Politics – Page 20 – Martin Simpson

Blue States Continue to “Unexpectedly” Fail, but Florida Abides (posted 2/2/24)

A couple of columns ago, I pointed out the comedic use of the word “unexpectedly” in MSM stories that recount the completely expected and predictable results of idiotic leftist policies.

Examples would be stories like, “University Allows Dudes to Play Women’s Sports; Actual Females Unexpectedly Get Badly Beaten in Sports,” or “Ultra-White Lady Thinks She’s a Chippewa Princess; Hilarious Genius Unexpectedly Mocks Her.”

(#wemustneverstopmockingher)

I’m realizing now that I could write about those stories seven days a week. For example…

California politicians have burned a lot of calories making criminals’ lives easier and cops’ lives harder for many years now. (Just as CA has spent a lot of energy on making taxpayers’ and homeowners’ lives harder, and the lives of open-air pooping practitioners and meth enthusiasts easier.)

And now – unexpectedly! – California is experiencing a severe shortage of cops.

The town of Alameda has recently been offering starting salaries over $113K and a signing bonus of $75K to anyone who would be a cop there… and there are still too few takers!

Because no one has ever said the words, “I would never want to live in Ken-Doll Newsom’s California, but it sounds like a great place to be a cop!”

Speaking of unexpected developments in California, for the first time since the company opened in 1948, an In-N-Out Burger is closing a location, this one in Oakland.

Even though the company COO says that the location is “busy and profitable,” – which tells you how good their burgers must be, since that is hard to believe about a business in California! – he also says that their employees and customers have been hard hit by theft, property damage and armed robberies.

On the same block, a Starbucks closed last year (unexpectedly!), and another fast-food restaurant is still open, but only using its drive-thru lane.

Which tells you everything you need to know: the Biden voters roaming the area have made it so unsafe that if you can stay in your locked car with its engine running, you just might be able to grab a meal without getting robbed or killed.

And you know what’s that’s called, don’t you?

Bidenomics!

But it’s not just California suffering the consequences of progressive a-holery. It’s everywhere that the Dems control.

Take Boston, for example. There are a lot of Walgreens stores in Boston. But there are three less than there were in November of 2022. And there’s about to be four less, since Walgreens announced that it will be permanently closing its location on Warren Street in Roxbury, which is “one of the most dangerous areas” in the city, according to local media.

(Also according to local media, that’s probably because Roxbury is home to roving bands of MAGA-hatted white nationalist thugs.)

Now if you are the kind of weirdo who is into things like logic, facts and statistics, you might guess that the latest Walgreens closing might be somehow connected to Roxbury’s violent crime rate (214% higher than the national average), or property crime rate (48% higher), or the region’s overall crime rating of “F.”

(As in, “What the ‘F’ is going on in Boston?”)

But if you are the kind of weirdo who gets elected to Dem congressional seats – and are therefore allergic to things like logic, facts and statistics – you know why Walgreens would REALLY be pulling out of a high crime neighborhood…

Bidenomics!

No, sorry. That should read…

Racism!

I give you Ayanna “chrome dome” Pressley, in a recent speech on the house floor which I am not making up: “Walgreens’ closures [in black and brown neighborhoods] are not arbitrary or innocent. They are disruptive, life-threatening acts of racial and economic discrimination.”

She went on to say that she intends to “demand answers from the Walgreens CEO. Why was there no community input? … Shame on you Walgreens!”

I wish the Walgreens CEO had been in the room, so he could jump up and say, “I’ve got some answers for you! The problem wasn’t too little community input, it was too much community out-take. As in, much of the community kept taking out a ton of merch without paying for it. Which is why by the end of 2022 we had to lock up everything in the store from toothpaste to toilet paper like it was oxycontin-flavored heroin. Shame on us? Shame on you, ya’ low-IQ, black Lex Luthor!”

But he never would have said that. Because on Walgreen’s main website, they devote a lot of pixels to bragging about their devotion to diversity uber alles. They literally say, “DEI is in our DNA.”

(It’s also BS, and explains why your former stores in Boston were FUBAR.)

In case you’re wondering what a white guy thumping his chest about diversity looks like, go to Walgreens’ diversity page and get a look at CEO Tim Wentworth.

The guy has the same unnerving, bug-eyed stare of Adam “Pencil-Neck” Schiff. Seriously. He’s a rich boss of a huge company, so you know that professional photographers took an entire portfolio of portrait shots of him, and this is the best one they could come up with.

He looks like he’s got a stand-up freezer in his basement at home that holds a half-finished skin suit that he’s making out of his female victims.

And by the way, guess who else joined Pressley in writing an angry letter to Wentworth? MA senator Liz Warren. And you can tell by reading that letter that she is really on the warpath on this issue.

(Boom! That’s a #neverstopmocking, Tomahawk Two-fer™ in this column!)

But I don’t want to give you the impression that our entire nation is imploding. On the contrary, the conservative policies of Ron DeSantis continue to provide more reasons for the long-suffering residents of blue states to flee to our free state. (Provided, of course, that they leave their old states’ dysfunctional politics behind.)

