Tag: Politics

The BBB, U Penn Bends the Knee, + The Simpson Gender Confirmation Protocol is Born (posted 7/9/25)

I’m trying to make this a five-column week, so I didn’t have time to respond to all of your kind words about yesterday’s column, but thank you all.   I was especially glad that the narwhal references went over well.

A little bourbon had been consumed before that word popped into my mind, and sometimes the brownest of the brown liquors can cause me to over-estimate how well a running joke is going to play.  But now I’m toying with the idea of starting every column with, “Where my narwhals at?”  

Anyway, this is my third column in three days, and still I’m running like Tom Cruise across the roof of a skyscraper in Mission Impossible 17.  Because lately there is both too much winning, and too much news.

So I still need to circle back – like Jen Psaki, only intelligently – to some recent stories.

Even though Trump blasting the Iranian nukes feels like it happened years ago, I’m still reveling in it.  Israel’s accomplishment of taking out or crippling Iran’s proxies (Hezbollah, Hamas, Assad, and the Houthis) and then destroying their air defenses and systematically launching surprise attacks that decapitated their military leaders and scientists and heavily damaged their nuke sites was really amazing. 

Then Trump’s surprise, bloodless strike to take out the rest of their nukes was another masterstroke.  In a sane world, Bibi and Trump would be sharing a Nobel Peace prize.  In this world, they’ll probably both be lucky if they aren’t impeached!

I saw a couple of good, funny posts about the Iranian mission shortly after it happened.  One said, “Democrats are okay with Iran having a nuke.  But they won’t let you have a gun.”

And the other said, “Now that Iran is out of business, there are only 3 Islamic countries with nukes left:  Pakistan, France and the UK.”

Both, sadly, receive the designation of “Fact Check: true.”

The passage of the Big Beautiful Bill was necessary, and mostly a blessing, though it is still hard to tolerate how fiendishly difficult it is to pass an actually fiscally conservative bill that will cut our bloated federal government’s spending!   (Sadly, the BBB isn’t that, though it does nibble at the edges at least.)  

On the plus side, the extra funds for border enforcement are much needed and will pay big dividends, and the extension of the tax cuts will fend off economic damage that would likely have screwed us in the mid-terms.  Enforcing work requirements for Medicaid and denying it to  illegals are beneficial as well.

One other great aspect of the BBB passing: watching the impotent rage and pointless theatrics of the leftists, inside and outside of congress.  Hakeem Jeffries’ marathon speech was probably the most Democrat thing to happen that week.  It didn’t even rise to the level of sound and fury, signifying nothing.  It was basically empty talking points and hypocrisy, signifying less than nothing.

The word coming out of Democrat circles was that Jeffries hadn’t let the other Dems know he was going to blather on for so long, so the smarter Dems were not happy.   But that just provided an added bonus: watching Marcy Kaptur (D-Who Cares?) falling asleep behind him.  (Which was also my strategy after Biden got elected: take a bunch of Benadryl and hope that when I wake up, Biden’s term will be over.)

The Dems had to get her out of there, so they replaced her with – I swear I’m not making this up – a male who thinks he’s a female, Tim/Sara McBride (D-‘oh!).  Thus the lefties created a visual tableau that perfectly illustrated the bankruptcy of their party: an old woman put to sleep by their pointlessly droning leadership, followed by the walking embodiment of their gender lunacy. 

Great optics, geniuses!  If that little psychodrama doesn’t make it into a GOP ad for the mid-terms, we’re leaving money on the table.

Other Democrats continued to take the path most traveled, and unfortunately for them, it was strewn with rakes, which they kept jumping on with both feet.  Because they have not learned the lesson of the boy who cried wolf.  (Or as Tim McBride calls it, “the boy who’s really a girl who cried wolf.”)  They could not just say that this is a bad bill, or point to its flaws.

They had to insist that it was the most cruel and evil bill they’d ever seen.  AOC fought back tears and said that this “was one of the saddest days in modern American history.”  Many warned that “millions will die because of this bill.” 

Can they not anticipate this backfiring in a year or two, when nobody has died and the world didn’t end?  As CO pointed out a few days ago, the predictions that Trump’s original tax cuts in 2017 would surely usher in another great depression are still accessible, and they have not aged well.

Speaking of not aging well, how about everybody’s favorite Nosferatu with scoliosis, Chuck Schumer, and his brilliant idea to scuttle the BBB?  He insisted that the entire bill be read on the floor of the Senate, giving an impassioned speech about how it’s a crime against humanity to vote on a bill that no one has even been able to read. 

Cut to Imhotep Pelosi, rising from her tomb and marching slowing out from beneath her pyramid, trailing burial wrappings all the way to Schumer’s senate office, where she broke the canopic jar containing her heart over his liver-spotted old head, while yelling at him about how he set her up.  “Don’t you know that the most famous thing I ever said was telling the Senate that they’d have to pass the [Obamacare] bill so that you can find out what’s in it?”

One other good news story that I loved was U Penn’s bending the knee and admitting their defeat in the transgender wars, by stripping male athletes of the trophies they won in women’s competitions, and apologizing to the women and correcting their records. 

It’s amazing to see how quickly the cultural dominance of the transgender fever has broken.  Just a year or two ago, our universities, corporations and federal government were on a deranged jihad to cancel everybody who dared to say that biology exists.  You couldn’t swing a dead, nonbinary cat in public without hitting a pride flag, and when our least qualified SCOTUS nominee confessed that she didn’t know what a woman is, everybody just laughed and gave her a lifetime appointment.  (And how’s that working out for us?)  

But now the shoe is on the other foot, and the genitalia are back in the proper locker rooms.  SCOTUS has given “gender affirming” mutilations and chemical poisonings the kibosh, even as Ketanji Jean-Pierre yells from the men’s room, “I dissent!  And why are these strange toilets on the wall?”        

Even though sane gender rules have returned to our society, I anticipate a rough transitional period ahead, during which many of our young people – along with university administrators and leftist politicians – will need to re-learn how to distinguish between males and females.  And because I am both a doctor (PhDs count!) and an Ameri-can, I have turned my considerable brainpower toward solving this vexing problem. 

And my deep (some might even say heroic) modesty cannot prevent me from admitting that I’ve done it.  I’ve come up with a test that I hope will one day be as famous as the Heimlich Maneuver, thus immortalizing my name in medical history.  Like the Heimlich, my method is low-tech, simple and effective.  And it doesn’t require expensive lab work, invasive cheek swabs, or embarrassing physical examinations.

I call it the SGCP™ – the Simpson Gender Confirmation Protocol™ — and I plan to give a presentation about it to the College of Medicine at Johns Hopkins this fall.

Here’s how it works:  Before an Olympic event – or a sanctioned grade school, high school, college or professional athletic competition – all of the contestants who want to compete in the women’s division will line up in front of a SGCP™-certified test administrator. 

Each administrator will be accompanied by an assistant who qualifies as a PWFE – Person With Functioning Eyes.

The PWFE will separate the would-be competitors who are obviously males into a separate line.  Then the administrator will grab a clipboard and stand in front of each person in line.  After recording each competitor’s name and date of birth on the clipboard, he will carry out the Simpson Gender Confirmation Protocol™ by administering a swift kick to the groin.

If the candidate falls to the ground and writhes around, praying for the sweet release of death for the longest, most agonizing minutes of his life, the administrator will check the box marked “physically intact.”  If, on the other hand, the candidate just grunts, and continues staring at the administrator with crazy Dylan Mulvaney eyes, the administrator will check the box marked “previous bottom surgery.”

Either way, the candidates will be sent to intensive psychiatric treatment, and will be banned from women’s sports and women’s spaces.  Problem solved, and you’re welcome.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to work on my acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Medicine.

So far all I’ve got is the last line (“Thank you for your attention to this matter.”) and a partial opening:

“We’ve all heard the cliché that you should never meet your heroes.

(Here I’ll dramatically pause while I look around the auditorium at the assembled dignitaries, picturing them in their underwear so I don’t get nervous.) 

Nevertheless, the faculty at the Johns Hopkins College of Medicine met me in the fall of 2025…” 

Hamas delenda est!

Reading the SCOTUS Case that Allows Trump to Act As President Again (posted 7/7/25)

I’ll be back with another column covering the ongoing foolishness in our politics tomorrow or Wednesday, but today I have to ask you to bear with me, because I’ve written an uncharacteristically serious column about the SCOTUS ruling in Trump v. Casa, Inc.  That’s the one dealing with the dozens of universal injunctions by district court judges who have been trying to stop Trump’s every move.  

The underlying case was about Trump’s EO ending birthright citizenship for the born-in-America children of illegals, which I’m afraid he might well lose, though he shouldn’t, IMHO.  But the ruling in Casa settled what should have been an obvious point: the US government can’t function with 677 de facto presidents, i.e. district court judges who can stop any executive decision for months or years at a time.

I’ve read the whole decision – written by Amy Coney-Barrett – including the concurrences by Thomas, Alito and Kavanaugh and the dissents by Sotomayor and Jackson, and I’d encourage anyone who is interested to read it, too.  As I discovered when I read the abortion and second amendment cases several summers ago, SCOTUS decisions are unexpectedly understandable, even for non-lawyers. 

I read this one over the Independence Day weekend, which seemed appropriate, given how grateful I am for our independence and for this ruling! 

I’ve found that I can just skip over the citations and look up only the legal terms that aren’t self-explanatory, and I was surprised at how much the justices’ writing reveals their intelligence, discipline and character.  The best writers and thinkers on our side are Thomas and Alito, IMHO.  On the other side, I think the general consensus is that Kagan is the smartest, Sotomayor is mediocre, and Jackson is embarrassingly bad.

