Politics – Page 15 – Martin Simpson

The Dems Can’t Help Themselves, Especially Gavin Newsom (posted 3/18/25)

Well, the Dems continue to compete in a hilarious triathlon of political ineptitude. They start by jumping on bikes and ramming into one pothole after another, then dismount and vigorously run for 100 meters through a lane full of rakes, then shoulder an Olympics-approved rifle and begin firing into their own feet.

But before I get to that, how fun was it to watch Elon’s son X bouncing excitedly alongside Trump as they walked to the Marine One helicopter together the other day?

It was so cute that even the most hard-hearted MSM hack had to almost say, “Awww,” before furiously catching herself. “NO! That’s Hitler and Lil’ Hitler! Must…not…feel…authentic…emotion.”

Of course the beauty of that moment came partly from the question of contrast that instinctively struck anyone watching: “Can you imagine letting your kid into Biden’s custody to walk him over to a helicopter?”

The question answers itself. [Cue Doctor Evil, humming up in his gliding chair and then pausing dramatically. “How about NO?!”]

Biden managed to make walking across a butter-soft lawn – in his specially-designed, codger-friendly, waffle-stomper shoes – look like hold-your-breath-while-Wallenda-tightropes-over-an-active-volcano high drama.

And the idea of Biden lifting a kid to put him onto a set of aircraft stairs?! Just trying to navigate the stairs by himself turned into something that looked like a montage of out-takes from the Eiger Sanction and a frontal assault on El Capitan.

Hey, here’s a question for you: How do we know that Gavin Newsom is smarter than a Hezbollah terrorist who STILL answers calls from unknown numbers on his Samsung De-Crotch-ulator 3000 pager? (Yell-o? Allahu akb-OUCH!)

It’s a trick question, of course, because we don’t. In fact, the only credible evidence that can be asserted in defense of that hypothesis is that he was at least smart enough to apparently agree in an interview with Charlie Kirk that allowing males to stomp women in sports obviously unfair.

But how do we know that Gavin Newsom is smarter than LA Mayor Karen “rhymes with” Bass?

First, because just about every sentient being is smarter than Karen Bass. (Although I wouldn’t bet a single lonely dollar on an IQ-off among Bass, Que Mala, AOC and any patient chosen by random lottery from a head trauma ward at a major metropolitan hospital of your choice. So, yeah.)

Second, because Bass managed to be in Ghana – which my crack team of mapologists tells me is pretty far away from Los Angeles – when the fires very predictably broke out, but then parlayed that idiotic move into a series of ever worsening idiocies.

Despite a boatload of public records laws requiring that she preserve all governmentally significant communications for at least 2 years, she…wait for it… “set her phone NOT to save text messages” during the crisis.

“Martin, who does that?” you might ask.

Until you think for a nano-second, and the question answers itself:

1. Bill Clinton on a “Welcome to the White House, New Interns” group chat. 2. Hunter Biden conducting a shady, “How much am I offered for this crude finger-painting?” group auction on a “Go-Corrupt-Me” fundraiser with a dozen dirty foreign officials and oligarchs.

And 3. The mayor of a horribly run blue city on a private plane in international airspace as she flop-sweats through an inauthentic dashiki while her city is burning to the ground.

Duh.

Then, back on the ground but air-headed as ever, she gave a press conference amidst wisps of acrid, blowing smoke on what looked like the Gone With the Wind movie set showing the aftermath of Sherman burning Atlanta:

Bass: “I’m demanding a complete investigation into the mayor’s actions during this crisis.”

Reporter: “Isn’t that you?”

Bass: “What now?”
Reporter: “You’re the mayor.”

Bass: “Um, yes. And I’m going to leave no stone unturned to get to the bottom of my actions.”

Reporter: “Couldn’t you just tell us that, now?

Bass: “Well, there are a lot of records to go through, and I want to be super-thorough.”

Reporter: “So you’ll be releasing all your texts, emails and phone calls?”

Bass: “Um, yeah. About that…”

Ugh. Remember that Hezbollah dullard I mentioned earlier? He’s sitting in a hospital in Lebanon, wrapped in gauze from neck to ankles, his face blackened by smoke and his eyebrows singed off, trying to explain what happened to his family members gathered around the bed.

“These telemarketers are driving me crazy! I’ve gotten three calls today, and now I’ve got one eye, one testicle and three fingers left!” (There’s a ring-tone of “Hava Nagila” from his bedside table.) “Oh wait a second, I’ve got to take this.”

And his uncle grabs the pager, and rolls his eyes at the other family members, who are all face-palming themselves. “Hey, at least he’s still smarter than Karen Bass.”

But now Ken Doll Newsom has been asked for his emails covering the same period, and Mr. Featureless Plastic Crotch is not dumb enough to try the ol’ “the dog ate my text messages” defense. Instead, he’s going with a claim that “they’re exempt from disclosure under the California Public Records Act.”

Apparently, his lawyers are suggesting that if you read the fine print closely, you’ll find that under the California Public Records Act, public records in California may be hidden from the public, at the whim of any Dem corrupticrat who might be revealed as a nice haircut on top of an empty head in an empty suit, if his public records were to be revealed. In public.

Newsom isn’t even trying to meet the bare requirements of the law by designating which records he’d like to hide and for what reason. This despite the fact that the CA constitution was amended in 2004 by Proposition 59, which asserted that “the people have the right of access to information concerning the conduct of the people’s business” as a foundational principle. This proposition was known as the “Sunshine” amendment.

But Veneer Boy’s lawyers have an answer for this too, as you’ll see in this quote that I am totally making up, yet which still communicates their meaning perfectly: “We are fully abiding by the Sunshine amendment, which we interpret as enshrining any Democrat Governor’s inalienable right to cloak his public records in an impenetrable, Stygian darkness. Hail Satan.”

That guy is the current front-runner for your party’s nomination for President in 2028, Democrats. And may God have mercy on your souls.

Oh, did I mention that it’s been revealed that Newsom secretly funded a $97,000 bust of himself that was recently placed in the San Francisco City Hall?

Because of course he did.

David Hogg/Gavin Newsom ’28!

Also, Hamas delenda est!

Leftist Moral Inversions are Finally Being Corrected (posted 3/12/25)

One of the worst things about the Biden years – in addition to the whispering Crypt-Keeper-looking serial fabulist who was our Cadaver in Chief, and in addition to his sidekick the Cackling Banality, and in addition to the dudes dressed like women and the skyrocketing inflation and the porous border being over-run daily by illegals, and in addition –

Okay, now that I think about it, there were way too many terrible things about the Biden administration to even narrow down a Top 10 Worst Things list. So let me start again.

One terrible aspect of the four-year plague of Biden-ness that descended on our land was the reversal of conventional morality that came to characterize much of our public life.