One example can be found in an American Thinker story titled, “Florida Leads the Way on Fighting Voter Fraud,” which documents the successes of the Office of Election Crimes and Security (OECS) since it was formed in 2022.

From arresting individuals for election fraud to exposing and fining shady, third-party registration organizations (some of them Soros-funded, shockingly enough) who broke laws to increase illegal voting, the OECS has made our elections more transparent and trustworthy.

Here’s hoping that other states and the Trump campaign will take our template nationwide, before November’s elections!

A second example was Disney’s “last-gasp lawsuit” against DeSantis failing in federal court on Wednesday. For those keeping score at home, that means that the woke groomers at Disney – once the Mouse House, more recently Mao’s House™ — are winless against RDS.

Disney lost their corrupt and crony-capitalistic fiefdom in the Reedy Creek Development District, and now they’ve got to pay the same taxes as other Florida businesses. After their attempt to thwart the will of Florida voters went down in flames, their arrogant CEO had to resign in disgrace. And when the Reedy Creek sweetheart deal was about to expire, their last-minute attempt to appoint a bunch of new board members at the 11^th hour was also rebuffed.

And now their latest legal challenge has been unceremoniously dismissed by a federal judge. More please!

But lest I suggest that everything is perfect in Florida, I have to acknowledge that we’re still living in a fallen world, and Florida Man is still alive and well.

Or in this case, Florida Woman. To wit, this week 35-year-old Celia Barrett was featured in this headlined story: “Naked Florida Woman Barges into Gas Station, Threatens to Kill Staff with Apple Peeler.”

Since the story was behind a Fox News paywall, I was only able to read the headline and first few sentences. But that’s still enough info to allow me to make three insightful comments.

Because I’m just that good.

Here goes:

1. Death by apple peeler would have to be one of the slowest, most painful (and yet easily avoidable) deaths I can imagine.

2. Obviously, we need a huge, annoying and time-wasting effort directed at universal apple-peeler control. Especially when it comes to those scary-looking “assault peelers.” (As for me, you can have my apple peeler when you pry it from my cold, dead hands!)

3. I know you’ve heard this a million times, but the First Rule of Naked Women is that, “Any woman who shows up naked in a gas station wielding a kitchen implement in a threatening manner NEVER looks like a woman you’d like to see naked in public.” Hamas delenda est!

I Wish DeSantis Well, and Hope Trump Beats Biden like a Rented Mule (posted 1/21/24)

I’ve got mixed feelings about DeSantis quitting the race, as you might imagine. But after the Iowa caucus results confirmed the polling over the previous months, Trump’s nomination was a fait accompli, and DeSantis made the only logical choice. I was glad to see him endorse Trump as the winning nominee, as he’d pledged to do at the beginning of the campaign.

I was also encouraged to read the responses to CO’s Sunday night thread on RDS’ dropping out, in terms of how little vitriol people expressed toward him. Many wished him well, and said they’d consider voting for him in a future race, which is what I’m hoping for.

The most frustrating part of the race for me has been seeing so many self-described conservatives doing the opposite: attacking him in the most dishonest ways, and taking such glee in the most petty smears. Unfortunately, they were following the lead of the far left, and of Trump, who praised him to the skies (“one of the best governors,” “doing a great job in Florida,” “he did a terrific job with covid”) before flip-flopping completely (terrible on covid, worse than Cuomo, etc.) when he became a competitor.

I understand that politics is a rough business, and I generally have a low enough opinion of politicians that I don’t mind seeing them knocked around some. But I think RDS is an unusually good man for a politician: scandal-free in his personal life; apparently good husband and father to his wife and kids; does what he says he’ll do, relentless in pushing conservative policies, and the most consistent and successful governor in the country.

When he got a history degree from Yale and a JD from Harvard (back when both of those degrees still meant something), he could have walked into a high-paying job and written his own ticket. But instead he joined the Navy while still in school, and spent time as a JAG officer in Gitmo and Iraq, sacrificing a ton of income to serve his country, before starting his political career.

I don’t want to over-do it on the praise, because he’s still a politician, and a human. He definitely has his flaws (lack of charisma, stiffness of style) as a campaigner. And he wants to be president, which always makes me at least a little suspicious. (A reliable Book counsels me to, “put not your faith in princes.” And I’m Martin Simpson, and I endorse that message!)

I just hope that the smears against him haven’t precluded him from a future presidential run. Not least because I don’t see a ton of Republican alternatives out there with strong records of consistent conservatism. (For every Chip Roy, Thomas Massie, Ted Cruz and DeSantis, there are a hundred Romneys (Ronna and Mitt) and other RINOs.)

If the Schiff-storm of slander against RDS has made him toxic for 2028, I think some of his “conservative” bashers are going to come to a hard realization when they are complaining next time, “Why are we surrounded by RINOs? Why aren’t there any trustworthy conservative Republicans for us to support?”

Because you had a great one as an option, and instead of just saying that you preferred Trump and acting like gentlemen, you took up a bunch of leftist lies (“He’s death-Santis!”) to try to destroy him.

This is why we can’t have nice things, or decent politicians.