After reading this case, I think Sotomayor did a little better than I expected, and Jackson was as bad as I expected.  And I thought Barrett wrote a much stronger originalist argument than I’d expected, and not just because she mercilessly took Jackson’s bizarre rambling apart.

Barrett starts the majority opinion – the initial summary of which is only around 2000 words –at the nation’s beginning, noting that “Universal injunctions are not sufficiently analogous to any relief available in the court of equity in England at the time of the founding.”  She then moves forward in time, claiming, “Nor did founding-era courts of equity in the United States chart a different course.  If anything, the approach traditionally taken by federal courts cuts against the existence of such a sweeping remedy.”

She addresses the counter-arguments, noting that “respondents claim that universal injunctions are the modern equivalent of the decree resulting from a ‘bill of peace,’” but then cites a bunch of precedents to show why that analogy does not hold.  She closes by summarizing the points on which the government must prevail, and demonstrating that they do so, while noting that this doesn’t mean that they will ultimately win on the underlying birthright citizenship question.  The key sentence in her conclusion, IMHO: “When a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too.”  

The full 6500-word opinion that follows traces the history of universal injunctions, pointing out that they “were not a feature of federal-court litigation until sometime in the 20th Century,” and that they have been exploding since W’s term, when over three-quarters of them have been issued.  (And we all know that the explosion of injunctions in the first four months of Trump II has drastically added to that statistical imbalance.) 

Her closing: “The universal injunction was conspicuously nonexistent for most of our nation’s history….  Had federal courts believed themselves to possess the tool, surely they would not have let it lay idle.” 

Thomas uses a citation-heavy 1200 words to emphasize the need for judicial restraint that this ruling supports.  Then Alito’s concurrence anticipates the activist left’s next counter-moves to try to get around this clear ruling.  He warns about an expanded view of third-party standing (plaintiffs who aren’t affected by an issue arguing on behalf of others) and class-action filings.

On the former, he says, “Left unchecked, the practice of reflexive state third-party standing will undermine today’s decision as a practical matter.”  On the latter,“Today’s decision will have very little value if district courts award relief to broadly defined classes without following Rule 23’s procedural protections for class certification.”  (Rule 23 forces plaintiffs to meet specific requirements to achieve a class-action suit, which activists hate, as you might imagine.)

Alito warns that lower courts “should not view today’s decision as an invitation to certify nationwide classes without scrupulous adherence to the rigors of Rule 23.”   “Lax enforcement of the requirements for third-party standing and class certification would create a potentially significant loophole to today’s decision.” 

Many on the left are already talking about trying both of these tactics, thus proving Alito’s point.  Hopefully his warning will rein in most lower courts from trying these end-around moves, though I imagine the most lawless of the activist judges will go for it anyway, being constrained by neither law nor ethics, as they obviously are.

Sotomayor actually lays out a pretty convincing argument that birthright citizenship is constitutional.  She relies mostly on the fact that it has been a long-standing precedent, which is ironic, since she and the other “living constitution” supporters only seem to value precedent when it leads to their favored political conclusions.  (They made a big deal about the 50-year precedent of Roe v. Wade being overturned, for example, but they had nothing to say about the nearly 200-year precedent of abortion not being in the constitution, until the Roe court “discovered” it in 1973. Not to mention the nearly 250-year precedent that the court shattered in Obergefell, when they “discovered” gay marriage hidden in the constitution.  Probably right next to the right to abortion, as well as the pre-emptive prohibition from ever electing Trump president.)

 The most striking characteristics of Sotomayor’s argument are her nakedly partisan tone and how consistently she calls for more power for her court.  She claims that the English equity courts “unlike this court” “constantly declined to lay down any rule that shall limit their power and discretion.”  She says that those older courts “[kept] injunctive relief flexible,” as opposed to the originalists on this court, who want to “freeze in amber” the precedents that they cite.  She takes a final shot at the conservatives, saying that unlike the equity courts she claims “delight[ed] to do justice, and not by halves,” this court only wants to do justice “by piecemeal,” which results in “strip[ping] federal courts of authority” and causing a “diminution of judicial power.”    

But while Sotomayor makes typical “living constitution” arguments that tend toward giving courts the power to “legislate from the bench,” Ketanji Jean-Pierre goes flying right past Sotomayor in her truly awful dissent.  I would warn anyone not to read Jackson immediately before the sober clarity of Thomas or Alito, because doing so could give you the bends.

If Sotomayor sounds like a partisan guest on PBS, Jackson sounds like an unhinged MSNBC host and a high school sophomore had a baby, and that baby was elevated to SCOTUS purely for DEI reasons.  Because: yikes!

She comes out of the gate hot – hot, and stupid! – by slandering the conservative majority, saying “The Court’s decision to permit the Executive to violate the Constitution…is an existential threat to the rule of law.” 

That’s three partisan MSM talking points in one sentence, and things don’t get any better from there.  She constantly begs the question by assuming that Trump’s EO is obviously unconstitutional throughout, even though SCOTUS has agreed to take that contention up in the fall term.  Her tone is by turns emotional (she talks about her disillusionment, fear and frustration), heavy on the kind of lefty talking points she started with (describing the court as endorsing “a rule-of-kings governing system”) and light on relevant citations and concrete argument.

In fact, she disdains the originalists’ analysis of whether universal injunctions have analogous precedents in the English courts and the Founders’ Judiciary Act of 1789 as “a mind-numbing technical query.”  (Many sane lawyers would call it “establishing foundations.”) She also calls it “legalese” and “a smokescreen!” 

She uses inappropriate phrases such as “…(wait for it)…” as if she were me, writing my juvenile mockeries of self-important leftists, rather than a SCOTUS justice!  She also seems to not understand the roles of lower courts and SCOTUS any more than she understands what a woman is, because she chides the originalist SCOTUS members for their “dismissive treatment of the solemn duties and responsibilities of the lower courts.” 

First, if the partisan lower courts had been taking their duties and responsibilities seriously, we wouldn’t be in this mess!  Second, they’re LOWER courts, you dunce!   The job of the higher court is to evaluate and often reverse the lower courts.  How does someone who went to law school not know that?   

By the end – and despite her rejection of English law and our early court decisions which originated from it – she approvingly cites Hypothetical Interplanetary Law.  To wit, “A Martian arriving here from another planet would see these circumstances and surely wonder: ‘What good is the constitution, then?’”

Good lord.  I guess if an imaginary ET doesn’t like our constitution, we should just dissolve it and then re-establish ourselves as Ketanji-land?

Barrett’s backhanding of Jackson’s ridiculous blathering is unusually scathing, and yet still not nearly scathing enough.  She calls Jackson’s argument a “startling line of attack that is tethered neither to these sources nor, frankly, to any doctrine whatsoever,” and points out that it “[waves] away attention to the limits on judicial power as a “mind-numbingly technical query.” 

And she finally does the judicial equivalent of coming off the top rope to slam a metal folding chair over Jackson’s 10-cent head in what has to be one of the most brutal dismissals in SCOTUS history:  “We will not dwell on Justice Jackson’s argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself. We observe only this: Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.”

So that leaves us with the smartest of the 3 liberal justices, Elena Kagan, who didn’t write in this case.  And her silence is deafening.

Because in a talk she gave in 2022, Kagan forcefully pointed out the danger of district court judges issuing universal injunctions, saying, “It just can’t be right that one district judge can stop a nationwide policy in its tracks and leave it stopped for years that it takes to go through a legal process.” 

In fact, she specifically condemned the practice of “judge shopping” to get those injunctions   She mentioned that when Trump was president, lefty plaintiffs went to the liberal northern district of California, and when Biden was president, righties went to a conservative district in Texas.

She was obviously right about that, since out of the 95 US court districts, 5 leftist districts have issued something like 35 of the most important 40 universal injunctions against Trump.  So Kagan is vindicated, and her clear stance against universal injunctions stands as a brave example of a justice not being swayed by her own personal political partisanship.

Oh no, wait.  In Trump v. Casa, Inc she voted against the position she had taken just three years ago, and by not writing a dissent, she gave no reason for the change.

I’d like to say, “I wonder why,” but we all know, don’t we?  When universal injunctions are hampering a Democrat president, they are very bad.  But when they are hampering a Republican president, they magically become extra super-constitutional and good.

Because on the high court – just as in Congress, and governors’ offices, and mayors’ offices – it’s (D)ifferent when they do it. 

Hamas delenda est!

Celebrating Independence, & Contemplating the Left-Right Pride in America Gap (posted 7/4/25)

Well, this is my fourth column of the week, and I’ve still managed to fall behind somehow on all of the (mostly good) news that’s happening.  And I’m half-way through the process of reading the entire SCOTUS ruling from last week on nationwide injunctions. 

So my plan is to have a column on Monday with my thoughts on that great SCOTUS ruling. (Will I also be mocking Ketanji Jean-Pierre?  Damn straight.)  And I foresee another 4 column-week (at least) coming next week, if I’m going to have any chance of keeping my head above water during the deluge of winning that’s happening right now.

But I’ve buried the lede, because it’s Independence Day, and I hope you all have a great one.  

It’s hard to talk about this day without going through a bunch of cliches that are so familiar that we’re now too close to see them.  But this really is an amazing country, founded by geniuses, and with a history we should be proud of.  And while we often take it for granted, I’ve been encouraged by a feeling that there seems to be a recent uptick in appreciation for the country. 

However, that appreciation might not be as widespread as it feels to me, a fact brought home by a Gallup poll I read a few days ago, which is fascinating for three reasons: 1. It ties into a discussion I’ve been having with one of my lefty buddies recently.   2. The reporting on it was a textbook example of MSM media bias. (And no, we don’t hate them enough.)  3. It clearly illustrates a profound difference between the left and right in America.