When terrorist-supporting radicals harassed and intimidated other students, our universities coddled the radicals and refused to help the students.

When thugs and rioters attacked police and businesses, the politicians forced the police to allow the lawlessness.

When disordered males invaded women’s sports and locker rooms, authorities chastised the women who complained, and gave their trophies and control over their privacy to the disordered males.

All of these cases and many more demonstrate that the old stereotype that conservatives are unfeeling while liberals are the cliched “bleeding hearts” is wrong. Both groups sympathize with others, and we conservatives aren’t bothered by lefty bleeding hearts. We just object to who they’re always bleeding for.

When progressives see a criminal fighting a cop, they side with the criminal. They don’t champion the cause of legal immigrants, but they’ll take to the streets to fight for illegal ones. They prefer shoplifters over shop owners, and squatters over landlords, and subway attackers over a Marine who defends the passengers.

That’s why the last couple of months have been so invigorating for us. After four years of escalating moral inversions, things have suddenly turned right-side-up again. Consider several good-news stories from just the last week:

With Biden in office, sweethearts like “Palestinian” “activist” Mahmoud Khalil seemed to be running woke Ivy League campuses. He has been a high-profile leader of campus protests, a participant in the “tent-ifada” encampment at Columbia, and an advocate for all sorts of Jew hatred and intimidation.

In addition to being a “political affairs officer with UNRWA” – the corrupt, UN-funded entity that has helped Hamas at every turn – he has still been living in campus housing, even though he graduated in December. As recently as last week, he participated in a takeover of a Barnard building.

But it’s a new day, and order is being restored. ICE agents arrested Khalil last Wednesday, and revoked his visa and his green card. When the news came out that the Trump administration is going to deport him, a lefty judge tried to stop that, but reports are that the administration had already moved him to a jail in Louisiana, where extremist NY judges are rightly ignored. Beautiful!

Columbia put out a whiny statement saying that it will not cooperate with ICE agents except where required by law.

And before I could yell, “Take away their funding!” the Trump administration took away their funding. Or at least $400 million of it, in the form of grants and contracts.

New SecEd Linda McMahon came off the top rope, citing the requirement that schools comply with federal antidiscrimination laws, and pointing out that universities have flouted that requirement for too long. “Today, we demonstrate to Columbia and other universities that we will not tolerate their appalling inaction any longer.”

And before I could yell, “More funding cancellations, please!” the Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism announced that, “More funding cancellations are likely to follow.” YES!

The NY Post reports that the Feds “have more than $5 billion in grant commitments with the Ivy League university that are currently under review.” As of Monday, an audit has begun, and I would love to be a fly on the wall in the faculty lounge right now!

The same FAFO process is happening all over the country. At DHS, where some treacherous employees have been aiding illegals by leaking information about upcoming ICE raids, Kristi Noem has started polygraphing employees to catch the insurrectionists. As of last Friday, two leakers have been found, and they’ll be facing felony prosecutions, and up to 10 years in federal prison if convicted.

I’m sure that the talking heads in legacy media are howling about that, but I’m unable to hear them over my laughter.

Amidst the steady stream of illegal immigrants being sent back home, a bad hombre named Diego de la Vega beat Hulk Homan™ to the punch by deporting himself back to Colombia in December. (The country, not the feckless university.)

If you haven’t heard of Vega, he might have done as much damage to our country as any of the criminal deportees you’ve heard about, including Mahmoud Khalil and the various face-tattooed gang bangers of Tren de Aragua.

Because Diego de la Vega was… wait for it… the former Communications Director for AOC!

Which raises a few questions about the Juicy Bootied One (her words, not mine), since it is not legal to hire illegals (duh!). It might be too much to ask for, but how great would it be if Homan’s Heroes burst into Sandy’s congressional office right in the middle of her next “Choose Your Fighter” video and slapped the cuffs on her?

Amidst all of these tales of the scales of justice being properly re-balanced, I have one last one for you. It’s the story of Brad Sigmon, 67, who died last Friday in South Carolina’s electric chair.

Sigmon had been on death row for 23 years, since he beat his ex-girlfriend’s parents to death with a baseball bat. He’d planned to kidnap his ex and “take her away for a romantic weekend that was to culminate in a murder-suicide.” I know: Brad had an unusual take on “romantic.”

Anyway, there’s one thing about his story that makes Sigmon a little different than your garden-variety evil man who needed killing. And that’s his method of execution.

Because while South Carolina’s death chamber is fitted out with an electric chair and a lethal injection set-up, Brad chose Door Number 3: a firing squad. Because Brad Sigmon is old school!

I mean, “was.”

He was placed in the electric chair and hooded, and a white target with a red bull’s eye was pinned to his chest. Then three DOC employees with rifles gave him a 21-gun salute. (Minus 18.)

I hope that his long delayed but well-deserved death gave some peace to his victims’ families, and I like to think that in his last moments, Brad Sigmon did his part to bridge our raucous political divide.

Because he gave us one bleeding heart story that most conservatives can get behind.

Hamas delenda est!

Get Ready for Whiplash: It’s Hamas and Jake Tapper (posted 3/7/25)

Today I’ve got two topics: an update on Hamas, and Jake Tapper’s latest indignity.

Let’s save Jake for last, since we’ll need a light, buffoonish closer after discussing the child-murderers and mass rapists of Hamas.

Regular readers know that I often end my columns with “Hamas delenda est!” as a homage to the great Roman Cato the Elder’s ending to every speech he gave, “Carthago delenda est!” Cato was reminding his fellow citizens that their enemy in Carthage must be destroyed, and I am reminding CO Nation that Hamas is sorely in need of warheads on their foreheads, as the saying goes.

I haven’t written about Hamas as much lately, mostly because of the constant deluge of political stories stateside since Trump’s delenda-ing of both the Cadaver and the Cackler in November.

But Hamas is still around, and they still shouldn’t be, and I’m encouraged by Trump’s recent statements that they better release their hostages quick, fast and in a hurry, or else he’s going to cry havoc and let slip the dogs of Big Dreidel. (You may remember them from “Disemboweling Pager Party, 2024!”)

I know that Israel’s leader is up for it – he puts the “Yahoo!” in Netanyahu – and I’m hoping that with Trump’s support, he hammers Hamas very soon. Because they are among the worst people to ever walk the earth.

I thought they couldn’t be more bestial than they were on October 7^th, but their recent “release” of the bodies of young mother Shiri Bibas and her two toddlers, Ariel and Kfir was possibly worse.

They paraded the corpses through town in locked coffins with paperwork listing the date of their “arrest” as October 7^th. They set up a stage with huge photos of the dead and Netanyahu, circled by gouts of simulated blood. After a ghoulish photo-op, they turned the coffins over to the Red Cross.