Okay, I had to get that off of my chest! But having said that, I’m pulling for Trump now, and I don’t think the amount of pessimism about his chances expressed in Sunday’s thread is justified. Especially if Joe Biden continues to lie in state as his opponent.

I know it sounds like I’m really down on Trump’s candidacy, but that’s only because I’ve come to mostly dislike him as a person.

I know that sounds weird, but let me explain: I am much more concerned with the policies and results of a pol’s governing than I am with his/her personality. To me, one of the most irritating tropes in politics is the idiotic cliché, “People vote for the guy they’d most like to have a beer with.”

Ugh. I have beers with guys I’d like to have a beer with, usually because they have a good sense of humor, are politically rational, and demonstrate good judgment when talking about books, movies, football and music.

To me, politicians are a lot like lawyers: they have their purposes, but a life well-lived is usually one in which you spend the absolute least amount of time dealing with either of them as possible.

I think that’s generally true of most conservatives: our philosophy is, “that government is best which governs least.” We want law and order, strong borders, a military that will deter attacks, and defense of our constitution. Beyond that, leave us alone, because we are free people, and we’ve got this.

That’s not the case with lefties. Politics is their religion, and government is their jealous god, and they tend to try to make heroes of their leaders, even if that means futilely trying to hammer a dead peg into a round hole.

Sorry, that’s “square.” A square peg.

The left deifies their leaders. Lenin’s corpse in Red Square, the cults of Stalin and Mao. JFK is King Arthur in Camelot, instead of the philanderer who botched the Bay of Pigs. Bill Clinton is a feminist hero, instead of the groper in chief and Juanita Broaddrick’s rapist. Obama is a historic Light-Bringer rather than a spendthrift racial grifter who lied that we could keep our doctors and health plans.

Brandon is presenting a special challenge for them, but the Dems are still praising him (“We can’t keep up with him! Bidenomics is tickety boo!”), and are doing their best to beat a dead president across the finish line in November.

Sorry, that’s “horse.” They are trying to beat a dead horse across the finish line. I don’t know why I keep making that mistake.

Anyway, my point is that I’m not looking for a drinking buddy when I vote for a president. In fact, sometimes the very qualities that I wouldn’t want in a friend are the ones I appreciate in a president, if they produce good political results.

For example, many said that Trump was impulsive and volatile, and he might fly off the handle and bomb another country if that country’s leaders p*ssed him off. Not a great quality in a best friend, in a bar.

But we all know how that worked during Trump’s presidency: Putin didn’t make a peep. The weird beards in Iran and Gaza and Lebanon didn’t instigate a mass murder of Jews. The Chicoms didn’t move on Taiwan, like they’re about to. A bunch of rag-tag Houthi pirates minded both their “Ps” and their “Qs,” rather than rampaging through the Red Sea.

That’s good presidential foreign policy. I’d like more of that. Also affordable gas and interest rates, millions fewer illegals pouring across the border, and more strict constructionist judges.

Don’t get me wrong: all things being equal, I’d still prefer good personal qualities in a president. (Sobriety, honesty, self-control, no intern-banging, etc.) But the main thing I want is disciplined, successful, conservative governance.

If I can get that – whether from a man or a woman, or a straight person or a gay person, or a black person or a white person or an orange person, or an old guy or a young gal, or an extrovert or an introvert, or a boring guy, or a nerd, or a braggart, or a skirt-chaser, or a guy in a Stephen Hawking wheelchair who speaks with an electronic, robot voice – I don’t care!

So yes, while I recognize and admire some of Trump’s good qualities, I don’t like him much as a person, and that’s a shame. At my age, I’m still looking forward to voting for a president whom I think can do the job AND whom I can look up to as a person. (I got to do that in the last several governor’s races, and it felt GREAT!)

But as I understand it, conservatism and MAGA have a lot in common. In fact, if you drew up a Venn diagram of conservatism and MAGA (the sound you just heard is Que Mala perking up her ears), you’d have around 90% of overlap.

The only MAGA stuff outside the conservative circle seems like personal loyalty to Trump, and a requirement to side with him when he’s doing something anti-conservative.

And while I’m going to give that one a big ol’, Dr. Evil-style, “How about no!” I’m happy with the other 90%. In fact, that’s more than I’ve had with any president over the last 4 decades.

Now I hope we can all do as much as possible to support Trump for the next 10 months, and call attention to the myriad of reasons why Biden and the Dems need to be swept from power, so we can start undoing the damage of the last 3 years.

Hamas delenda est!

Mostly Good News Stories, Despite the Iowa Caucus(posted 1/19/24)

Today I’ve got a couple of lighter stories, and a few post-caucus thoughts on the state of the election.

First up, the great conservative humor site Babylon Bee continues to impress. They ran into a little controversy this week with a joke they posted about Vivek after he dropped out of the race. It was a silly and harmless joke, but apparently a lot of conservatives got upset enough to give the Bee some grief about it.

Which is really annoying, because we’re supposed to be the folks with a sense of humor. It’s the humorless leftists who are always getting triggered, pulling their non-binary onesies over their heads and running for safe spaces when a somebody tells a joke involving ethnicity, gender, or pretty much anything.