I wrote a few months ago about several lefties who are good, old friends of mine, and in one of my recent email exchanges with one of them, I commented on those leftists who really dislike America.  In his response, he said that he hoped I didn’t think he was among them, and I assured him that I didn’t.  He’s a good man and he loves the country; I wouldn’t be able to maintain a friendship with somebody who hates my country. 

But I think it’s pretty obvious that there is a disturbingly large segment of the left who disdains America, and it includes too many of the party’s leaders, including their last living president.   Obama famously expressed his desire to “fundamentally transform” America because he thought it communicated the ambition of his policy agenda.  But many of us realized the clear inference of that statement: if you love something or someone, you don’t want to “fundamentally transform” them. 

When they look at American history, many leftists focus almost exclusively on the sins that we share with all other nations throughout history – slavery, violent clashes with earlier inhabitants, bigotry – rather than the breathtaking achievements that set us apart.  And they judge us for the former more harshly than they ever would judge other nations, while they downplay, deny or elide our accomplishments.

They don’t just view us as no better than other nations, but as much worse.  Ilhan Omar says that Somalia is better than America (though she seems frustratingly unwilling to go back there), illegal thugs from Mexico wave their flag and burn ours, and Nikole Hannah-Jones’s influential leftist screed blames America for 1619 (which we shouldn’t have to point out was a century and a half before America existed) and denigrates 1776.

Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan was well calculated to enrage the left, and boy did it!   Their primary response was summarized by creepy Andrew Cuomo, then governor of one of our largest states: “America was never that great.”

On this Fourth of July, let the left have that pinched and sour lie. I’ll stick with the idea in one of my favorite poems, this one from Sir Walter Scott.  It starts with these lines:

“Breathes there a man, with soul so dead/Who never to himself hath said,/This is my own, my native land!/Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,/ As home his footsteps he hath turn’d,/ From wandering on a foreign strand!”

(I wish the complainers on the left would spend a little more time wandering on a foreign strand, instead of staying here and b*tching.) 

The end of the verse switches to contemplating the rightful end such a person will come to:

“The wretch, concentred all in self/Living, shall forfeit fair renown,/ And, doubly dying, shall go down/ To the vile dust, from which he sprung,/ Unwept, unhonour’d, and unsung.”

Walter knew what he was talking about. 

So here’s the reporting on the Gallup poll’s results.  In 13 left-leaning publications – HuffPo, Daily Kos, Axios, Newseek, etc. – the headlines are a variation on a theme:  American pride falls to record low.  (Remember: this isn’t talking about pride in your sexual tastes or fetishes.  That was last month.) 

Several publications are a little more dramatic (“Americans have never hated being Americans more,” says the New Republic), or identify the real cause of the problem: “American pride plunges to new low under Trump,” says Alternet; “National Pride in American takes dramatic nosedive under Trump,” sneers the Daily Beast.     

So the message is clear: more Americans than ever think that America sucks, and it’s all Trump’s fault.  Unexpectedly!      

But you won’t be shocked to find that the feckless media bottom-dwellers skewed their headlines.  Because the poll itself breaks the results down by political groups, and it finds that Republicans are pretty consistently proud to be American, while pride among Independents has been slowly slipping over the last 10 years, but is still a majority position.

But the vast majority of diminished pride has happened among the Democrats, 62% of whom were proud to be American last year, while only 36% feel that way now.

So the accurate headline isn’t “Americans’ pride plunges under Trump.”  It’s “GOP consistently proud, most Independents proud, Democrats throw a tantrum like whiny little beeyotches when they don’t get their Cadaver in Chief.” 

Which leads me to my final point concerning the dramatic differences between the parties.  It’s natural for your pride to ebb and flow a little bit, depending on whether your guy is president or not. 

Even I (an optimistic, America-loving patriot) – when watching Joe Biden fall up staircases and over sandbags, and scream at the clouds like Grandpa Simpson, and poop on the Pope – had to fight the urge to wear dark glasses and a baseball cap low over my forehead in the hopes that people would mistake me for a miserable Canadian. 

But the surprising thing is that pride in our country is not only highest among Republicans, it’s much more consistent.  The Gallup poll has tracked national pride since 2001, and in the wake of 9/11, GOP pride was at 90%; for the next 24 years, it averaged right around where it is now, at 92%.  It only dipped into the 80s during the 4 years of Biden, and at its low point was still at 84%.  

The Democrats started out at 87%, and briefly touched 90% once, in 2002.  Since then it’s been a steady decline, staying in the high 70s to low 80s until 2015, when it plunged down to 42% during Trump I.  It recovered when Biden began his reign of error, but even then it only reached a high of 62.

The Independents have generally been in between the two parties.  It’s a little troubling that Independents’ pride has also been sliding – if less extremely, and with less volatility than the Dems’ – from 76% ten years ago to 53% now.  But my instinct is that if you forced Independents to declare for one party or the other, the most patriotic among them would go to the GOP, and the less patriotic to the Dems, leaving both parties about where they are now.

We probably didn’t need this poll to tell us the two main take-aways from the data. 

First, Democrats are generally less patriotic than Republicans. Over the last 10 years, which were evenly split between Dem and GOP presidents, only a little over half of Democrats (55%) said they are proud to be American, while more than 90% of Republicans said that over the last 25 years. 

Second, Democrats’ patriotism is much less steadfast; it waxes and wanes depending on whether or not they control the White House.

On both of those points, I’d much rather be on our side than on theirs.  I’m glad that we can see America with all of its flaws – and yes, these are often expressed in the foolish choices manifested in badly chosen presidents – and still love it, and be proud to be American.

Watching so many on the other side cling to their bitterness and focus it on this amazing country is hard to take.  Their rejection of our founding and traditions leads to so much unhappiness, as we’ve seen in the degradation of the big blue cities, the hollowed-out universities, and the lost reputation of the compromised legacy media. 

But we can’t let that temper our own optimism.  We’re winning a lot of battles now, and the ship of state is slowly turning in the right direction.  Our successes and their failures are making the differences between our philosophies all the more stark, and more and more people are voting with their feet,  

We’re still facing a lot of challenges, and we’ve got a lot of obstacles to overcome.  Getting our budget under control, repairing the damage caused by an open border, and cleaning up our damaged institutions is going to be a long slog.  But every generation since the founding has had to fight to preserve the republic, so we know that it can be done.  

And we can see the road the Democrats are on – in California, Chicago, and now New York City – and we know how they’re going to end up.

Unwept, unhonour’d, and unsung.

Happy Independence Day, everybody!

Hamas delenda est!

The Self-Inflicted Wound that is Zohran Mamdani (posted 7/2/25)

When I left off yesterday, I was just getting to the new leftist blunderkind, the likely future mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani.

And I know what you’re thinking: “Zohran” is a good name for a Mongol raider, or a Martian emperor, or perhaps something from Pfizer that you can use to treat your dermatitis. (“Ask your doctor about extra-strength Zohran.  Side effects may include racial tension and economic palpitations, and in rare situations, rectal bleeding and civilizational collapse.”)

But it’s not a good name for a New York City mayor.  And unfortunately, his name is the least objectionable thing about him.  He’s a 34-year-old trust-fund socialist Muslim Jew-hater who’s never had a real job.   He graduated from Bowdoin (unexpectedly!) with a degree in Africana studies (unexpectedly!)  where he also co-founded the school’s chapter of “Students for Justice in Wakanda.”

Sorry, that should be “Students for Justice in Palestine.”  Got my non-existent countries mixed up there. 

Since graduation, he’s followed a career path of being a professional useless person, in such positions as volunteer, activist and agitator.  You know your resume is thin when the most prominent job you’ve held is “failed rapper.”   

And by the way, how the hell does someone fail at rapping?  Lose your rhyming dictionary? 

I mean, I’m almost as white as Liz Warren (#wemustneverstopmockingher), and even I can rap.  

Here you go:

Zohran’s bad, he makes me mad,

my dog is sad, no one’s glad. 

He oughta be mayor of Islamabad.    

Beeyotch!”

Now go watch one of Zohran’s old rap videos, and tell me my rap wasn’t just as good. 

In fact, tomorrow morning I’m going to take a whack at writing my Grammy acceptance speech.  And while I can’t tell you exactly what that will entail, I can tell you the last lines right now: “Shout out to Tom Petty, Rest in Power!  Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

Just kidding.  If any of you ever hear me say, “Rest in Power,” you have my permission to shoot me in the face with whatever firearm is closest to hand.   

Anyway, Zohran is terrible in many ways.  As someone has noted in the past, NYC is already Sodom, but with Soviet Economics.  And ZM said to himself, “Why not go for the trifecta and throw some Jew hatred in there too? See how that goes?” 

Z’s long history of anti-Semitism is already causing some deliciously entertaining leftist-on-leftist infighting in Democrat circles.  A deranged HuffPo article on Senator Kirstin Gillibrand calling out Zohran’s bigotry featured someone named Sanjana Karanth (gesundheit) turning the dishonesty dial up to 11.

She described Gillibrand’s accurate statements as “a shockingly racist tirade” and “the lie that Mamdani endorses rhetoric that endangers Jewish New Yorkers, without mentioning the anti-Muslim hate rising alongside anti-Semitism.”

Yes.  Karanth (Bless you.  Do you need a tissue?) makes a great point, because we are all aware of the tidal wave of hatred directed toward Muslims in America. 

Such as the Jewish massacre of 11 peaceful Muslims worshiping at the Tree of Life synagogue, and the evil Egyptian rabbi who just lit a bunch of peacefully protesting Muslims on fire in Boulder, and the Torah-studying villain who shot that young Muslim couple outside the Capital Jewish Museum in DC last month, and—

No, wait.  My crack research staff tells me that those were all attacks and murders of Jews.  I would recount the hundreds of recent hate-crime attacks on Muslims in America, but when I asked Siri for that list, she just laughed at me until I had to turn her off.  So my bad.     