When the Israelis finally received and tried to unlock the coffins, they discovered that the keys Hamas had given them didn’t fit the locks. When they broke the locks open, they found the coffins stuffed with Hamas propaganda surrounding the bodies. When they examined the children, they found that they had been beaten or strangled to death, rather than killed in an Israeli airstrike, as the lying jihadi scumbags had claimed. And when they examined the mom, they found that it wasn’t her body. It took another day or two for the evil pr*cks to return her remains.

Two other details: According to video and reports, it wasn’t Hamas “fighters” who captured the Bibas family on October 7^th, but “Palestinian” “civilians” who accompanied their cowardly co-religionists to torment the Jews and loot their property.

And many hundreds – possibly thousands – of those “civilians” danced and sang and celebrated while the black-hearted parade of their victims’ broken bodies was going on. In that context, what does it mean to call any of them either “innocent” or “civilians?” I know that their children are innocent, since they haven’t yet grown up into the psychopathic, anti-Semitic thugs their parents are raising them to be.

But in all wars, there is collateral damage. And after Israel has sacrificed so much and lost so many in their heroic efforts to limit collateral damage in Gaza, I think the day is coming when they’ll have to take a page from the empire that once oppressed them, and “Go Roman” on Hamas.

Am I saying that if this kind of devil’s parade makes its way through streets filled with celebrating homicidal freaks carrying murdered Israeli children again, an Israeli pilot flying a borrowed A-10 Warthog should make a low pass down that street with that awesome Gatling gun and cannon blazing?

If I can quote a recently defeated candidate who is at this very moment guzzling box wine and wondering what went wrong – and I think that I can – I’m saying that we should have that conversation.

Whoo. Glad I could get that off my chest.

And now, for the silly little man the great Dennis Miller used to call Tap-Tap the Chiseler…

Jake Tapper is coming out with a tell-all book in May about the shameful media cover-up of Joe Biden’s obvious physical and mental frailty.

Did I say “tell-all?” I meant, “tell-some.” Because in his diligent spelunking for the truth – the book’s publicity touts interviews with over 200 insiders – he failed to land one key character at the heart of his tale. The Deep Throat for this Watergate. The White Whale for this epic quest.

Okay, I’m getting carried away. We all know that Tapper is not some significant figure like Moby Dick. (Though Tapper could pull off one part of that name.) (And in case AOC is reading this, I don’t mean the “moby” part, Your Juiciness.)

#yourwordsnotmine

So the one Moriarity (I can’t help myself) at the center of the coverup that Tapper couldn’t interrogate was… wait for it… Jake Tapper!

Because of course Jake was an unindicted conspirator in the whole mess. For years he faithfully delivered the ridiculous leftist talking points – Biden is sharp as a tack! Videos of him looking feeble are deep fakes! Who hasn’t fallen, and fallen, and fallen up a mobile airplane staircase? – like a yapping lapdog with no moral compass.

My favorite of his idiotic self-own videos is when he condescendingly interviewed Lara Trump, accusing her of defaming Biden’s cognitive brilliance and barely letting her get a word in edgewise. And he raised the lamest defense of all – Biden’s phantom stutter – to attack her.

When I first heard the Dems bring that up, I thought that they must be joking. Because who’s ever heard of a childhood stutter that disappears for 60+ years, then comes back only when an old buzzard creakily shuffles toward death’s door?

But I said to myself, “Martin, you’re a witty and a ruggedly handsome elderly gentleman. But that’s not important right now. Because you’re also a fair man, and a working dog and not a show dog. So you should do some research on stuttering before you dismiss the leftists’ laughable excuse-making as the utter hogwash that it obviously is.”

So I did my homework, and I searched medical literature for everything I could find about NDSRO (Near-Death Stutter Re-Occurence).

I looked for all of the common symptoms that Biden had displayed: Compulsive Hair Sniffing; TOSS (Tripping over Sandbags Syndrome), SHWGS (Shaking Hands With Ghosts Syndrome), and even Emotional Dysregulation with Associated Intermittent CWS and SAHOS (Creepy Whisper Syndrome and Sudden Alarming Hollering Outburst Syndrome).

And it turns out that none of those exist. UNEXPECTEDLY!

But that didn’t deter Jake the Snake, who followed video of Lara discussing Biden’s inability to speak a coherent sentence with the challenge, “How do you think it makes little kids with stutters feel when they hear you make a comment like that?”

Ugh. Is that not the perfect distillation of dishonest leftism? A lie, a bad-faith accusation, and then “Won’t someone please think of the children?!”

When she stated the obvious – Biden doesn’t have a stutter, he’s in obvious cognitive decline – Jake wouldn’t have it, and started lambasting her because she has “no standing to diagnose his mental condition.”

No she doesn’t, Moby. But she does have something that she shares with the 300ish million in the American PWFE (People with Functioning Eyes) community: she can recognize a doddering old fool when she sees one!

Just like you could, Jake. But you took a huge paycheck to look the other way, stick your fingers in your ears and say, “Biden is perfect in every way,” for four long years.

And now, when everybody is free to admit the truth, you’re looking for another big paycheck for writing a book that ignores the complicit Donkey in the room, i.e. you!

Not since OJ Simpson (no relation, people! I can’t emphasize that enough) wrote “(If) I Did It” has a guilty man put out such a blatantly sleazy and hypocritical book. Tapper’s title is “Original Sin: Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and his Disastrous Choice to Run Again.”

I would have respected him more if he had at least demonstrated as much integrity as OJ (!), and titled it, “(My) Original Sin…”

Hamas delenda est!

Reaction to Trump’s Quasi-SOTU Speech (posted 3/5/25)

I had a couple of topics to write about this morning, but they will have to wait until Friday, because I can’t not comment on last night’s State of the Union-adjacent speech.

I’ve written before about how I generally don’t like these things. All of the rote jumping up and down in applause by the party in power, and the concomitant studied silence by the other party, the using of people in the crowd as props to put a human face on various political issues, etc.

Because I’m a grumpy old man about this stuff, I prefer the way the early Founders handled SOTUs: they sent a letter that was read out in congress, and that was it.

I’d like to return to that. Just a handful of paragraphs hitting the highlights: “Our navy has whipped the Barbary Pirates, our cavalry has kept the raiding parties from the savage Warrens at bay on our western frontier (#wemustneverstopmockingher), and the sorghum crop this year is abundant. Thank ye, and God bless America.”

But having said that, if you’re going to do a modern SOTU, this was the way to do it. Though it was too long (they all are), there were a lot of strong lines. (My favorite was about the border: “[The Dems] said that they needed a new law to secure the border, but all we needed was a new president.”)