(I remind you of this oldie: Q: How many feminists does it take to screw in a light bulb. A: THAT’S NOT FUNNY!)

In his response to the critics, the Bee’s CEO Seth Dillon confirmed my positive impression of him: “Some of our readers have expressed concern about this report, suggesting it did not meet the high journalistic standards they’ve come to expect from us. We want you to know that we’ve listened to you. We’ve heard your voices. And they are stupid.”

Perfect!

Of all the things that should not be taken too seriously, jokes are right up there near the top.

For example, here’s a humor test: a Breitbart story yesterday reported a survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York with the headline, “Factory activity in New York suffered an unexpected collapse in January.”

The story goes on to fill in the gory details: the index of business conditions plunged 29.2 points in January to a negative 43.7, and a drop of 58.2 points over two months. (Numbers below zero indicate worsening conditions.) Those stats are the worst since April of 2020, when the economy was decimated by the sudden pandemic lockdowns.

Don’t see the humor in that? It’s in a subtle word choice from the headline: “unexpected.”

Okay, so I’m no Norm MacDonald. But I find the absurd to be funny, and nothing is more absurd than a bunch of leftists foisting economy-crippling policies on a state, and then calling the resulting cripple-ation (cripple-osity? cripple-tude?) “unexpected.”

It would be like saying, “Dems Prevent Cops from Arresting Criminals; Crime Unexpectedly Skyrockets.” Or, “Newsom Tries to Fiscally Rape Productive Taxpayers; Productive Taxpayers Unexpectedly Flee California.”

Or, “The DNA Test Results for Blonde, Blue-eyed Liz Warren are in: She’s Unexpectedly Categorized as Super-Duper-Blindingly White.” (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

In another feel-good story, Bilal Nofal has been eradicated.

I know what you’re thinking, and no, “Bilal Nofal” is not a super contagious virus that we’ve discovered a cure for. Although come to think of it, you should have probably always maintained at least 6 feet of distance from Bilal Nofal.

Because Nofal was a top Hamas spy chief, “in charge of investigating suspects of espionage.” That means he sadistically tortured people he suspected of helping the Jews.

I use the past tense because on Tuesday the IDF was flying a plane over Nofal and then – yada yada yada – he experienced a SBAMD.

If you’re not up on your military acronyms, that’s a Sudden Ballistically-Assisted Molecular Disassembly.

Also, since it’s never “too soon” to mock a dead terrorist scumbag, here’s a fun fact: Bilal Nofal’s name can be disassembled and reconfigured (just like his body was on Tuesday) (HA!) into the anagrams “albino fall” and “anal fob ill.”

(Cue the NBC “The more you know” theme music.)

Ooh, I’ve got one more. If only CO would make me the honorary headline writer for Cautious Optimism, I would title the above story as follows:

“Anal Fob Ill F**ks Around with the Jews; Unexpectedly Finds Out.”

And here’s one more feel-good story, this time from Missouri, where a burglar named Darren Venneman was plying his trade of breaking into houses on Strawberry Lane in Qulin last Saturday night.

Unfortunately for him, the homeowner was a Second Amendment enthusiast, who responded by shooting him five times. In other words, Venneman got ventilated on the mean streets of Qulin, Missouri.

If by “mean streets” you mean… Strawberry Lane, I guess? Yeesh.

Venneman was airlifted to a hospital, but died of his wounds. The local sheriff says that the homeowner won’t face charges, since he acted in self-defense.

Because: Red State!

But even in common sense red states, people still have to endure the scourge of the media. And local media seemed to sympathize with the burglar, calling his death “tragic” and “untimely” and an “unforeseen tragedy.”

Though it sounds to me like his death was extremely timely, in that he broke in and was immediately – you might even say “punctually” – shot.

Also, “unforeseen” is close enough to “unexpected,” and thus worth a Simpsonian “HA-HA!” (As in, “Moron Breaks into Gun Owner’s House, is Unexpectedly Shot.”)

Nonetheless, the media story ends by expressing condolences to Venneman’s friends and family, saying, “May they find strength and support during this difficult time.”

But judging from local commenters’ reactions to the local news story posted on Facebook, the community is coping with their grief just fine.

Sample comments include, “Excellent! Good for that homeowner!” and, “Try that in a small town!!” and, “This is how we thin the herd.” and, “Bet he won’t do that again.”

Indeed. God bless Missouri!

Finally, I congratulate the always-Trump contingent of CO nation after the first caucus; the polls were accurate, and Trump’s margin of victory in Iowa was impressive.

I’m still a DeSantis supporter, and while I’m not surprised at the depth of support for Trump among the base, I’m disappointed that I won’t get to see RDS give Biden the old SBAMD in November. (Not least because I think Biden would have been forced to debate RDS at least once, and that would have been a blood bath for Brandon! I know that Trump would destroy Biden too, but by refusing to debate in the primary, he’s given Biden’s handlers the excuse to refuse a debate in the general, which he will absolutely do.)