Zohran has repeatedly called for “globalizing the Intifada.”  Of course Zohran, his apologists, many Islamists, and Sanjana Karanth have a conveniently ahistorical response, pointing out that “intifada” just means “struggle.”

Regular readers know that since I retired I am working on learning German, and it just so happens that I know the German word for “struggle.”  Which is “Kampf.” 

As in, “Mein Kampf.” 

Which is NOT comforting, Zohran!  Especially since I’m sure that Hitler’s manifesto – if translated into Arabic – would be a big seller among Zohran’s co-religionists.  And “Mein Intifada” does not sound any better than the original!  

Even in a party lousy with anti-Semites, Zohran has distinguished himself.  Or as the great Babylon Bee put it, “Hamas Claims Responsibility for NYC Mayoral Primary.”

But Zohran the Merciless doesn’t just hate Jews.  He hates whitey and rich people too!  Like most innumerate socialists, he’s promising the world to poor people: free buses, free healthcare, nearly free grocery stores (Yay, USSR!), and rent control forever!  Ironically, the majority of the poor and black voters went for Cuomo, while it was the woke white college graduates who went strongest for Zohran.  Unexpectedly!

Or, as the Babylon Bee also put it, “Dems Discover Innovative Strategy of Promising Free Stuff to Stupid People.”

Zohran was dumb enough to say that he specifically wants to raise taxes on those in “richer and whiter neighborhoods,” and crunchy granola AWFLs were dumb enough to say, “Thank you sir, may I have another.”

Thus proving that racists who hate minorities are dead wrong.  Because there is nobody on God’s green earth dumber than a white, leftist, blue-city resident at the ballot box.

But the suicide-vest cherry on this intifada sundae is that Zohran has vowed that NYC is going to defy ICE deportation efforts.  After referring to the recent arrest of an illegal at Federal Plaza by ICE agents, Mamdani vowed that “those days are going to come to an end when I’m the mayor.”

Oh man, I am hoping that we can get this fight on pay-per-view! 

In one corner, it’s wimpy Zohran with his history of accomplishing nothing and nearly crying when he talks about mean tweets he’s received (he really did that), as he enters the ring waving copies of his grievance studies diploma and Mao’s Little Red Book. 

In the other corner we have Hulk Homan™, with his bulldog head, Popeye forearms and gravelly voice, who almost certainly has chunks of MS-13 gang members in his stool, and who enters the arena waving a copy of the US code saying that illegals can be deported forthwith.

Not since Mike Tyson in his prime took on that malnourished pre-teen suffering from asthma, spina bifida, rickets and childhood macular degeneration…

And just when I thought I couldn’t respect Zohran less, he took a page from the playbooks of Cankles McPantsuit (“Ah ain’t noways tie-uhd.”) and Que Mala (“Ya bettuh thank ah union membuh!”), and got caught adopting different accents to pander to different crowds. 

Videos of him from his rapping days and also more recently show him doing an Indian accent so pronounced that he made Apu from the Simpsons sound like Professor Henry Higgins.  During an interview, a New York reporter called him out on the issue.  Unexpectedly!

No, this time I’m being serious.  Because this time, it really WAS unexpected! 

Zohran said – in perfectly unaccented English — “New Yorkers, more than they hate someone they disagree with, hate someone they can’t trust.”  (By the way, you had us at “they hate.”)     

The reporter said, “On the issue of trust, you’ve adopted different speaking accents in different scenarios.  Is there one that’s real and one that’s affected?”

He lamely replied that, “There are different parts of my life.  Here in New York City, this is how I speak.”                     

Ugh.  Will the Democrat base never learn?  Normal people like authentic people.  One of the greatest compliments you can hear about a celebrity is “he’s the same person when the cameras are off as when the cameras are on him.”   

Even if a politician or celebrity has some rough edges, we like to know that he or she is not a phony.

For example, I’d bet my house that grade school Tom Homan was exactly the same as Tom Homan now, only smaller.

I picture him playing basketball at recess, when a tough kid from a different school hops the fence and grabs the ball from a smaller kid and starts shooting baskets.  And young pre-Hulk Homan confronts the kid.

 “If you know the Playground Rules, you’ll know that rule 7a is that nobody who doesn’t attend this school can play on this playground.  Now I’m going to give you to the count of 3 to get back on the other side of that fence.  1…” 

And on “2” he head butts the kid into next week, then picks him up and tosses him over the fence like a Martha’s Vineyard liberal tossing the illegals whom DeSantis flew there onto the first bus out of town.   

And Donald Trump sounds like Donald Trump, for good and ill, wherever he is.

Close your eyes.  Trump at the supper table, when he’s 8 years old…  

Well, you’ve got to open your eyes. Because I’m writing this, and you’re reading it.  But you know what I mean.

Trump at supper, age 8:

“Mom, this was a fantastic meatloaf.  Fantastic!  Nobody’s ever had meatloaf like this.  Other people say that meatloaf is their least favorite meal.  They’d rate it at the bottom of all foods, if it even got a rating at all.  And yet, this one was terrific!  Frankly, you have made meatloaf great again.”

The same guy, 70 years later, meeting with the Pope:   

“Hey, your Holiness, I want to apologize for our last guy.   I know you’re too righteous to say it, but I’m not: he was our worst president, even before he came here and sh*t on the guy before you, pardon my French.  Just a disgrace.  Anyway, I’d appreciate it if you’d put in a good word for me with the Man Upstairs, because I am surrounded by the lowest IQ Democrats ever.  Just between you and me, they don’t know what the f**k they are doing, you know?  Hey, do you still get to ride around in the Popemobile?”

And, scene.   

So let’s recap.  Trump is five months in, and he’s got the highest approval ratings he’s ever had.  Groceries, gas and inflation are down, and the border is closed.  The right track-wrong track numbers are up, military recruitment is up, and Iranian nuke sites and scientists are up. 

As in “blown up.”

The stock market has recovered, the BBB appears poised to pass, Trump is handing out EOs like Joe Frazier handing out naps, and  SCOTUS is slapping down leftist judges’ TROs like Macron’s wife slapping Macron.  Harvard is trembling, Rosie has fled to Ireland.  And Trump is in the process of crushing his enemies, seeing them driven before him, and listening to the lamentations of their men who identify as women.

And the Democrats are about to elect a cosplaying Communist jihadi who couldn’t run a lemonade stand to run NYC straight into the ground, a process which should be well underway about the time people are going to the polls in next year’s midterms.

To paraphrase an optimistic Elwood Blues talking to Joliet Jake right before the iconic car chase, it’s 17 months to the midterms, we’ve got a full tank of gas, a half a pack of EOs, things look dark for the Dems, and we’re wearing sunglasses. 

So we’ve got that going for us.

Hamas delenda est!

The Tragi-Comic NYC Mayoral Race (posted 7/1/25)

Well thank God that’s over!

I’m referring to the least in-your-face Pride Month (or as I call it, “Haughty Spirit” month) in years.  (“Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”)  In every other way, this June was one for the record books.   Which is why I now continue what will be at least a four-column week.

In today’s edition of celebrating the Left’s self-be-clowning, I’m going to focus on last week’s NYC Democrat primary, which promises to be a boon to the GOP and one more self-inflicted Biblical plague on New York City. 

And one that, just like in the original, is going to result in a Jewish exodus, with Mamdani playing the role of Temu Pharoah.  And this time, nobody has to wait around, pleading, “Let my people go.”  Because the Hebrews now have access to U-Haul, and unlike the Red Sea, I-95 South is wide open, baby!

(They said, “Hey Martin, bet you can’t work in half a dozen Old Testament references in the first three paragraphs.”  And I said, “Hold my King James and watch this.”)

If I can be serious before mocking the hell out of the idiotic voters in NYC – and I know that the 90% gives the other 10% a bad name – this really is a sad story.  Truly.  A great nation should have great cities, and NYC used to be one of the greatest cities in the world.  It’s tragic to see what has already happened to it, before we even get to what’s going to happen to it soon. 

I know that some of my fellow conservatives say, “Don’t worry about it.  Let NYC become a warning to the country and the world of what can happen when you elect terrible socialists to positions of power.  It will provide a valuable FAFO lesson.”

That’s true.  But it’s not like we need ANOTHER warning, or more FAFO lessons!  We’ve got Chicago (RIP).  And LA.  And San Francisco.  And Baltimore, and Detroit, and New Orleans.  And the nations of Venezuela, and Cuba, and old East Germany, and current Haiti, and…

Ugh.  As grateful as I am to not be living in a big blue city, watching Dem voters choose their own self-degradation makes me feel the same kind of pity and frustrated anger I get when I see a junkie – ravaged, scarred and dope-sick – shooting up one more time. 

Then I remember that many of those voters would force that hellish descent on the rest of us if they had a chance, and I say – with another famous New Yorker, Jerry Seinfeld – “Yikes.  Good luck with all that.”   

And it’s not like New York City or state were doing great in recent years anyway.   It’s been a one-party Democrat town for what seems like forever – with the brief interregnum of the Giuliani and Bloomberg years – and the old lions of the party were content to turn into hyenas, scavenging off the accomplishments left to them by previous generations, while letting the place slowly go to pot.  Literally, lately. 

(We Midwesterners call this process “eating your seed corn.”)

Many observers say that part of the reason so many lefties were open to a new, younger, fresh face is due to the dysfunctional hash the establishment Dems made of things.  Hochul, and Cuomo before her, and David Patterson before him didn’t exactly blaze a trail of good governance.  And the less said about DuhBlasio, the better. 

But you’d think that there would have to be some quasi-competent Dems in New York who saw Mamdani coming, right?  And yet the best candidate they could muster was Andrew “Grandma-killing Butt-grabber” Cuomo?  Really? 