And Trump demonstrated his flair for the dramatic, with one feel-good announcement after another. A key terrorist from the Abbey Gate attack has been captured and is on his way to face American justice; the young black kid who had brain cancer getting made an honorary agent; the high school kid being told he’s been accepted at West Point; Jocelyn Nungaray’s mom being told that a wildlife sanctuary has been renamed for her daughter; reading the letter from Zelensky saying that the minerals deal is back on, etc.

But perhaps the best news for the country to come out of the speech was the Democrats’ stunning demonstration that they are incapable of reading either a nation, a moment, or a room. Because they are ineducable. Bone-deep, weapons-grade stupid.

I’ll admit that it’s always a tough gig to be the out-of-power party at a SOTU. You have to sit on your hands most of the night while the opposition is standing and applauding, and it’s not easy to do that without looking petulant.

But you know what’s an even worse look? Heckling like children, and applauding only ONE THING in the entire speech, and choosing the worst possible thing for that one moment of applause.

They started the night off on the wrong foot, heckling and yelling out immediately. You may remember when one GOP congressman, after listening to Obama lie for half an hour straight in one of his SOTUs, yelled, “You lie!” The entire MSM nearly melted down, and the hyperventilating lasted for days. “This is unprecedented! The most inappropriate violation we’ve ever seen! Would he ever have yelled like that at a white president? Racist!!”

But double standard, thy name is Democrat.

The first and the worst offender was Al Green. You might remember Al Green as a talented soul singer, but now his fine name has been besmirched by one of the worst Democrats in congress. And that’s really saying something, considering that Melting Face Maxine Waters, Ilhan “Allahu Akbar!” Omar, and Juicy Booty AOC (her words, not mine) are all in the congress.

The Democrat (bad) Al Green is tough to look at, and tougher to listen to. Luckily, in the first few minutes of the speech he started to scream incoherently, and the GOP was ready for him, sending the Sergeant at Arms to escort him out.

Which brings up several questions for me:

1. What’s the point of having the title “Sergeant at Arms” if you aren’t armed?

2. If you are armed, why didn’t you let bad Al Green ride the lightning? Are tasers broken?

3. Since when are disordered lunatics allowed to carry a cane with a big metal head on it into the presence of the President?

Obviously, the Sergeant at Arms missed a golden opportunity, because as soon as the bad Al Green started hollering and raised his cane, Sarge could have yelled, “CANE! Swarm! SWARM!” and initiated a violent pile-on.

And if, once the agents had picked Green’s body up and carried him out, it turned out that his cane had been accidentally shoved into a position that required a doctor to remove it, that’s the chance you take when you bring a cylindrical object into a SOTU and act like a fool.

I would also have accepted a third option for dealing with Green, which regular readers may remember from a few earlier columns of mine. I’m speaking, of course, of the Robot Flamethrower Dog!

Sure, some might object to deploying a RFD in the confined space of a SOTU. But since bad Al Green was sitting amidst the other Democrats, what’s the worst that could happen? Maybe a few facial burns – which in many cases would be a lateral move at worst, appearance-wise – and a few of those idiotic paddles being scorched.

You say, “collateral damage,” I say, “collateral hilarity.”

And speaking of those paddles, what grade are those people in?! Unless you’re going to a ping pong tournament, an auction, or a sick kink party at the Biden-era NSA, you should not be carrying a paddle around in public.

And the idiotic lines printed on the paddles reinforced the Dems’ terrible judgment in two ways: they were pre-printed, which meant that this bonehead stunt was premediated, and the printed phrases were such banal imbecilities.

“Musk Steals,” “False,” and “Save Medicaid.” I’ve seen smarter messages on a Magic 8 Ball when I was a kid.

“Are these Democrats really going through with this childish stunt?”

“Signs point to yes.”

“Is there a greater concentration of low-IQ numbskulls anywhere on earth right now?”

“My sources say no.”

And Trump cannily set them up for the bad optics, with his riff on, “There is nothing I could say to make them happy, or to make them smile or applaud, even if I cured a terrible disease.”

The Dems immediately proved him right. They wouldn’t applaud for a black kid with brain cancer, or for terrorists being brought to justice, or for a 95-year-old mom getting her son back from a Russian prison.

So what was the one thing they were willing to celebrate?

I’m not making this up. When Trump challenged them, asking, “Do you want to keep this war [in Ukraine] going for another 5 years?” the morons started clapping. Trump saw one of them, and took the personal shot, saying, “Pocahontas says yes.”

And when the camera panned to the Powhatan Pale-Face herself, she doubled down on dumb, and applauded more vigorously.

She really is that out of touch! This dowager with none of her (extremely white) skin in the game actually clapped for five more years of war. “Yay! Let’s fight to the last Ukrainian!”

And that is why… say it with me again, people…

#wemustneverstopmockingher!

Thinking About Governmental Job Losses (posted 3/3/25)

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

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

By an enormous fire.

Which also consumed their houses.

Months ago.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. There are no winners in rectal laser tag.

Where was I? Oh yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hamas delenda est!

I Won’t Miss the AP, or Joy Reid (posted 2/27/25)

Well, we’re back from Tennessee, and as usual the firehose of ridiculous political news has not let up. So I’ve got a column today, with another one to follow tomorrow.

First though, I read all the comments on my Monday column, but didn’t have time to respond to them. But I appreciate all of the kind words, and am glad that my Yosemite bathroom scenario landed. However, I did not mean to impugn the fine people in the Master Locksmiths community!

On the contrary, I intended to poke a little gentle fun at the hysterical leftists who are suggesting that firing one man with one bathroom key at Yosemite has caused our entire national park system to collapse.

One other bit of business: I have to give a shout out to Robert Desmond and Frederick Beal, two of the finest Americans in this or any other generation.

Am I saying that just because they hit my Tip Jar hard last week? (Which can be found at my webpage, Martinsimpsonwriting.com.)

Maybe. But I also like the cut of their respective jibs, and believe that they’ve demonstrated the kind of class and taste that should be a model for us all. Not to mention their fantastic discernment when it comes to how to spend their political-humor-column dollar. I thank and salute you, Desmond and Beal! (And though I’m no career counselor, that would make a hell of a law or accounting firm name. Or possibly a regionally popular folk music duo.)

Okay, on to the cavalcade of imbeciles on the left over the last several days…

I’ve enjoyed watching the AP getting their gender nonbinary onesies over their heads and throwing a tantrum because Trump is keeping them out of the White House press conferences and off of Air Force One until they call the former Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.

And because this is 2025 in America, when lefties throw a tantrum, it means crying in court. The AP took their complaint to a District Court judge, who ordered an expedited consideration of their lawsuit, while refusing to give them an immediate TRO.