DeSantis is a fighter, but absent a meteor strike in the next month or so he’ll have to withdraw, and Haley is farther to Trump’s left than Trump is to DeSantis’ left, and thus she’s not an option for me.

So the base has made its choice, and the die has been cast, and we must win in November, so when RDS suspends his campaign, I’ll be getting back on the Trump train with both feet.

I’m really hoping that the optimism of the super-MAGA segment of CO nation (and the entire nation) is justified. I’m more worried than that, for reasons I’ve mentioned elsewhere, but I also see some positive signs, too. The bogus lawfare cases against Trump seem to be crumbling on several fronts, and polls indicate that a lot of people (though not as many as should!) see those cases as illegitimate.

Trump still has his strengths, and if we can keep Biden from dropping out, Trump’s biggest weakness (his historically bad, underwater disapprove/approve numbers of -15 points) should be trumped by the fact that Biden is the only other pol in recent history with the same, -15 number.

And Biden’s all-around terribleness should ensure that number doesn’t get any better, and will likely get even worse!

And Trump’s numbers in Iowa remind us that you’ve got to give it to him: the man is a human tornado!

I want to see him drop out of the sky and destroy a bunch of MSM empty heads, then skip a few miles before descending and turning the DNC headquarters into kindling, then skip up again and come down on Biden’s White House and level the place.

Would I like it if he could also discipline himself, and maybe avoid dropping down and taking out some grade schools and orphanages, and some conservative subdivisions full of people who don’t love him but will support him, too?

Absolutely. And if he could say at least two or three smart and funny and true things for every counter-productive one, that would be another bonus.

His speech on Monday and his interview on Wednesday were steps in the right direction: “We’re going to make this country so successful again, I’m not gonna have time for retribution. And remember this, our ultimate retribution is success.”

Yes! More of that, please! Hamas delenda est!

I’m Still Capable of Being Surprised, Up to a Point (posted 1/15/24)

You know the kind of cliches that indicate that something will never happen? Like saying, “The gals on the View will have an intelligent conversation… when pigs fly.” Or, “Joe Biden (RIP) will achieve a foreign policy success… when hell freezes over.”

Well I think I’ve discovered a new cliché of that type. And I can use it in a sentence.

Like this one: “The MSM will cover a conservative fairly … when a big blue city’s Democrat mayor says something true about economics.”

Okay, so it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. But on January 10th, when a reporter tried to get New York City (RIP) mayor Eric Adams to criticize Gov. Hochul’s decision to not raise taxes, he said this accurate thing, which I swear I am not making up:

“Well, we are one of the highest-taxed states in the country outside of California, and you have to find the right balance. [I]n NYC in general, 2% of New Yorkers pay 51% of our taxes.”

And then – flap your wings to warm them up, piggies – he said, “We’re seeing a hemorrhaging of, not only working class people, but we’re concerned about losing that high tax base…”

Before he finished with – strap your skates on, Hitler, Jeffrey Epstein and Fidel Castro – “…because that tax base pays for our police officers, our teachers, our firefighters, keeps our streets clean.”

I know. You could have knocked me over with a feather plucked from the wing of an aerodynamically successful swine.

A leftist mayor said something true about the dangerous results of leftist fiscal policy. I think this might be a new day dawning. We might be on the verge of a return to sanity, opening the possibility of a functional bipartisan—

Oh no, wait. This just in, from one day later:

When asked in an interview about the unfolding illegal immigrant disaster in his city, Adams said that NYC “has done a great job” handling the surge, and that, “This has nothing to do with sanctuary cities. Migrants and asylum seekers are paroled into the [country]. They’re here legally.”

Annnddddd… we’re back. Pigs can’t fly. Hell is still hot. And big city Dem mayors are still allergic to reality and accountability.

Case in point, the Round Mound of Unsound Policy, Illinois Governor Pritzker, has sent a letter to Texas Governor Abbott, asking him to stop sending illegals to Chicago. “I plead with you for mercy for the thousands of people who are powerless to speak for themselves. Please, while winter is threatening vulnerable people’s lives… do not send more people to our state.”

In recent months, Pritzker has called Abbott’s policy “a cheap political stunt,” and in his new letter he complained that, “Hundreds of children’s and families’ health and survival are at risk due to your actions.”

Got that? It’s not Biden’s fault for inviting millions of illegals to flood across the border, and it’s not Illinois Democrats fault for declaring Chicago a sanctuary city for all of the future illegal Democrat voters in south and central America (mi casa es tu casa!). It’s the Republicans’ fault.

Your party has opened the border, J.B. I know how surprised you are that even with all of this global warming that is about to boil us to death, the forecast for Chicago right now is for a freezing cold winter.

If only there were some places where the Mexicans, Guatemalans, El Salvadorans and Venezuelans could live where they weren’t in danger of becoming Latinx-cicles.

Oh wait. There are such places. And they’re called Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Venezuela.

So get off your high horse, put down that comically oversized turkey leg, and give your party’s leader a call. (Fair warning, though: you may need a Oujia board.)

One final piece of advice, and this is a paraphrase of Claudine Gay’s immortal words from Animal House (“Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”):

Delusional, two-faced and double-chinned is no way to go through life, Governor.