If they needed an old-school name that dead-end Democrats would vote for just out of familiarity – e.g. Drunk Uncle Ted Kennedy, the second runner-up Kennedy after the first two were out of play – why not pick Chris Cuomo?

Sure, he’s not smart, despite how he tells it: “I can handle things, I’m smaht.   Not like everybody says, not dumb.  I’m smaht, and I want respect.”

(If you don’t get the Godfather reference, you’re dead to me.  Dead!)

So yeah, Chris would be nobody’s first choice.  Even Mario tapped Andy over the Block Head. 

(Chris: Just because I’m younger, I shouldn’t have been stepped over.

Andrew: That’s the way pop wanted it.

Chris (yelling, while slumped in his armchair): Well that’s not how I wanted it!”)

(They said, “Hey Martin, bet you can’t follow an Old Testament main course with a Godfather-reference chaser.”  And I said, “Hold my gun AND the cannoli, and watch this.”)

Anyway, since Chris got canned by the Tattaglias—sorry, I mean CNN – he’s got nothing else to do.  He’s tanned, rested and ready, and at least he can brag that he never killed a bunch of senior citizens by tossing some contagious covid patients into their nursing home like a bunch of wrinkly biological weapons and bolting the door behind them.  

But no.  The Dems went with Raggedy Andy, despite the sexual harassment claims that allegedly did him in.  Though I think we all know that that was more of a “straw that broke the horndog’s back” kind of thing.

Because this is the Democrat party we’re talking about.  If you could go to the congressional offices of any 10 randomly chosen male Dem officeholders and dust the rumps of their 20-something secretaries for prints, you’d come up with 8 positives for groping. 

And that’s only if your 10 chosen Democrats included Mayor Pete and Spartacus.

Okay, I’ve got to interrupt myself to say that I believe that God is just feeding stuff straight into my brain.  Because I just free-styled the last 8 paragraphs or so, and that Buttigieg and Booker reference even caught me by surprise.   And I know that it’s immodest to admit it, but I just laughed at my own joke. 

In fact, when I’m done with this column, I’m going to pour a second glass of Knob Creek 9, clink the two glasses together, and congratulate myself.  Because it’s the middle of the night, and my wife is sleeping, and she would be furious if I woke her up right now to read her this column. 

Not that Cassie the Wonder Dog is not smiling at me as I look at her right now.  But that’s because she’s one of God’s greatest creatures, not because she appreciates my skewering of hypocritical Democrat politicians as they dictate self-righteous “we’re shocked by Trump’s sexism” press releases while chasing their secretaries around the desk like so many Benny Hills with plum committee assignments.

Ooh, I just thought of one more thing: I can’t wait to see what AI-generated graphic CO comes up with to accompany this column!  Keep it PG-13, CO!

Where was I?

Oh yeah.  To quote some wit on the internet, “Defeated Cuomo left groping for answers.”

So that brings us to Zohran Mamdani…    

…and that’s where I’m going to leave it for today, because I’m over 1100 words in, and this bourbon isn’t going to sip itself.  Also, I’ve got over a thousand words drafted about Mamdani already, so I won’t test your patience with a 2000+ word column now.

So think of this as a tease, or a cliffhanger, and I’ll see you tomorrow!

In the meantime…

Hamas, Hezbollah and Mamdani delenda est!

The Left is Not Handling All of This Good News Well (posted 6/30/25)

I virtually “met” CO many years ago – that’s a story for another day, but I can tell you that it was reminiscent of the Three Wise Men finally making it to Bethlehem.  Although CO is not exactly the baby Jesus, and I was just one lone wise man.  More of a wise guy, really.  But as Bogey said at the end of Casablanca, it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. 

I wrote my first column for CO’s site on December 9th, 2016.  You can find it, along with the rest of my archives here at Martinsimpsonwriting.com.  (And don’t miss the prescient “future conservative SCOTUS” joke in that first column, which was written before I’d acquired my conical purple wizard hat that allows me to see the future.)  

Since then I’ve written 683 columns – this one makes 684 – and I’ve had an acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Literature just gathering dust in my desk, tragically unused, for most of the last 8 years.  And yes, I wrote it in a comedic Donald Trump voice, which I’m sure would go over great with the Nobel crowd in Stockholm. 

Oh okay, if you insist, I’ll give you an excerpt from it, featuring the first few paragraphs and the last lines:

“I’d like to thank God, CO and every member of CO Nation, and I’d also like to thank the European elites who hand out these awards.  But I can’t, because many people say that you’ve turned these awards into the fake news of awards, giving them to every leftist lunatic who ever put pen to paper.  They’ve become totally fake.  Fake awards! 

But still, you’re doing a tremendous thing tonight, though frankly, it’s embarrassing that it’s taken you so long.  So embarrassing.  I mean, I get it.  I stand before you as a representative of the greatest country in the world, a man with a wit as sharp as my gaze is steely and my jawline is firm.  And you’re looking around at each other glumly.  Look at Hans over there!  So glum.    Your men are simpering and your women are ugly, and your nonbinary children are cowering in a corner, hoping that you won’t let Putin conquer your countries and enslave them.  Sad.”

[Jump cut to the end of the speech]   

“…like nobody’s ever seen before. 

Now please, go back and read through my body of work, and learn its lessons.  Otherwise, people are going to think that you just don’t know what the f**k you’re doing.  Thank you for your attention to this matter.”  

And, scene.

I say all that to say this: in the nearly 9 years I’ve been writing on this site, I don’t know that there has been a week packed with more good news (other than the weeks featuring the epic losses of Hillary and Que Mala) than this past one.  And now I’ve got such an embarrassment of riches to write about that I don’t know what to do.   I’ve been writing three columns a week, but I could write three columns a day this week, and still barely scratch the surface!

I see two broad categories of good-news stories: those involving big wins for our side, and those involving hilariously entertaining, schadenfreude-infused tales of various leftists melting down in theatrical glory.

So I’m just going to jump in and start celebrating and mocking, and see if I’ve got the gas in the tank for another 5-column week. 

I’ll start with a guy whose name I’d never heard before, possibly because he’s a columnist for USA Today.  Which is a paper that people fold over their heads and press tightly against their ears if they’re stuck in an airport where CNN is playing on every tv. 

His name is Rex Huppke.  After I saw the column I’m about to tell you about, I researched him a bit, and the first thing I came across was a column he wrote last weekend, right after Trump took out Iran’s nuke sites.  Instead of waiting a few days, lest intervening events make him look very stupid – a phenomenon that I’m guessing he experiences quite often – he opened up on our “dumb president.”

He predicted a coming “quagmire in the Middle East,” and after a few hundred words of dire warnings that have already been proven to be as smart as Jasmine Crocket with a concussion, he ended by saying that if the bombing proves successful “it’ll be dumb luck.  But if it leads to disaster, it’ll be exactly what anyone paying attention to these reckless hucksters predicted.”

Wow.  Nicely done, Huppster.  You tried for the old “heads I win, tails you lose” trick, and yet you still managed to lose.  How does it feel to have the dumbest guy around be proven smarter than you and all of your egghead co-religionists in the MSM? 

Unexpectedly!

But that’s not why I’m writing about Wretched Rex now.  Because after that disastrous column a week ago, Huppke took another swing at it…

One. Week. Layter.   

This time, he wrote about the SCOTUS ruling saying that public schools can no longer force grade school kids, against their parents’ consent, to learn all about how they can change their sex (in a textbook called, “Science, Schmience,” I’m guessing).   This ruling gave Rex what he thought was a very clever column idea. 

As we say in the South, “Bless his heart.”

In an op-ed titled, “Thanks SCOTUS!  It’s now my right to prevent my kid from learning about Trump,” Huppke argues that SCOTUS preventing kids from being indoctrinated in the LGBTQ+ religion is analogous to allowing kids to opt out of any school lessons discussing US presidents of whom Huppke doesn’t approve.

(Did I mention that Huppke’s email address is @bluesky?  Because of course it is.)

Seriously.  Because Trump has made boorish comments about genitalia grabbing and illegal immigrants, and was found liable for sexually assaulting a mentally unstable woman in a transparently bogus civil verdict that will definitely be overturned eventually, Huppke believes that his kids should be prevented from learning anything about Trump and his presidency.   

Think about that for a second.  If children were kept from learning about any US presidents whose behavior offended Rex’s tender sensibilities, our history textbooks would be as short as AOC’s attention span.   

(If I were delivering this next part as a speech, this is where I’d take a drink of water and a very long inhale before running down the following list…)

No Washington or Jefferson (who owned slaves), nor any other presidents before Lincoln, since they all at least tolerated slavery.  Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and said some unkind things about black folks.  Grant was a horrendous bully, since he gave the Democrats of his day wedgies and swirlies, and then took their slaves away and freed them.

TR hunted, Wilson was a racist, FDR undoubtedly called the people he put in camps “Japs.”  Ike killed a lot of people, and Truman dropped a couple of bombs that were even more offensively penetrative than the MOP (stop snickering).  JFK banged every female within arm’s reach, LBJ said the n-word more often than he said hello, and Richard Nixon was Richard Nixon.  Reagan whipped the Dems’ co-religionists in the USSR and Nicaragua, and Clinton repeated JFK’s sexual crimes, while adding perjury to the mix.  W was Bushitler, Obama deported 3 million angels in human form at our southern border, and Biden raised Hunter and used him as his bag-man/cut-out with the Chicoms.    

The only president who might possibly pass the Huppke Standard of Non-Offensiveness might be William Henry Harrison, who died in 1841 after serving only 30 days in office. (History Note: This was too long ago for that stunt to be called, “Pulling a Biden.”)   

On the other hand, I’m sure that once the leftist cancel squad has a chance to examine those fateful 30 days, they’ll find that Harrison allegedly told one of his cronies that women would let him “grab them by the bustle,” or else he called some of the Native Americans he fought against in Tecumseh’s War a “whiny bunch of Liz Warrens.”  