My first instinct on hearing Trump’s name change for the Gulf was that it was a funny trolling of the left – what’s good for Comrade Goose is good for Commissar Gander, after all – but that it was also kind of silly. But now that I’ve seen the left’s reaction to it, the idea has grown on me.

AP has insisted that they won’t bend the knee to Trump on this. Or, I guess, bend the tongue? (For anyone who just made up their own Kamala-interviews-with-Willie-Brown joke, grow up!)

(Also: HA!)

Many people may feel like Trump is bullying AP by trying to coerce their use of his preferred language. But I’ve had long experience with the AP, and that experience leads me to a different conclusion.

Regular readers may remember that I was an English professor for 30 years, before I retired to go into full-time hilarious genius-ing for CO Nation. During much of that time, I used an influential citation and reference work called The AP Style Guide, which set standard usage rules for writers in many fields and majors. As a young prof, many of my department-dictated syllabi required that students buy the AP guide.

But as I gained seniority, wisdom and perspicacity – and the ability to throw around words like “perspicacity” – I also got more control over my syllabi and reading lists. And I stopped requiring students to buy the AP guide. Because it became more and more politically tendentious and hectoring.

(I know: pretty perspicacious use of both “tendentious” and “hectoring,” right? You’re not going to hear those in one of AOC’s or Aunty Maxine Waters’ low-IQ rants.)

Anyway, my point is that AP loves shaming and coercing undergrads into repeating their preferred terminology, using the threat of a lower GPA to force them into a twisted game of “Stalin Says.” (It’s like “Simon Says,” but with more totalitarian humorlessness.)

The AP guide says that when writing about races of people, you must capitalize the first letter of “Black,” but keep the lower case for “white.” It also decrees that illegal aliens should be called “undocumented,” that mothers be called “birthing persons,” and that gender denying mutilations be called “gender affirming care.”

Also according to the AP, we’ve always been at war with Eastasia, and war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.

Oddly enough, AP has happily gone along with various past examples of political name changes, including agreeing to call Mt. McKinley “Denali,” the nation of Turkey “Turkiye,” and Kiev “Kyiv.”

But I guess it’s (D)ifferent when Trump is the one making the name change.

I’m looking forward to seeing how this childish resistance ends. Will the AP stubbornly consign themselves to forever sitting and pouting at the media kiddies’ table, rather than submit to the mean orange man the way they force cowed undergrads to submit to them?

Or will they finally surrender? If so, I hope that Trump really rubs it in. I picture him standing in front of a map of the northern hemisphere with a pointer in his hand, tapping one re-named feature after another.

Trump (pointing to the former Greenland): What’s this called?

AP (mumbling): Trumpland.

Trump (tapping Canada): And this?

AP: the 51^st state, America’s Evil Top Hat

Trump (tapping the former Denali): And this?

AP: Mt. McKinley

Trump (tapping a spot in South Dakota): And this?

AP: Mount Trumpmore

Trump (tapping the Gulf): And this?

AP (staring at their shoes and muttering): The Gulf of America.

Trump (cupping a hand behind his ear): I can’t hear you.

AP (louder): The Gulf of America!

Trump: That’s better. Now bend over, and I’m going to give you one stroke on the seat of your pants with this pointer for every day you got that wrong.

And, scene.

I’ve got time for one more brief note, and it’s the feel-good story of the week: the firing of whitey-hating bile spewer, Joy Reid by MSNBC.

You may remember Reid as the mean-spirited racial arsonist who gleefully sneered about “the white tears” of unfairly prosecuted people like Kyle Rittenhouse, non-violent J-6ers, and Catholic abortion protestors.

My smokeshow wife (of Norwegian descent) remembers Reid mostly as a culturally appropriating scammer who adopted an unconvincing version of the blonde hair proudly worn by her Viking ancestors. (“My culture is not your costume!” she may have shouted at our tv.)

Reid’s show, like much of the pap on MSNBC and CNN, has taken a huge drop since the election, losing more than half of its already pathetic audience. On one hand that makes sense, since getting so thoroughly stomped in an election would naturally depress her viewers.

On the other hand, I think the kind of dead-enders who would still be watching Reid’s program before 11/5 would be motivated mostly by race-hatred, bitterness and incipient mental illness anyway, all of which she has catered to after the election as much as she did before.

Most leftist talking heads – as well as Reid herself – blamed… wait for it… racism and sexism for her firing.

Unexpectedly!

But you’d think that her latest horrifically low ratings would give even those blockheads pause. Because in a nation of around 330 million people, Reid has recently had 59,000 viewers in the key demo of 18-49 year olds.

59,000! On what passes for a major tv network! By comparison, on the slowest of nights, the RDN (Ring Doorbell Network) captures 100K viewers, and a recent two-part special entitled, “Latex vs Oil-Based?” on the WPDN (Watching Paint Dry Network) was seen by 70K viewers.

Reid’s final show was the only must-see tv she ever participated in, and then only because she actually cried in the final moments before well-deserved obscurity descended upon her like J.B. Pritzker descending on a giant ice-cream cake. (#putdownthatcomicallyoversizedturkeyleg)

I’m too much of a gentleman to mock Reid’s “black tears.” In fact, she might have actually been comforted to see the white tears I cried as MSNBC tossed her under the garbage truck that Trump drove to one of his campaign events.

Until she realized that those were white tears…of laughter.

Hamas delenda est!

Loving the First Month of Trumpkrieg™, Despite a Few Stumbles (posted 2/21/25)

I’m up in Tennessee now — with the wife, one daughter and the Wonder Dog — visiting my mom, while my sister and her hubby are taking a well-deserved trip. We drove up on Tuesday, and got to see two brief snowfalls since we got here, which partially made up for it being too cold to take mom out for walks in and around town.

Regular readers may remember that my mom has Alzheimer’s, and she’s experiencing the gradual sliding involved in that disease. We have to remind her many times each day that this is her home, and we won’t be leaving until after my sister gets back home, and she’ll never be alone.

But she’s still got her sweet disposition, and she loves to laugh, and the stories that I tell her about her and my dad and our lives together never fail to delight her. Some of them she remembers, and enjoys the remembering. Some of them she doesn’t, but even with those, there’s a special grace in the way she experiences them for the first time, each time.

While we’ve been enjoying our time with her, the world has continued to turn, and the Trumpkrieg™ continues apace. But Trump has finally taken a few wrong steps, IMHO. His pick for Sec Labor seems to be a hostile lefty; while I think her nomination is a mistake, it’s a minor one, because if she behaves in office the way she has before, I think Trump will fire her pretty quickly.

More seriously, I’m surprised by the way he’s handling the Ukraine situation. I know that Zelensky has been acting a little too entitled lately, and Ukraine has had corruption problems that pre-date this war. But I admire Zelensky’s guts – when Biden’s first instinct was to offer him a flight out of the country after Putin invaded, he said he wanted to stay and fight, and I’ve generally got a soft spot for Davids taking on Goliaths.

