on boondoggles like the CA bullet train. Withdraw funding wherever it can be legally withdrawn to stop taxpayers from unwillingly subsidizing wind and solar farms that produce expensive electricity that must then be subsidized again when it shows up in electric bills.

3. Use the power of every law and regulation – not as dishonest lawfare, but as aggressive enforcement of laws that have long been ignored or thwarted. Arrest and prosecute every person who interferes with or attacks ICE, border patrol or the national guard. Make examples of judges who break the law or rule frivolously; impeach a handful of them where you can, and arrest and prosecute those like the WI judge who was just convicted for helping an illegal escape ICE officers.

4. Use conservative media to highlight the truth – and counter the MSM – on every story they distort or lie about, i.e. all of the stories. Make the really bad actors famous – violent illegals, Somali scammers, brother-marrying anti-Semites in Congress – and highlight our wins (lower crime rates and unemployment, an improving economy, etc.). Build on our recent successes in social media, and keep the spotlight on Dem malfeasance

5. In a perfect world, I’d like us to keep the filibuster. But in the real world, I’m afraid it’s time to get rid of it, both because the Dems will certainly do so the minute they get back in power (they already did, with judges), and because they’ve repeatedly demonstrated that they aren’t good-faith negotiators. We can’t continue to fight with one arm tied behind our back, and we can’t continue to bring strongly worded letters to a knife fight. If we don’t, the Dems will prevent us from making health-care reforms, and then will profit by blaming us for the failed Obamacare that they are 100% responsible for.

We made some very good progress in 2025, but we need to keep the pedal to the metal in 2026.

I hope you all had a great holiday season, and are looking forward to the new year as much as I am!

Hamas (and Trantifa) delenda est!

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Looking Back at 2025 (posted 12/29/25)

I hope everybody had a great Christmas. We had a peaceful and quiet one. In recent years I’ve gotten into the 12 Days of Christmas liturgical tradition, which was not a part of my Baptist upbringing, but which is appealing for several reasons. I’ve always loved Christmas, and any chance to extend that holy/holiday feeling for longer seems intrinsically good. (I know that Hanukkah is not a major Jewish holiday, but I’ve always like the idea of 8 days of celebration…so you know I’d be up for 12!)

And because I own a few rental houses in a college town, I really appreciate the feeling of a temporarily emptier town, and the opportunity that brings to do some maintenance work without having to work around tenants’ schedules, traffic, etc. On the agenda this week is some yard clean-up – I’ve already removed three pickup loads of leaves and limbs – some minor carpentry, repairing and painting a picket fence, and repairing and painting some wooden window screens.

I also appreciate the chance to look back at the year that has passed, and to look forward to the new year, too. In this column I’ll look back at some highlights and lowlights of 2025, and in the next column – the last one for this year – I’ll look forward to some of my hopes and fears for 2026.

Obviously, Trump taking office was a huge deal, and a great relief after the four benighted years of the Cadaver and the Cackler and their horrible policies and personnel. Trump’s most dramatic accomplishment was completely closing the border after 16 minutes in office – and after years of Biden and the Dems feigning an inability to close the border without “comprehensive immigration reform” legislation.

(By which they meant opening the borders to millions of unvetted immigrants to ensure a leftist voting majority forever.)

The deportations, though frustratingly slow, have been great too. The relatively slow pace of deportations has not been because of lack of trying, and it’s been infuriating to watch the same Dems who allowed millions to stampede in – with NO due process to protect American citizens – now insist that every obviously deportable alien be given full, years-long due-process hearings.

Still, Trump’s move to offer cash and a plane ticket to those who will self-deport is smart, and has been paying dividends; I think around twice as many have self-deported as have been caught and forcibly deported. And as long as Homan and Trump keep pushing aggressively, I would guess that more and more will self-deport, as the realization sinks in that Hulk Homan means business, and they’re going to be caught and tossed eventually.

I think another high point has been the improvements in the first year of Trump’s second term compared to his first. The first time around, his win came as a surprise to many, and with no previous governing experience, Trump had to fumble his way up a very steep learning curve. He left way too many oppositional deep-state bureaucrats in place, and his appointments were a mixed bag, with a lot of misses.

And I’m not just talking about Amarosa and the Mooch. (Terrible drive-time FM radio shock-jock duo, terrible political appointments.) Pence was a good man but an empty suit as VP; I can’t remember a thing about Rex Tillerson as Sec State. I actually liked Mattis as Sec Def and Jeff Sessions as AG, but they both had some self-inflicted wounds.

With the possible exception of Pam Bondi, I can’t think of an appointment this time around that hasn’t been at least as strong, and usually a marked improvement over their counterparts in the first term. JD is a boss; Mario is doing half a dozen jobs and all of them well; Stephen Miller and Hegseth have taken everything the sleazy MSM could throw at them and spit right back in their eye.