(Supplemental Historical Note: This was long before they had hashtags. But we have them now.  So #wemustneverstopmockingher )

Ironically, Huppke has probably out-smarted himself – thus creating this SCOTUS argument which future legal scholars will probably refer to as the case of “Half-wit v. Half-wit” – with his call to ban teaching anything about Trump’s presidency in K-12 public schools. 

Because ANYTHING taught about Trump in public schools run by leftist teachers’ union activists would be such hateful and farcically dishonest propaganda that Huppke is unintentionally doing those future schoolchildren a great favor.

Besides, they’ll be able to learn plenty about Trump’s accomplishments at the colossal Trump Presidential Library (which at this pace will be solely funded by billions of dollars won in defamation suits against various MSM propaganda outlets), as well as the plaques and carved speeches on thousands of Trump statues and monuments across the nation, and from the documentaries playing on whatever television networks replace the desiccated media husks that once were PBS and NPR.

(I exaggerate for comic effect.  And in the hopes that Rex Huppke will somehow see this column, causing the top of his head to blow off in a fit of narcissistic rage.)

See what I mean?  I just produced 1500 words of cathartic bliss, and I’ve barely even scratched the surface of all the great things that happened last week.  So assuming I have the time – I may be spending many hours in a doctor’s waiting room if this condition that has already lasted way more than 4 hours doesn’t subside – I’ll be back with another column tomorrow.

Hamas delenda est!

They Won’t Accept Success: Tucker and the Left’s Reaction to Taking Out Iran’s Nukes (posted 6/27/25)

It’s been interesting to watch the reactions to Trump’s bombing of Iran, especially since there are very few things that we agree on as a nation.  Our recent election results have all been within a handful of points of 50/50, and the job approval ceiling for the last several presidents appears to be right around 50%.

In that context, you’d think the 12 Day War in Iran – assuming that the fighting is now over –would seem to be an extreme outlier, since there has rarely been such a one-sided modern battle. 

Israel’s all-time record victory in the Six-Day War in 1967 will likely never be topped.  (One of my all-time favorite t-shirts is a white one with the blue Star of David on it, and the words, “Six Days, B*tch.”)  And even the first Gulf War took a little over a month. 

So the speed of this victory, along with the moral lopsidedness of the combatants – no one but Iran’s ruling theocratic dictatorship and their terrorist clients could side with them – is also unusual in most conflicts among states.  You would have to be a totally deranged lunatic to side with the mullahs over Israel and us.  (Ladies and gentlemen, I give you… Keith Olbermann.)

I wrote in a previous column about Israel’s stunning successes against Iran before this war, and then during the lightning-strikes and coordinated strategic destruction of military targets, along with decapitating the cream of the Iranian military commanders and nuclear scientists.  It’s amazing to think about how much they’ve accomplished in a year!

They decimated Hezbollah with the brilliant pager plot, along with targeted strikes on all of their top leaders, and did the same to Hamas with their relentless attacks on the terror forces of October 7th.  They contributed to the weakening of the Assad regime in Syria by eliminating much of their navy and air force, and when Assad fled, Israel wisely flew strikes that took out most of their remaining ships, planes, missiles and chemical weapons, so they wouldn’t fall into the hands of Assad’s successors.

They also took out much of Iran’s air force over the last year, and in the early hours of their attacks this month, they took out the rest, along with the leaders who would have organized a military response and possible counter strikes.  Their successes meant that our bombing run against Iran’s nuke sites posed fewer risks than it otherwise would have.

All of this put the Democrats in a very tough position, partly because too many elite Dems and their activist base really dislike America, and partly because successes of one party always make for bad politics for their competitors.  I mean, if Biden’s program – allowing millions of illegals into the country, spending like a meth addict with a trust fund, forcing dudes into girls’ sports and lockerrooms, imposing draconian covid mandates and lockdowns on healthy people – had succeeded, our election prospects last year would have been dismal.

Having said all that, it was so entertaining to watch all of the hysterical reactions from Never Trumpers and the left during the lead up to our bombing.  Particular favorites in a crowded field were the articles and speeches of David Frum and Chuck-you Schumer, which aged like milk left out in the summer sun.      

Frum published an article in the Atlantic (motto: Wrong About Everything Since 1857) entitled, “What Iran Knows About Trump: The Mullahs of Iran Join the Bet that Trump Always Chickens Out.”  I’m going to see if I can get the Atlantic to publish my companion piece to Frum’s.  I’m calling it, “What David Frum Knows About Trump… Could Fit in a Thimble.”  Frum also tweeted that, “’Two Weeks’ is what Trump says when he’s backing away from a commitment he did not mean.”

What makes those even funnier?  They both appeared on June 21st, the very day that Trump was rocking the Iranian Casbah (sing it with me, “Khameni don’t like it…”) instead of chickening out, as Frum-py knew he would. 

Schumer got in earlier, but just as stupidly.  He put out a video a few weeks ago warning that Trump was going to fold to the mullahs, and make a secret deal.   “If Taco Trump is already folding, the American public should know about it,” he croaked.   

He sneered that Trump was “gonna sound tough in public and then negotiate a side deal that lets Iran get away with everything.”  And give him credit, because he was half right:  Trump did sound tough in public. 

But then he dropped the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, or MOP.   

And before you can ask, I looked it up, and that is NOT gay slang, no matter how much it sounds like it.  (Still, the next time my wife asks me to get the mop, I’m going to chuckle and give her my Grouch Marx eyebrow wiggle, even though she won’t get it.) (I mean the comedic reference, not the…  Ahem.  Perhaps I’ve said too much.)

By the way, I assume that everyone has noticed Schumer’s obvious physical decline.  He was briefly taken to the hospital a day ago for a breathing scare, but he was losing it long before that.  He’s getting more and more hunched-over every time I see him; right now he’s got the posture of a jumbo shrimp, or possibly the letter “c,” and that gives him a creepy Nosferatu-ian vibe when he crouches over a podium and hollers at us while glaring from over the top of his glasses.

Do any politicians ever just retire anymore? 

Unfortunately, Tucker Carlson has continued his precipitous slide from being a smart and insightful guy into either a dumb hack, or a dishonest one.  Shortly before Trump gave the mullahs the MOP (stop snickering), Tucker was on Steve Bannon’s podcast raving about the apocalyptic consequences if Trump did anything to Iran.

He said it would signal “the end of the American Empire” and of Trump’s presidency, and predicted that we’d lose thousands of soldiers in another Iraq situation.  And he mocked the idea that the argument isn’t between those who want to use quick strikes to prevent Iran from getting nukes, and those who want to rely on drawn-out negotiations (which, spoiler alert have been tried and failed miserably for the last several decades). 

Nope.  For Tucker, “The real divide is between those who casually encourage violence and those who seek to prevent it – between warmongers and peacemakers.”  That sounds like something that could have been written by Bernie Sanders, AOC, or the ghost of Howard Zinn. 

Speaking of AOC (she of the juicy booty, according to her), she and half the Democrats in Congress ran to microphones or X and immediately started calling for the impeachment of Trump (again!) and decrying his horrific, unconstitutional act of bombing without getting congress’ permission first. 

Apparently no one has told them that every president since HW Bush has done that, or that Obama dropped thousands of bombs without congress’ permission in just the last several months of his reign of terro—I mean, administration.

But I didn’t need to study for years about geopolitics to support the bombing of Iran’s nuke sites.  Because I informed myself by reading an article on Twitchy about 20 actual laws in Iran, and that was enough. 

A small sampling of illegal activities in Iran: apostasy (leaving Islam), blasphemy, homosexuality and adultery can all get you the death penalty.  You can’t criticize the chief Weird Beard, or drink alcohol, or dissent online.  Women can’t sing or dance in public or go to stadiums, and they have to wear pup tents or beekeeper outfits. 

You can get up to 74 lashes for holding hands or kissing in public, and any same-sex relationships – even if, and I am quoting, they are “non-penetrative” – will get you “lashes, prison or worse.”  (I’m no relationship-ologist, but if your sexual relationships are non-penetrative, I’m pretty sure you’re doing something wrong.) (But hey, you do you.)

However, I didn’t even need to read about any of those laws, because they had me at # 19:  Dog ownership is banned, because dogs are “unclean.”   (Cassie the Wonder Dog is beside my desk as I write this, so I’m typing very quietly.)  Which is truly offensive, not to mention ridiculous.

I’ve seen those mullahs’ lice-y looking beards, and I’ve read about their goat brides – not to mention the goat chlamydia outbreaks that routinely sweep through the Iranian leadership – so I don’t think they should be throwing any stones about cleanliness from inside their glass mosques.    

Am I saying that the Iranians deserved a devastating bombing campaign because of the way they treat dogs?

I’m saying we should have that conversation.

And I’m also saying yes.    

Hamas delenda est

Greta’s Great Adventure (posted 6/25/25)

This story is a couple of weeks old – which feels like years, in this media environment – but it contains too much hilarity and valuable lessons to not comment on it before it disappears from our memory completely.

This spring, an American organization called the Gaza Humanitarian Fund (GHF) was formed, and it soon got the backing of the Trump administration and the Israeli government to start trucking food into Gaza and distributing it to the Palestinians.  Before then, the food distribution had been handled primarily by the UN, and through its usual honesty and competence…most of that food ended up in the hands of Hamas thugs, who then sold it at inflated prices to the Gazans.

The GHF quickly became much more successful, getting the food to the people it was intended for, while cutting out the Hamas creeps who had been preying on them.  Hamas’s response had the maximum Hamas-ness: they started beating and shooting people to keep them from getting the food, especially when the people had started to openly applaud and say, “Thank you, America.”