So while I think that Trump rightly wants to pressure both sides to take an off ramp that will end the war, it sucks that Putin is going to gain some land when the dust settles, necessary though that may be. Whatever Zelinsky’s flaws, they pale in comparison to Putin’s evil invasion, and Trump’s claims that Ukraine started the war are idiotic. By coming down so unfairly hard on Ukraine, he’s also strengthening Putin’s negotiating hand, a misstep that sharply contrasts with Trump’s usually skillful application of pressure.

Still, having said all of that, Trump’s first month has been amazingly successful. With Kash Patel’s confirmation, he’s rounded out a cabinet of downhill runners that promises more victories to come, and more Democrat malfeasance to be revealed.

And holy cats, are the Dems ever continuing to play right into his hands, and hitching their wagons to one unpopular cause after another! They’re trying to elicit sympathy for illegal gang-bangers getting deported, and IRS agents getting laid off. They valorize corrupt, soft-insurrectionist bureaucrats who publicize their own resignations in a vain attempt to cast insubordination as righteous self-martyrdom. (This isn’t an airport, drama queens – you don’t have to announce your departure. Just cram your participation trophies into cardboard boxes and go!)

Trump’s filling his roster with alpha dogs and apex predators, and the Dems are fielding pencil necks, white squaws (#wemustneverstopmockingher) and wet-behind-the-ears non-binary they/thems like Lil’ Davy Hogg!

And the self-beclowning self-owns! The glorious, hilarious, oblivious self-owns!

Al Sharpton – the walking embodiment of “unfit for any office” – actually sounded outraged when he asked the dozens of MSNBC viewers to imagine what Madison or Jefferson would think of Trump’s attempt to “overthrow the government!”

Nevermind the difference between “fixing” and “overthrowing.” Sharpton wants his listeners to recoil in horror at the thought of our Founders’ disgust at someone trying to revolt against a government. Why, that kind of terrible behavior could even lead to a war!

Some might call such a hypothetical war… and I’m just spit-balling here… a “revolutionary” war!

Who wants to tell the desiccated, un-revered un-reverend?

And that wasn’t even the stupidest attack attempt of the week! That dishonor goes to poor Margaret Brennan, who by now has been publicly depantsed more often than AOC at a Miss Juicy Booty contest. (Her words, not mine.)

When Brennan wanted to grab the “20” end of an 80-20 issue by taking the “anti-” position on free speech, she chose the stupidest historical example that anyone could possibly pick.

While interviewing Marco Rubio, she seemed bothered that JD Vance had called Europeans out on their hostility towards free speech, especially since he did so while he was in Germany. She noted that Vance “was standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide,” and closed her question with the insulting assertion that Vance’s delivery of the speech in Germany “changed the tone [of his message]. And you know that.”

Ugh. Ignorant and condescending is no way to go through life, Marge.

Margaret thinks the Nazis weaponized free speech. Now I don’t know if you’re a history buff, but…do you have to be a history buff for that to sound a little strange to you?

Like most middle-aged straight guys, I’ve read a lot about WWII. And I don’t remember the part when Hitler was constantly vexed by the vibrant German-Jewish press, with their kvetching about his pogroms, and their strongly worded op-eds pushing for him to build fewer death camps. Right up until the end of the war, the Berlin Kosher Press was a thorn in Hitler’s side.

Or that’s the way it happened in Margaret’s imagination. But in the real world, the Nazis were actually pretty skilled at weaponizing one thing.

[Begin Sam Kinison filter] WEAPONS!! OH! OHHHHHHHH!! [end Kinison filter]

Stuka dive bombers early on, the first jet fighter plane at the end of the war, and the V-1 and V-2 rockets. Innovative U-boat wolf pack tactics, and tank designs like the Panther, Tiger and King Tiger. The Nazis were whiz kids when it came to weaponizing weapons. But a free, candid and open exchange of ideas?

Not so much.

In fact, I saw several stories that noted the reality, i.e. that the Weimar government (preceding Hitler’s rise) had very restrictive speech codes that they used against the nascent Nazi party, including preventing Hitler and Goebbels from speaking publicly for several years.

Ironically, those speech restrictions helped Hitler to rise. Many Germans wondered what these Nazis were saying that so antagonized the government, and being censored gave them a frisson of forbidden attraction. A famous Nazi propaganda poster showed Hitler with tape over his mouth, capitalizing on the idea that he was being kept down by the censors.

And of course, as soon as they gained power, the Nazis doubled down on the speech restrictions, killing or driving out any publishers or journalists who criticized Nazism.

The truth is that the Nazis weaponized speech restrictions to help them gain power, and then weaponized speech repression to help them hold onto power. Just like the Biden administration. (And no, I’m not saying that the Dems are as bad as the Nazis.) (And not just because the Nazis were competent.)

So pull up your pants and take a seat, Margaret!

On second thought, you keep doing you, Ms. Brennan.

But make sure that you’re always wearing clean undies, because the American people are going to be seeing a LOT of them over the next four years.

#mooningMargaret

Hamas delenda est!

Turn the EOs into Laws, Settle the Filibuster, + David Hogg Bellies up to the Trough (posted 2/17/25)

Regular readers know that I am enjoying the Trumpkrieg™ as much as anybody. But I’m concerned that I haven’t heard much about following up the quick and easy victories of Executive Orders by pushing bills that will codify them into law. (I know, EOs are neither as quick nor easy as they should be, since the left has an army of biased judges who can temporarily delay their implementation. But I’m confident that they will still be enacted relatively quickly.)

I love the bracing effect of a volley of EOs unleashed on Biden’s legacy, like the first fusillade sent down range against the enemy after a besieged Marine unit receives fresh ammo in the middle of a battle.

But EOs alone produce a “sugar high” that quickly dissipates. In 2017 Trump wiped away a bunch of Obama’s EOs. (And there was joy and rejoicing amongst right-thinking people!) Then Biden wiped away Trump’s EOs in 2021. (And darkness descended.) And now Trump is returning the favor.

Since anything done by EOs can be undone by them, we need to move quickly to pass laws, especially in areas where we’ve got the “80” position on an 80/20 issue. Use the same EO language to pass laws banning men from women’s sports, locker rooms and prisons, for example.

Then, when the Dems take back the White House (shudder), rather than just signing an EO that lets men start beating women in sports and raping them in prisons again, the Dem president (shudder) will have to go to the American people and say, “Let’s let the dudes back into women stuff.”

Good luck with that, hypothetical future Democrat president! (hypothetical shudder)

In some cases, we might not need this. For example, the EO on birthright citizenship is heading to SCOTUS, and they could rule correctly, giving the ban the force of law going forward.