And Tom Homan is my hero.

Trump clearly put together a team during his four years in the wilderness, and he hit the ground running. In a functional nation with sane Democrats in it, Trump could have passed much of his agenda through congress. In the dysfunctional mess Trump inherited, he has had to sign a boatload of EOs and push through the imperfect omnibus Big Beautiful Bill, and those have been vast improvements over the last four years, and clear improvements over the first year of his first term.

He’s also laid the groundwork for good things to happen in the near- and mid-term future. The regulation cuts and tax cuts that kick in next month will help the economy, as will the trade deals that are bringing tons of investment into our country. The appellate courts and SCOTUS are likely to grind along and keep knocking down the partisan lower-court judges’ attempts to stop every good thing that is happening, from immigration enforcement to the economy to pushing back on the discrimination and trans lunacy embodied in DEI ideology.

That’s not to say that everything is going great. The DOGE effort was noble and much-needed, but has lost a lot of momentum with Elon’s departure. While Trump’s tariffs push has provided some useful leverage in trade negotiations in some cases, and they have not produced the disastrous results predicted by many conservatives, their indiscriminate and impulsive deployments have hurt some of our allies, and caused some economic uncertainty and problems for many Americans.

I think that SCOTUS is likely to trim Trump’s sails a bit with some forthcoming tariff opinions, and as a strict constructionist, I think that probably should happen. I think it will be good for the economy, and it might also provide an opportunity to Trump to recalibrate, and hopefully make more congenial trade deals with our allies, while saving the punitive tariffs for our enemies, especially China and Russia.

But highlights aren’t just instances when we do well. Highlights also happen when our opponents shoot themselves in the foot, and defecate on their shoes, and step on rakes, and many other metaphors of hilarious self-injury that I cannot think of right now.

And boy, have the Dems been on a self-injury tear this year! The TDS has settled over the deep blue areas of the country like the plague hitting Europe in the 14^th century, and the results are likely to be just about as devastating. The insane, insurrectionist and violent resistance to ICE enforcing our immigration laws are already starting to bear fruit. That hag of a judge in Wisconsin who helped an illegal felon temporarily evade ICE has just been convicted, and is providing a good example for the rest of the left-wing partisans in robes.

The flight of American citizens from blue states and cities to red ones is only accelerating, as the horrific results of leftist governance – high taxes, high crime, insufferable micro-managing Karens of both genders – are destroying the quality of life in those blue areas. Ken Doll Newsom and Brandon Johnson and J(um)B(o) Pritzker continue to afflict the citizens of CA and IL respectively, and Mamdani’s incipient carnival of stupid is about to give NYC voters what they asked for – good, hard and sans lubrication.

As sick as I am of feckless RINO GOPers – thanks for not redistricting, Indiana Republicans! –Congressional Dems have reached new record lows of approval, around 18%! And they’re still steering into the skid of stupidity. They’re championing felon illegals, scamming Somalians, and drug-running Venezuelans. And now they’ve set the Epstein files to blow up in their faces, too. After four years of having total control over those files and doing nothing with them, they now look like morons as they clamber onto their high horses and accusing Republicans of doing slowly and bumblingly (fact check: true) what they themselves refused to do at all!

And as the newest tranches of Epstein material comes out, it turns out that there is no new damage done to Trump, while Bill Clinton is turning up in a whole photo album of hot tub and pool pics with every female who is not his Clydesdale-ankled harridan of a wife.

Or, as a Babylon Bee headline put it, “A Surprising Amount of Epstein Photos are Turning up in the Bill Clinton Files.”

Of course the saddest political event of the year was the murder of Charlie Kirk and its aftermath. It’s fitting that that is the clearest dividing point of 2025, because it became a focus of wildly different reactions that showed the essential nature of so many on both the right and the left. For the vast majority on the right – and most independents too, I think – the brutal and evil nature of Charlie’s death was rightly repulsive. So far, at least, it has produced a groundswell of support for Turning Point USA among young people, and a spur for many to turn to (or return to) Christian faith.

For a tiny sliver of the right, including creepy racist Nick Fuentes and newly creepy anti-Semitic dunce Candace Owens and sadly deteriorating Tucker Carlson, Kirk’s death has provided a jumping-off point for conspiracy theories and mean-spirited attacks on innocent friends and associates of Charlie.

And for the left, his murder unleashed a tidal wave of shockingly ghoulish glee. They have revealed the ugly reality of their political hatreds in a way that will hopefully inoculate many citizens from wanting to vote for them in the near future, at least.

Coming up next: my hopes – and a few worries – for 2026.

Hamas (and Trantifa) delenda est!

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