The MSM jumped right on the story, reporting that the scenes of grateful Gazans were AI deep fakes, and that the IDF had been shooting, and causing the recipients to panic and trample each other.  Because of course they did. 

When the AI story and the smears of the IDF were debunked, the MSM quickly melted away and started lying elsewhere.  Because: ditto.

Anyway, GHF’s performance demonstrated what a legitimate charitable food distribution plan looks like. 

Meanwhile, a boat was sailing from Sicily (and where were the mafia pirates when you needed them?) toward Gaza on a mission to provide an instructive counter-example of what a fraudulent, virtue-signaling PR circle jerk looks like.  And boy, did it!

The most prominent celebrity passenger on The Mental Minnow was Greta Thunberg, of “The climate will kill us all!” fame.   She’s known by many names: The Doom Pixie.  Sweden’s Shame.  Lil’ Miss “How Dare You!”  But she wanted the world to know that she’s moved on to another noble cause: Jew hating.

Greta and the other merry moronic mariners made videos to document their brave journey to, as she put it, “attempt to break the siege and open up the humanitarian corridor by delivering aid like food and medical supplies.”  She waxed eloquent about the “systematic starvation of 2 million people” and “a live-streamed genocide.” 

Of course, that Israeli genocide does not exist anywhere outside of her unnervingly square head.  But the Self-important Scandinavian was not going to be deterred by little things like facts and reality.  

“Hey Martin,” you are probably saying, “did she record those videos while dressed in the traditional garments of her people, i.e. the Sverigedräkten, or Swedish national dress?”

Yes, and no.  (And by the way, nice umlaut you’ve got there.)  She did wear the traditional garment of her people, but her real people aren’t the Swedes, but the anti-Semites.  And their traditional garment is the terrorist tablecloth, i.e. the keffiyeh. 

And yes, she was all keffiyeh-ed up! 

Naturally, the Israelis intercepted the boat, which gave the maritime martyrs the chance to preen and posture.  Greta recorded a video saying that she was being kidnapped, and appealing to the government of Sweden to use diplomatic pressure to get her released, so that she could complete her mission of taking what turned out to be a small cooler of assorted sandwiches and unpronounceable Swedish snacks to the Gazans. 

The Swedes, not usually noted for their sense of humor, managed to have a perfect, deadpan reaction.  As the Mail Online put it, “Sweden has rejected Greta’s plea for help.”  The Swedish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Maria Malmer Stenergard (she sounds hot, but strict) said, “A great responsibility rests on those who choose to travel contrary to the advice given to a place.” 

Then she pursed her lips and gave a curt nod – which my Norwegian wife informs me is the Scandinavian equivalent of an Italian guy spitting on the ground and giving you both middle fingers – and walked back into Umlaut Hall, or whatever the Swedes call their White House.  

The Jews, on the other hand, are quite famous for their sense of humor.  (Which you would know if you’ve ever seen the Three Stooges, Albert Brooks, Jerry Seinfeld, or Bernie Sanders.)  And they gave Greta the business in their press release, which I am not making up:

“The ‘selfie yacht’ is safely making its way to the shores of Israel.  The passengers…were provided with sandwiches and water, and are expected to return to their home countries.  The tiny amount of aid that wasn’t consumed by the ‘celebrities’ will be transferred to Gaza through real humanitarian channels.” 

Perfect!  But after that squirt of seltzer in the eyes and pie in the face, the Israelis also caught Greta’s Groupies with a little Schindler’s List surprise, taking her and her companions into a room where they began to screen the horrific film of the October 7th massacre.  According to Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz – and I couldn’t make that name up if I tried – “when they saw what [the film] was about, they refused to continue watching.” 

Because of course they did. 

And within 24 hours, Israel deported the whole rotten lot of them. 

Many people cheered Greta’s failure, but not me.  Because I think she got what she wanted, which was to cosplay as a brave, compassionate do-gooder whose noble mission was thwarted by the dastardly Jews. 

I wish that the Israelis had wrong-footed her by waving her through at the border into the hands of Hamas.  With the help of my conical purple wizard hat, I know exactly how that would have gone:

IDF guy:  Here you go, you morally superior Europeans.  Welcome to Gaza.

Greta (nervously): W-w-what?  Aren’t you going to arrest me, to stop me from bringing aid and sustenance to my Muslim fellow-sufferers under the Zionist jackboot?

IDF guy:  No, no.  You can go right on in.  You see those angry-looking men standing with their arms crossed and sneering?  Those are your Hamas “handlers.”

Greta:  Were those verbal quotation marks around “handlers?”  What do you mean by “handlers?”

IDF: Oh nothing.  Just that they’re going to handle you.

Hamasnik 1 (H1):  Who is that infidel harlot?  She looks familiar.

Hamasnik 2 (H2): I’ve never seen her before.  She has a very square head.

H1: What?

H2: Her head is strange.  Very distinctive shape.  If I had ever seen her before, I would remember that head.

Achmed (just joining them):  What is going on? 

H1: The Jews are letting those infidels come in.

Achmed: Why?  And what’s with that woman’s head?  It’s perfectly square.

H2 (to H1): I told you!  And her eyes are small and beady.

Achmed (snapping his fingers): I know!  That’s Greta Thunberg.  That obnoxious infidel harlot who lectures everybody all the time.

H1:  That’s it!  I knew I recognized her.  (doing an impression in a high-pitched voice) “How dare you?”

Achmed (in a similar voice): “You have stolen my dreams with your empty words!”

H2: I’ve never heard of her.

H1: You’re lucky.  She is terrible.  She screamed at the infidel men, and no one even flogged her!  I can’t imagine having to listen to her.

Achmed: She needs a ball gag to shut her up.

H1 and H2 (looking at each other, then at Achmed): A what?

Achmed:  A ball gag.  (looks at them)  You know, like in the movies, when a woman is… making noise, and…  Perhaps I’ve said too much.

H1:  Perhaps you have, Achmed!

Achmed (changing the subject):  Anyway, how about that head?  She’s the reason Allah made burkas, and told us to cover women with them.

H2: I’m not sure you could get a burka over that head! 

H1: If you did, it would look like you put a burka on a box! 

Achmed: And you’d still have to look at those weird beady eyes through the eye slot.

The three laughed, while Greta watched them, nervously.    

H1: I don’t know how those infidel men do it.

H2: Truly, they are very foolish. 

After a long moment of them staring, and Greta fidgeting…

H3:  Still, she can be my third wife.

H1: Isn’t your goat your third wife?

H3 (shrugging):  Then she can be my fourth wife. 

Greta (turning, dropping to the ground and grabbing the IDF guy’s legs):  Don’t leave me here.  Let me go back into Israel!

IDF guy: You want to come back into the nation of genocidal evildoers?

Greta: Yes, please.

IDF guy: What about the poor, oppressed Palestinians?   

H3 (calling and waving): Hello, infidel harlot?  Bring your square head over here, so I can smite you with the cane of instruction!

Greta (to H3):  No thank you.  But good luck with your intifada! (quietly, to the IDF guy, out of the corner of her mouth): Get…me…out of here.

And scene. 

Hamas delenda est!

Thoughts on LA, SCOTUS, and Joe Biden’s Autopen (posted 6/9/25)

Well, LA’s on fire.  Again. 

And this time, as in the past, the Woke Avengers team assembled.  Led by Gavin the Haircut and Karen “Absentee Woman” Bass – plus an assortment of anonymous, mediocre DEI hires who have never done an honest day’s work in their lives – they leapt into action. 

Annnddd… did nothing for 36 hours, at least.

Well, that’s not fair to the Big Mouth Bass, because she released an outraged statement saying, “We will not stand for this!” 

Unfortunately, by “this” she didn’t mean hordes of violent thugs rioting and attacking ICE agents enforcing our laws.  No, the “this” for which she won’t stand is…wait for it…ICE agents enforcing our laws.      

I’m not making that up.  Even though Bass tried to walk that idiotic statement back within about 12 hours, the damage had already been done. The Bass had taken the bait, and been hooked on her own stupidity.  And like another fish-faced far-left mayor (I’m looking at you, Lori Lightfoot…and that’s not easy), this might finally cause her to be reeled in.  Because she appears to have just been flipped to her dorsal side, and prepared for a political grilling that she probably won’t survive. 

But hey, it’s LA.  So maybe she’ll get a “catch and release” parole.   Angelenos sure seem to like doing that with violent illegals.

(They said, “Hey Martin, I bet you can’t come up with 8 juvenile fish-related insults in a story on riots in a Democrat city.” And I said, “Hold my bourbon and watch this.”)

Two bits of good news can come out of this debacle.  First, the pro-illegal-immigrant Left is showing who they are (again!), and that belies nearly everything they’ve said about illegal immigration for the last several decades.  It’s hard to make the case that the vast majority of illegals love America and just want to assimilate and contribute when thousands of them are attacking American law enforcement, burning American flags, and flying the Mexican flag.    

Second, Trump has learned from his past mistakes.  In 2020 he allowed antifa and BLM leftist mobs – and a school of a-political scavenging looters swimming in their wake (bonus fish reference!) – to run roughshod in dozens of leftist cities around the country.  He didn’t call out the National Guard, maybe because he figured that if leftist mayors and governors were content to let their cities burn and would fight any help he tried to give, they could reap what they’ve sown. 

But Trump 2.0 means bidness.  He’s firing as many swamp creatures as he can, blasting away at Ivy League Jew-haters like a truckload of explosive de-groining pagers, and hammering the left with EOs like Sonny Corleone tuning up Carlo with that garbage-can lid.  (If you haven’t watched the Godfather frequently enough to get that reference, begone!)