But I’m still a belt-and-suspenders guy: even if SCOTUS might do the right thing eventually, it would be nice to try to pass a law explicitly ending birthright citizenship. Even if it didn’t pass the first time, getting a bunch of Dems on record opposing it would help us whip a bunch of them in a future election, and then maybe a second attempt would be successful.

The same should happen for all of our 80/20 issues. Put them on the floor, and force the Dems to vote against them.

I saw one intriguing way to possibly bolster this effort. (I’d give credit to the writer if I remembered where I saw it. Maybe on the Daily Wire?) The idea is that the GOP congress should immediately propose and start pushing a law codifying the filibuster for regular legislation, with a one-year deadline to pass it.

But the GOP should warn the Dems that if by the end of next January they have successfully opposed it and it hasn’t passed, the GOP will immediately kill the filibuster themselves, and jam through every bit of legislation that Trump wants. In that context, smart Dems would have a big incentive to vote for legislation to keep the filibuster, knowing that if they don’t, the GOP is going to run rough-shod for the next year, and possibly 3 years.

So far, the filibuster has only been a customary practice, which we saw when Harry Reid threw it out for lower court judge confirmations, thus allowing us to put judges on SCOTUS with 51 votes. (HA!) And before the election, many Dems were saying they would get rid of the filibuster for all legislation, arguing that the evil GOP was “thwarting the will of the people” by adhering to it.

As an O.G. conservative, I like the filibuster, because it prevents faddish passions from driving whiplashing policies. But a prerequisite for a functional filibuster is the existence of two sides operating in good faith, so that some party members are willing to cross party lines to support reasonable ideas proposed by the opposition.

Does ANYBODY think that’s the world we’re living in? If Trump gets to nominate someone for SCOTUS, and there are 47 Dem senators, and there is no way that any Trump nominee will get more than one Dem vote. (Zero, if a second coconut falls on Fetterman’s head and he reverts to his leftist priors.)

So why would I want to keep the filibuster? Because as much of an obstacle as it is to us now, if it were codified into law it would be much harder to overturn, and will thus be a similar obstacle when the Dems get a small majority later.

However, if the Dems don’t take the deal by next January, we can’t continue to live by rules that we know the Dems will trash as soon as they regain power. Toward the end of Biden’s term, they seriously talked about killing the filibuster, stacking the SCOTUS and adding Puerto Rico and DC as new states. And they likely would have done AT LEAST the former if they’d won in November.

So let’s force the issue. If they want to play by the rules, that’s our thing. But if they expect to change the rules to gain an unfair advantage, we’ve got to beat them at their own game, by beating them to the punch.

Because like the big guy in the new Army ad said: Stronger parties are harder to kill.

Switching gears, I’ve got some fun examples of recent leftist self-owns, but this column is getting long, so I’ll save them for Wednesday.

In the meantime, I’m happy to report that the choice of Lil’ Davy Hogg as the DNC vice chair is already paying dividends.

For us.

Remember when Cankles McPantsuit and the rest of the left were making fun of Elon’s DOGE tech wizard wunderkinder because they were so young? (This was about two weeks ago.) But then the DNC picked their own 24-year-old blunderkind. And he immediately showed that he’d learned from his leftist elders by starting a money-making grift for himself.

He used the party’s “sucker list” to solicit donations for his own private PAC, which pays him over $100K per year.

Sorry, that was supposed to be “donor list.”

Or was it?

Anyway, the smarter Democrats – I know: they can fit in a phone booth at this point – are probably realizing that they screwed the pooch by electing Hogg.

Ooh, which reminds of this older tweet of Hogg’s that I just came across: “I’m never planning on having kids. I would much rather own a Porsche and have a Portuguese water dog and golden doodle. Long term it’s cheaper, better for the environment and will never tell you that it hates you or ask you to pay for college.”

So many thoughts. Starting with, on the list of things to worry about happening in the future, Davy Hogg fathering kids is not one of them. Because: biology.

Second, if he does manage to impregnate somebody, and if future college admissions are offered based on merit (Because: Trump!), I don’t think Davy will have to worry about paying for college for any dullards he manages to sire.

My favorite part of this story is the name of Hogg’s political action committee: “Leaders We Deserve PAC.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Hogg/Warren 2028!

I Pour Concrete, and Trump Takes the 80 in Many 80/20 Issues (posted 2/12/25)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Injected. Straight. Into. My. Veins!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hogg/Warren, 2028!

Biden Loses His Security Clearance, Dems are Stopped by Hero Outside Building, and Don’t Understand That Unelected Bureaucrats Ran USAID (posted 2/10/25)

Regular readers know me as someone who is rarely surprised by political events. I’ve usually got my ear to the ground, my nose to the grindstone, and my finger on the nation’s pulse. Which explains my four consecutive national Twister championships in the 1990s.

Where was I?

Oh yeah. ADHD.

Anyways (to quote a certain Latina with a Juicy Booty – her words, not mine), I’m not often surprised by political events. But I was definitely caught off-guard when I heard that Trump took away Joe Biden’s security clearance on Friday.

Mostly because… why on earth would Joe Biden still have a security clearance?!

He couldn’t stay awake for his briefings when he was president. And now he’s a civilian, and has signed with famous talent agency CAA – I’m not making that up… because I couldn’t – and is working hard on memorizing his lines for the starring role in “Weekend at Bernies 3: This Time it’s Presidential!” So how could he possibly find time to receive intelligence briefings? And for what purpose?

When I looked into this, I was surprised to find that we generally allow former presidents to keep their security clearances and receive intelligence updates, even though they no longer have any ability to act on them, or any reason to know what’s in them. So we should cut that out immediately, for all past presidents.

But good lord, for Joe Biden? That guy couldn’t be trusted with secret information when he was a hack senator, or a hack VP, or a hack president. And that was before he lost his marbles!

In addition to these other reasons, Trump was justified in yanking Biden’s clearance as an act of karmic justice, since Biden had yanked Trump’s clearance as soon as Biden became president.

Or, as Trump so Trumpily put it in his announcement, “[Biden] set this precedent in 2021, when he… [stopped] the 45^th President (ME!) from” receiving intel details. He also threw in another crisp jab (as is his wont), saying, “The Hur Report revealed that Biden suffers from ‘poor memory’ and, even in his ‘prime,’ could not be trusted with sensitive information.”

Ouch! By the way, has there ever been a more justified used of scare quotes than referring to Joe Biden’s “prime?” And you’ve got to love that all-caps “ME!”

Still, it’s got to be humiliating to have your security clearance publicly and justifiably taken away. (Just ask the corrupt 51 Hunter-laptop-denying “national security officials,” who can no longer sell themselves as knowledgeable insiders, even to the dozens of gullible, tin-foil-hat-wearing shut-ins who make up the audience of CNN.) So maybe it’s a mercy that at least Joe Biden didn’t live to see this happen to him.