Meanwhile, in Texas, rational people are continuing to do things right.

One such rational person is Terry Willis, a resident of a Houston suburb. This week his surveillance cameras alerted him to a small group of Biden voters (I’m guessing about that part… but I’d bet Hunter’s life on it) going through his neighborhood, trying the door handles on parked cars.

When four of them came up his driveway and let themselves into his ATV, which was on a trailer behind his truck, he walked out into his yard to speak with them.

He said, “I apologize that our evil society has given you such a bad deal in life. Please help yourself to my sanctuary ATV. Because: Massachusetts!”

Oh no, wait. This story happened in Houston.

So when he walked into his yard, he was carrying his AR-15 rifle.

Because: Texas!

He racked in a shell and said, “I don’t think you want to do this.” And the criminals ran away, leaving a trail of cowardice and human waste in their wake.

When interviewed, Willis said, “For approximately 20 years, I’ve had a concealed weapons permit. I’ve also been through hunter safety courses. I’ve built guns.”

Did you get that? While leftists have been building DEI programs, abortuaries and memorials to recidivists like Michael Brown and George Floyd, Terry Willis has been building guns!

Did I get a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye, watching that news story? Maybe.

I can’t think of a better way to end this column than with Terry’s closing words to a local reporter:

“I’ve worked for 40 years of my life. Everything that I’ve got… never stole anything, and I’m just not taking it anymore. This ain’t the place to come, because we’re tired of it.”

Yes. Yes we are.

But if those misunderstood youngsters are looking for a place where citizens ARE willing to take it some more, and are NOT tired of it, I’d suggest Chicago.

But get yourself a clean pair of pants and a nice warm coat first!

Hamas delenda est!

I’m Looking on the Sunny Side, So Far this Year (posted 1/5/24)

I’ve got the uneasy feeling that there’s going to be a lot of unsettling news as 2024 goes on, but for now the year is fresh and new, and I see a lot to be optimistic about.

FSU got deservedly humiliated in their bowl game, anti-Semitic identity hire Claudine Gay got tossed out of her Harvard presidency, and the Native American president of Penn got tossed overboard even more quickly than Gay did.

Okay, I’m not sure the Penn lady is an Indian, but since she’s as white as Liz Warren and has nice cheekbones, I’m just assuming. (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

In the ongoing battle of Hebrews vs. Terrorists, the good guys are putting wins on the board by taking hateful creeps off the board. On January 2^nd, a bunch of Bond villains from Hamas, Fatah and other “Palestinian” and Lebanese terror groups were meeting in Beirut. (I picture a bunch of guys with eye patches and facial scars sitting in high-backed chairs around an enormous conference table over a glass floor covering a giant aquarium filled with sharks with frickin’ lasers on their heads.)

Then the Mossad and IDF came calling, as reflected in my super-accurate re-enactment here:

Sound at the door: Knock, knock.

Hamas money and weapons guy Salah al-Arouri: Who’s there?

Door: Kosher drone.

Salah (confused): Did anyone order a kosher drone?

Collection of thugs: We ordered death to Israel, with a side of death to America, but no kosher drones.

Salah: Wait a minute… kosher?

Drone: KA-BLAM!!!

The following day, an assistant commander in Islamic Jihad’s northern Gaza division with the ridiculous name Mamdouh Lulu was recorded live as he walked on a Gaza street, talking to a companion. As the Israeli eye in the sky watched, the two split up and Lulu went on his merry way, probably with visions of having non-consensual sex with a goat dancing in his head.

Annnnddddd… he was vaporized in an Israeli airstrike. Which sounds about right, since lately the leading cause of death for terrorists in Gaza is “spontaneous vaporization.”

I’d like to think that the pilot said, “Screw you, Lulu,” when he fired the missile.

But one thing is clear: Lulu didn’t even have time to say boo hoo before he went bye bye.

That very same day, a huge crowd of terror enthusiasts gathered for an upbeat tribute to the late Iranian super-villain Qasem Soleimani (or, as he became known after Trump found out his whereabouts, “goo in a Jeep”) in a cemetery (appropriately enough) in the Iranian town of Kernan.

Annnndddd… several bombs went off in the crowd, killing over 100 people and wounding at least 140 more. And before you can say, “Yeah, but how many innocent people may have been hurt or killed in those explosions?” remember that the crowd was there to venerate the memory of a Jew-hating mass murderer.

So, zero. Zero innocent people.

As satisfying as it would be to chalk this karmic strike up as yet another successful Israeli chess move, reports suggest that a Sunni Muslim group was behind the bombing. I’m not a Muslim-ologist, but I understand that many Sunnis are not particularly fond of the Shia running Iran.

So let me first applaud those Sunnis. And to the Shia, I just have one question: Are you going to let those guys get away with that?

But it’s not just vaporizing terrorists who are getting this year off to a good start. It’s also some imploding DEI spending initiatives.

One hopeful story on Breitbart reported that after a huge increase in DEI programs and hiring several years ago, “tech giants including Zuckerberg’s Meta and Google have slashed their funding of DEI programs in 2023 by up to 90 percent.” And as AOC could tell you, that’s nearly half!