And this time around, the TWA (Triumvirate of Whoop Ass) – Trump, Hegseth and Hulk Homan™ (plus their chick sidekick in too much makeup and a too-tight costume, Kristi Noem, God bless her) – are going to make the violent radicals WISH the worst thing they had to deal with was some Rooftop Koreans!

Let the mass arrests begin, and the mass deportations accelerate!

Hey, speaking of fish out of water (boom!), I’ve got to give the most unexpected shout-out ever to – prepare to deploy your smelling salts – the three leftist SCOTUS justices!  Each of them wrote a clear and logical (i.e. conservative) UNANIMOUS ruling last Thursday, and I couldn’t be more shocked if I’d been flipping through the channels and came across AOC cogently explaining the Theory of Relativity!

Kagan wrote Smith & Wesson vs. Mexico, finding that of course S&W can’t be held responsible for what violent scumbags do with their product, so mind your business – along with your cartels and fentanyl – Mexico! 

Sotomayor wrote Catholic Charities vs. Wisconsin, finding that of course you can’t discriminate against a religious charity just because you’re a Christophobic bigot.

And perhaps most surprising of all, Ketanji Jeanne-Pierre (HA!) wrote Ames v. Ohio Youth Services, finding that of course discrimination is unconstitutional, even if it’s “reverse” discrimination against whitey or straight people. 

I’m flabbergasted, and don’t know whether to scratch my watch or wind my butt.  But just in case this is a sign of the End of Days – and how could it not be? – please get yourself right with Jesus, pronto!

Finally, going from the most unexpected story ever, to perhaps the most expected story ever, I give you the latest in the Joe Biden auto-pen controversy. 

Last week Biden refuted the contention that others had signed many official documents for him without his knowledge, due to his well-documented descent from low IQ hack to confused, to dementia-ridden, to full-blown, stage 4, cuckoo-fried-chicken status.

When his forthcoming statement was announced, many observers watched with bated breath, wondering whether his voice would be steady, his posture upright, and his delivery graceful.

Annnnddddd… he released a written statement instead.

Because obviously the best possible way to refute an accusation that you are too far gone to make a clear statement, so someone else had to produce writing on your behalf, is to…produce a statement written by someone else on your behalf.

Brilliant! 

How do I know for certain that Joe Biden didn’t write “his” statement? 

Because I am a professional student of the written word, with a mind like a steel trap and keen insight into all matters linguistic.

If you don’t believe me – and to quote St. Greta the Self-Righteous, “How dare you?!  You have stolen my dreams with your empty words!” – here is Biden’s laughably phony statement:   

“Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency.  I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations. Any suggestion that I didn’t is ridiculous and false.”

And now, here is how that statement would have appeared, IF Brandon had actually written it himself:

“Let me be Claire.  I made the incisions in my presh-dentsy.  I made declensions about pardons, execrable borders, luhsshlation and presti… prestidigi…  Come on man!  Any digestion that I didn’t is raddish and face.  I mean…rhombus and pulse.  You know, you know the thing.   Ummm… uhhh……………………………………………………… We finally beat Medicare.”

And, scene.

Hamas delenda est!

A Little Political Taxonomy(posted 6/4/25)

Perceptive and regular readers of my columns may have noticed that I am periodically annoyed by our elite leftist leaders in DC, the MSM, and the Ivy League. 

If by “periodically” I mean “7 days a week, when I’m not asleep.”  And if by “annoyed” I mean “infuriated.”  And I do, in both cases, mean that. 

But there is another type of nationally prominent lefty who just frustrates me, because they demonstrate the ability to think clearly and call out problems on both sides…but then can’t sustain that and come to the right conclusion.

There are so many people of the first type from whom to choose, and their failings are so obvious as to need little explication.  So for today I’ll discuss just one, and his actions just this week, on just one issue. 

The Dem in question is Jamie Raskin, and the issue is the terrorist attack in Boulder, Colorado on Sunday. 

By now you all know the basic details: Muslim illegal immigrant named Muhamad (unexpectedly!) who hates Jews (unexpectedly!) uses a makeshift flamethrower and Molotov cocktails to badly burn 8 Jews who were peacefully marching to plead for the release of the hostages still being held by Hamas terrorists in Gaza.  (The terrorist reportedly used fire in his attack because he had been unable to get a gun, due to his illegal status.)   At least two of his victims had to be airlifted to a hospital, and if they survive, will face a long and extremely painful recovery.

A few more details make the story even more infuriating.  At least one of the victims was an octogenarian Holocaust survivor.  A local police official – hours after video had widely circulated showing the terrorist screaming, “Free Palestine!” and, “I did it for Gaza!” – insisted that the scumbag’s motives were not known.

Then a genius named Juliette Kayyem got on CNN late that evening and blasted Kash Patel and Dan Bongino for having declared that the obviously targeted terror attack was a “targeted terror attack.”  Juliette was not buying that small step to a well-supported conclusion.

But soft! What ditz through yonder camera speaks?  Tis Juliette, and she’s a total moron: “It makes law enforcement look disorganized, and it makes the FBI look so juvenile, like why are you getting ahead of the police chief who says, ‘I don’t know what this is?’”

Did I mention that Juliette is a former DHS official in the Obama administration, and a former Harvard professor?  Because of course she is.

Anyway, Muhamad came to the US on a tourist visa in 2022.  When he broke our laws by overstaying that visa, the Biden administration demonstrated their “tough on crime” bona fides by… rewarding him with a work visa for two more years!  And then he illegally stayed again, when that visa expired.  (Please insert an all-caps “Unexpectedly” after each of the three previous sentences.)

So to recap: an anti-Semitic Muslim illegal immigrant carried out a horrific attack using fire.  From that set of circumstances, one might logically draw the conclusion that we have serious problems involving vicious anti-Semitism, mass illegal immigration, and even a statistically over-represented tendency to violence among some (not all) adherents to a certain Religion of Peace.  And possibly a “fire-control” problem.

But not if one is Jamie Raskin D-(‘oh!)- Maryland, who turned his awesome Sherlockian powers of deduction toward Boulder, and quickly arrived at the culprit: Guns! 

The poor dunce went on MSNBC, and said, “We are still in the midst of a gun violence epidemic…. This is why we are for a ban on military-style assault weapons in the country.  Our lax gun laws are a danger to everybody in America.”

I’m not making that up. He looked at a multi-faceted crime with zero guns involved, and decided that guns were the problem.

I thought about guns when I saw that news story, too.  But my thoughts were more along the lines of, “I wish that had happened in Texas, Florida, Tennessee, or some other free state where citizens exercise their 2nd amendment rights more vigorously.  Because if it had, that hateful creep would have been lucky to light up his first octogenarian before he was stitched with bullets from his tiny groin to his evil cranium.”

And THEN we would have all been spared that smoking bullet-magnet’s idiotic political slogans, and Juliette would have been justified in scratching her empty head and wondering what his motive had been.

So Juliette and Jamie are the type of leftists who drive me crazy, because they are propagandist hacks who wouldn’t tell an inconvenient truth or make a good-faith argument if their lives depended on it.

But the second type – and there aren’t a lot of them – are frustrating, because they often show that they are capable of clear thought and smart criticism, and yet continue to make common cause with those like Raskin, Schumer, et al.  

John Fetterman is one.  Since he recovered from his stroke, he’s frequently been a beacon of sanity in the Dem congress.  He’s called out the anti-Semitism on the left, praised Trump’s closing of the border, and criticized his party’s shameful coverup of Biden’s physical and mental infirmity.  But he still votes with them the vast majority of the time, even though he’s proven that he knows better.

The best example of this type is Bill Maher, who I think I’ve written about before.  He’s a condescending egotist who I wouldn’t want to hang out with, but he’s intelligent and often very funny, and he regularly takes a scalpel (and a machete) to woke errors and idiocies like nobody else on the left.  And yet, at the end of the day and after demonstrating that he’s got 20/20 political vision…he puts his leftist blinders back on and returns to rote conservative bashing.

Or, as one of my favorite Bible verses puts it, “As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly.”

I don’t watch Maher’s program, but I often watch clips of it that show up on my various political feeds, and his discussion of Harvard’s self-destructive arrogance this past weekend was a good example. 

He spends nearly 6 solid minutes tearing Ivy League education a new one, with insight and sarcasm.  He points out that students aren’t being educated but indoctrinated, and indicts woke intolerance, feckless administrators, and the hypocritical arrogance of gullible, entitled youth.  He points out that Harvard is “an assh*le factory.”

But then – so frustrating! – he puts on his pinko-colored glasses, and goes every kind of wrong.

The pivot comes when he grudgingly says that Harvard does turn out some decent people.  But his first example tells you all you need to know: “But for every Barack Obama, there are two Josh Hawleys.”  And he doesn’t mean the comparison as an insult to Obama – which it should be – or a compliment to Hawley.  Which it should be. 

For the next 3 minutes, he lobs evidence-less ad hominem attacks at Hawley, and then lists those on the right who have Ivy League degrees with an acid tone of disdain: Vivek, DeSantis, Cruz, SCOTUS members, etc. 

That’s it.  He just lists them.  He doesn’t cite any stupid or evil things they’ve done, or any of their flaws.  He just sneers their names, and his audience of trained seals applauds accordingly. 

I keep finding myself thinking of the Parable of the Talents, and how those who squander greater gifts are judged more harshly than the less gifted who don’t make much of themselves.  I look at dullards like Hank Johnson, AOC, or Eric Swalwell, and I’m not sure they even know how dumb or wrong they usually are. 

But then I look at someone like Maher, deftly dissecting the destructive foolishness of the Left, before immediately backsliding into juvenile, simple-minded smears of the Right.  I watch him proving that he knows better, and then acting like he doesn’t, and I shake my head.       

I don’t know which is worse. 

But I do know that I’d rather be on our side – even with all of our squishes and weasels! – than on theirs.         

Hamas delenda est!