In other news, you’ve probably heard the cliché that “all heroes don’t wear capes.” Well this past Friday we learned the truth of that saying, when we met one of my new idols: the anonymous security guard outside the Education Department HQ’s front door in Washington.

Instead of a cape or a uniform, the guard wore earth-tones, a pair of glasses perched on his head, and an expression half-way between a poker face and the iconic picture of Ben Affleck with his eyes closed in tortured world-weariness.

That lone paragon of virtue stood his ground when confronted by a motley mob of far-left malcontents from the bowels of the Crazy Caucus in the House of Representatives, bent on forcing their way into the building and staging an idiotic yet telegenic (they hoped) show of resistance to Trump.

The unassuming hero had neither a badge, nor a gun, nor pepper spray. Nor even narcissist spray, which would have been super useful against the empty-headed camera hogs bearing down on him.

But he had a few things that his foes were unprepared for: the patience of Job, a resting heart rate that never went above 50 beats per minute, and an expression of barely contained contempt, along with implacable boredom. That’s a guy you’d want next to you in a foxhole!

Put yourself in his place. He’s used to standing guard while an endless line of dead-eyed, low-T mediocrities trudge into and out of the unnecessary building, to engage in a variety of foolish tasks, all of them utterly useless.

The highlight of his year is probably when some sad parade of protestors marches by, featuring signs with ridiculous slogans like, “Pay me not to Work!” “Fiscal Prudence is Racist!” or a perverted version of the Gadsden flag reading, “Don’t Misgender Me!”

But on that fateful Friday, he looks down the street and sees a shambling clot of pitchfork-carrying mouth-breathers slouching toward the building he’s sworn to protect from the likes of them. Then he sees, in the middle of the pack, some pitiable, damned soul who was apparently in some sort of a terrible fire. The skin of her face appears to be sloughing off the front of her skull, her mouth just a garish red smear of—

Oh no, wait. That’s just Maxine Waters.

(Which is plenty bad enough, even though it’s not a horrific creature out of a Stephen King novel like he initially feared.)

As she got closer, he could tell that she hadn’t been in a fire. Because if she had, that unconvincing wig she’s got on would have gone up like a Roman candle, producing a plume of coal-black smoke like a tire fire on the edge of town.

Still, the sight of Melting-Face Maxine up close would be enough to send lesser men screaming into the night, or falling to their knees and trying to gouge their eyes out. If we could have found a way to deploy her to Kandahar when a Marine patrol was under heavy attack from the Taliban, she could have leapt up from ambush and stared at the enemy, croaking in her gravelly voice.

What followed would look like a Fourth of July fireworks show, as hardened jihadi fighters up and down the line triggered their suicide vests, just to escape from that hellish vision.

Anyway, it was spectacular, and I’ve added that video to my short list of things to watch whenever I need a little pick-me-up. I had two favorite moments in particular.

1. Arrogant Maxine tried to bully the guard, insisting that he show her his ID. It’s a tribute to his fortitude that he didn’t growl in her face, “I thought IDs are racist, you hideous crone. Begone!”

2. One congresswoman in the back of the pack – in an obnoxious variation on, “Do you know who I am?” – called out, “There are no thieves or thugs here. We are MEMBERS OF CONGRESS!”

Quick, somebody call Kamala, because this lady needs a Venn Diagram to explain the flaw in her thinking.

As with so many events over the last three weeks, the internet had a field day with the guard, coming up with names and titles for him. Among my favorites are, “Captain DOGE,” “Gandalf the Chill” (“You shall not PASS!”), or the new “Secretary of Zero F’s to Give.”

This incident is just one more proof that the Dems are still in such disarray in the face of Trump’s whirlwind of EOs, surprise announcements, and verbal groin kicks. The poor dopes don’t know whether to scratch their watches or wind their butts, as the old saying goes.

They’ve made numerous pathetic attempts to stop the Trumpkrieg™ (copyright by me, right now). They raised pointless filibusters to several of Trump’s nominees, which only resulted in those nominees being confirmed a day or two later than originally planned.

They’ve also gone out to microphones in front of several government buildings, where one pol after another got up and railed, grunted and gibbered about Orange Hitler this, and dictator that, and the “he can’t do this” other thing.

One scary-looking congress-troll howled that he was filing impeachment papers against Trump, while he swung around a cane that looked like something a Democrat would beat Frederick Douglass with in 1861, right before the GOP armies marched south and whipped the Demfederacy and freed their slaves.

Chuck Schumer also showed up – cameras were there, so duh! – and he was creepier than usual. He leaned down into the camera with his hands half-curled near his face, which gave him a look I can only describe as Nosferatu-esque.

He then started the saddest chant I’ve ever seen, saying, “We will win. We will win.” After a minute, Melting-face Maxine jumped into the frame (forcing me to recoil and say, “GAH!!” scaring Cassie the Wonder Dog and my wife), and he grabbed her hand and raised it, as the pathetic chant was dying out.

Then Maxine croaked out a common refrain that many Dems have latched onto lately, and which I can’t figure out. “Elon, nobody elected your ass!”

Does the Democrat base not understand that most of the people who actually make our government run – for good or ill – are not elected? Chiefs of staff, spokespeople, 99% of every department and agency – all are unelected. Even cabinet members, though confirmed, are not elected.

Let me put this in the form of a Q&A so simple that even AOC can understand:

Q: Can Elon Musk cut the budget of USAID, or close it down, or fire the ne’er-do-wells who work there?

A: No, because he is unelected. But he can recommend to his boss (who is super-elected) to do those things, and that guy can do them, or not.

Q: Guess who else is unelected in the big DOGE vs. USAID battle?

A: ALL of the USAID bureaucrats.

Q: Guess which branch of government USAID is part of?

A: The executive branch. (Even though USAID bureaucrats don’t seem to believe that.)

Q: Guess who leads the executive branch? (Hint: He is often called the “Chief Executive.”)

A: That’s right, the President.

Q: What is the old-fashioned phrase that describes the USAID bureaucrats’ employment status with the President?

A: They “serve at the pleasure of the President.”

Q: Do you think that the President is pleased by corrupt, obstructionist a-holes who are trying to sneakily undermine all of the policies he was elected to execute?

A: He is not.

Q: Finally, what is the word that describes someone who does what some of the USAID bureaucrats have been doing, i.e. refusing a legitimate President’s legal orders and secretly colluding to prevent him from doing what he was democratically elected to do? (Hint: You’ve heard this word a lot in recent years.)

A: Insurrectionist.

Keep flailing, Dems.

Hogg/Warren 2028!