Even as PR flaks and spokes-castrati at the tech companies continue to mouth platitudes about the value of DEI, their shareholders and bosses have realized that that value is commensurate with the number of innocent people attending Soleimani-Fest ’24, and they’re trying to avoid having the market give them the Lulu treatment.

Meanwhile in Florida, Ron DeSantis has caused yet another big leftist interest group to weep and gnash their teeth. (Man, I wish we could have a conservative door-kicker like that guy as our president!) This time it was a huge teachers’ union – the United Teachers of Dade (UTD) in Miami-Dade county – who is looking at de-certification because of a RDS-backed right-to-work law requiring that a union meets a dues-paying membership threshold of 60% to stay in power.

Despite a panicked push to boost their membership – including sleazy tricks like smearing the law’s backers and kicking substitute teachers out of their bargaining unit to lower the number of teachers required to meet the 60% threshold – the UTD came up short.

And now Florida parents may be about to gain even more control over their kids’ education. And an influential public union that is way less concerned with educating students than with laundering union dues for Democrat candidates and the DNC.

Finally, I’ve got a few thoughts about the very encouraging signs coming out of the Claudine Gay implosion at Harvard. I don’t think that forcing her out means that Harvard and other universities have learned their lesson and will now reform themselves. If they had, they wouldn’t let her return to a faculty position and get paid $900K a year. (That’s more than I make in several years, and I never plagiarized in my dissertation, or anywhere else!) (If by “several years” I mean “ten years!”)

But I do think that the damage to the reputation of Harvard and Penn and universities in general is serious. The public has seen behind the curtain, and now recognizes the corruption and inexcusable and offensive racial politics there. The empress was obviously wearing no clothes.

And very stupid and ugly glasses!

The premise behind affirmative action was always that it would only involve a very light touch on the scale, and only to tilt an outcome when two job applicants or students were very evenly matched in every other way. If that was ever true, it hasn’t been true for many, many decades.

The recent SCOTUS debate and ruling on affirmative action in college admissions revealed the ugly truth that preferred minorities with bottom-quintile test scores and qualifications were being admitted at higher rates than whites and Asians in the top several percent.

And Claudine Gay’s exposure just hammers that home. A non-identity hire trying to become president at a top school like Harvard would need to have published a number of books, at least several of which would have to be ground-breaking, influential works in their field, amongst a large number of articles and decades of high-profile service.

Gay wrote a total of zero books, and only 11 peer-reviewed articles. And she didn’t even write most of those, as her prolific record as a high-volume plagiarizer proves!

Not to mention that every one of those articles was about race – one of the least rigorous fields in academia, to put it nicely – and all of them were predictably banal and unoriginal, as they only re-packaged the fashionable prejudices of the left: whites are evil and racist, the West is terrible and America is worse, “people of color” are eternally oppressed victims.

Gay is a hack and a mediocrity, and she went out as she came in: playing the race card, and playing the victim, and lying her butt off.

It’s right and salutary that the American public got to see that.

More please!

Hamas delenda est!

Ready for a New Year (posted 1/1/24)

I hope that your year has started off as well as mine. Since we had covid on Christmas, we had our Christmas celebration on New Year’s Day, with Karen’s brothers and their families coming to the house to feast and exchange gifts.

So I started 2024 off with a Merry Christ-year! (Which I generally prefer to a Merry New-mas, though your holiday mileage may vary.)

As always, on the cusp of a new year, one’s mind naturally turns to marking the passage of time, and looking backwards and forwards simultaneously.

When I look back on 2023, I’m extremely grateful for many things happening in my personal life – disproportionately so, given the perilous condition our nation appears to be in: a relationship with my Creator who loves and forgives me; the patient, smokeshow wife; the healthy and thriving kids; the envy of canine-dom in the form of Cassie the Wonder Dog; the chance to live in a state with the best governor in the country, etc.

And though I’ve said it before, I’ve probably not said it enough: the chance to sound off on the Cautious Optimism site has been a source of great comfort and joy in my life. I mean that sincerely: comfort and joy! (Yes, I’m still in a Christmas mood, since we just celebrated today, and the 12 Days of Christmas extend through January 5^th.)

In December of 2016, the Great and Powerful CO invited me to contribute my occasional musings to this site, and since then I’ve had seven years of getting stuff off my chest, and lowering my blood pressure, and meeting so many great people. I can’t thank all of you enough!

If I can risk tainting the new year with a shameless plug…As regular readers know, when I post a new column here, I post the most recent column to my WordPress site, Martinsimpsonwriting.com. There you will find all of my columns going back to 12/16, as well as some pictures, a few short stories, and a few videos. If you like what you see there, you can click “subscribe,” and you’ll get an email notification each time a new column appears.

Looking forward, I’m going to be posting a handful of short stories I wrote during another life as a fiction writer, and a lot of pics of my (finally!) restored Victorian house, Rosewood. I’m also going to try to record and post at least one video a month on various topics of interest. (If anything is on your mind that you’d like to see discussed, please let me know.)

When I look forward to the next year in the life of our country, though, things are a lot more cloudy. In an election year when the stakes are so high and our national life so troubled and deteriorating, my fascination with politics – properly understood and undertaken – alternates with an increasing disgust with the grubby reality of politics as they are actually pursued.

When I’m in the latter mood, Wordsworth’s words sum up my instinctive distaste for public life: “The world is too much with us; late and soon/ Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.”

Since I’ve retired, I’m not as focused on getting or (hopefully!) spending. My big-picture concerns now require more focus on how I spend time than on how I spend money. And spending time thinking about politics and politicians can often seem a foolish expenditure indeed!

But as soon as I say that, I recognize that politics are shaping the world that my kids and future grandkids will live in, and so attention must be paid. Plus, it is therapeutic to mock dishonest pols and bad ideas. Besides, both Thomas Moore and C.S. Lewis said that the devil cannot stand to be mocked, and those guys knew a few things.

And if that applies to Satan, I’m sure it applies to his minions (i.e. most politicians) too.

But there will be a lot of time for mockery later. For now, I’d just like to point out at least one silver lining during our current national malaise.

Although some of our problems are definitely hard to solve – social security is going broke, our national debt is staggering, our universities need ground-up renovation – many of them really are not.

It’s amazing how many “crises” should be simple to solve, because they arise from logical errors that would be ended with the application of the most basic common sense. For example:

It’s not good to sterilize young people, or cut healthy body parts off because they are going through a phase of discomfort with their bodies and/or mental illness. (The defining characteristic of being young is going through phases, so don’t make permanent and irreversible physical changes!)

You get less of what you punish, and more of what you reward. So if you reward criminals – make excuses for their crimes, minimize their punishments (ridiculous plea deals, short or no sentences, no penalties) – you get more crime.

Giving a drunk a drink doesn’t help him, and most of our welfare system is the institutionalized form of buying alcohol for alcoholics. Stop that.

A country without a border cannot remain a country, and cutting illegal immigration by 95% is a very simple task. It’s very hard to stop the last 5% or so, but if you build physical barriers and man them with adequately armed officers, and then take into custody and either immediately jail and deport everyone you catch, the draw for future illegals will be stopped.

Law and order MUST be maintained throughout our society, and our current hands-off strategy seems literally insane to me. Allowing mobs of protestors to attack public and private buildings, and to close off major highways and bridges, and to terrify students and cops and paralyze major universities (just as allowing millions of illegals to break into our country and disperse throughout it) – all of these are voluntary choices.

Mind-bogglingly, inexplicably, and weapons-grade stupid choices!

Especially because, again, the solution is so simple and obvious, in every case:

When a-hole narcissists block a highway or bridge to paralyze a major city, give them a few quick warning honks, and then drive right through them. (If any of them suffer injuries but then have to wait a long time for an ambulance to reach them because of the congestion they’ve caused, they can use that writhing-in-agony time to reconsider their life choices.)

When pro-terrorist students riot and assault other students and university officials, expel them permanently and jail them immediately.

“But Martin,” I can hear you saying, “despite the brilliance of your words, the logic of your argument, your personal charisma, and (let’s not deny it) your knee-weakening physical attractiveness, we don’t have the resources or manpower to drive-over and pepper spray and jail and deport millions and millions of Biden-voting wastes of space!”

Yes, but we wouldn’t have to. We’d only have to demonstrate our determination to the first few troublemakers, “pour encourager les autres,” as the Frenchies say.

Picture this:

The first antifa thug in a crowd to throw a bottle at the cops gets a faceful of pepper spray and/or birdshot and then is cuffed and arrested…

The first BLM whitey-hater who storms a courthouse gets a bean-bag round to the groin and then is cuffed and arrested…

The first two arrogant morons who try to block traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge are partially squashed in a game of human Frogger, and if they survive that, are cuffed and arrested in the hospital…

How do you think their co-would-be-revolutionaries would react after seeing that?

Or how about this: What if the two gender-confused, identified-as-male-at-birth “leaders” of a clot of cosplaying grievance-studies majors who attack a pregnancy-support center or Supreme Court justice’s house were arrested and taken to jail. And once there, they were photographed and printed and tossed into a holding cell – with their frosted pink hair and facial piercings, wearing a “Queers for Palestine” t-shirt over a gender non-binary skort — with a dozen recidivist criminals.

And the next day, after their rich yet feckless parents have bailed them out, what if they limped back to the collective and told their tearful tales of prolapsed this and bruised that, and how they discovered a whole new meaning of “misgendering” in jail…

What do you think would happen to the attendance at the next hate-filled leftist assault on a public institution or building?

Okay, that last example might be going a little too far. On the other hand, if we have to err on the side of either letting the rioters destroy our society, or letting criminals open a can of macro-aggressions on their temporarily incarcerated carcasses, let’s go with Door #2.

To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, predictable and swift consequences will concentrate the mind of even the most mouth-breathing, AOC-IQ-level miscreants among us. So why haven’t we tried that lately?

Let’s learn the lessons of 2023, and make 2024 the year of re-instituting cause and effect, and reaping what you sow.

Hamas delenda est!