trump – Page 9 – Martin Simpson

Lawfare Is Looking Shaky, & Some Military Bad-Arsery (posted 2/23/24)

I know that the worst of the elite left is cheering that the corrupt NY judge and evil Letitia DeVille have run their banana republic lawsuit scam on Trump, and he’s now on the hook for almost half a billion dollars to get it eventually overturned.

I’m so outraged and disgusted by that sham trial – and the other three! – that I can’t think straight, and I can’t add anything to the story that others here have not already said.

Except that I hope that the huge middle of the electorate – the independents, the casual and semi-apathetic voters, the RINOs and the mushy centrists – is paying enough attention and is sane enough to recognize the blatant corruption of the Dems, and punish them for it in November.

In the meantime, I wish that I had Trump’s ear, so that I could encourage him to stay focused on the important stuff. He’s already got us in the conservative base with him, and he’s got a slight lead in the polls. He just needs to remember the old political cliché: “When your opponent is decomposing before our eyes, stay out of the way.”

(I’ve paraphrased that slightly.)

For example, when the Hur report came out last week and Biden decided to stumble out and prove that he is tickety boo, mental-function-wise, he made things infinitely worse. He yelled at the clouds, insisted that of course he knows what year his son what’s-his-name died, and bragged about how he got the president of Mexico to open the Panama Canal so the Gazanians could go see the pyramids.

For the next 24 hours, the lefty establishment went to Defcon 4, insisting that the Hur report didn’t say what it said, and you didn’t see what you just saw.

A flop-sweating lineup of MSM empty heads and Democrat hacks mumbled that sure, when he’s on camera Biden’s got the gait and demeanor of Bela Lugosi on horse tranquilizers, and he speaks like Ozzy Osbourne after a Fetterman-esque stroke.

But behind closed doors, the guy cavorts around the Oval like Fred Astaire at the height of his powers! When he talks foreign policy, it’s like Benjamin Disraeli and Metternich had a baby. And his enunciation! You remember when Professor Henry Higgins was trying to teach diction to Eliza Doolittle?

It’s like that! Biden is at the top of his game, we tells ya! He stands astride the world like a modern colossus!

Trump should have pulled a giant, gilded throne up next to that media dumpster fire and roasted marshmallows over it, wearing a big Cheshire cat grin and saying nothing.

Instead, he got in front of a camera and said that he told our NATO allies that if they didn’t pay for their own defense, he’d tell Putin to do whatever he wanted to them. Then he insinuated that Nikki Haley’s husband may have left her, saying, “Where’s her husband? Where is he?”

Why?!

It doesn’t matter that he’s right about NATO’s recent under-funding of their own defense. Many dumb and uninformed people think Trump is too friendly with Putin. Of course, they’re wrong! But is it helpful to say that?

And spoiler alert: Haley’s husband is in the Army National Guard, and is deployed overseas. Which is irrelevant anyway, because you’re beating her by 30 points in her home state, and she’ll soon be out of the race. There is no reason you should even say her name again.

Especially since Biden is out there throwing up on his shoes three times a week, and the media is dying to cover ANY story other than that!

Please, Mr. President. Don’t give them any other stories. We all know that they hate your guts. Don’t make their job easier!

Now onto happier news. And there really is some.

We seem to be turning the corner on the recent trans madness, with more and more pushback against the groomers and narcissistic activists. The first of what will surely be a tidal wave of lawsuits have been filed against docs and hospitals that have done mutilating and sterilizing surgeries on kids who later realize what was done to them.

And if common sense and the Hippocratic oath hasn’t stopped the butchers yet, gigantic financial judgments against them will likely do the trick.

Even though our borders are still disastrously open, the decisions by Abbott and DeSantis to send the illegals to big blue cities and states is causing just the opening battles of blue-on-blue warfare that is going to be schadenfreude-tastic to watch. And if we can get Trump back in the White House, he’ll have a lot of support to reverse course immediately.

In fact, when it comes to fighting illegal immigration, City Journal (which I recommend to everyone) had a recent article proving how laughably wrong the leftist Cassandras were when they attacked DeSantis’ tougher immigration law SB 1718, which took effect last July.

The law invalidated driver’s licenses given to illegals by blue states, required hospitals to quantify uncompensated care given to illegals, and forced employers to use E-verify to check new hires’ legal status.

Of course the lefties tore their garments and gnashed their teeth, predicting that Florida’s workforce would plummet by at least 10%, and the economy would crater. The state Dem party chair warned that, “Ron’s ‘woke’ war will cause prices to increase on all goods and services,” and other hysterics wailed about the inflation that was sure to follow.

Annnnddddd… the opposite happened. Unexpectedly!

Florida’s economy grew by 6 % in the third quarter, the population growth since then was 2^nd in the nation, and food shortages and inflation never materialized.

I mean, other than the commonplace nationwide inflation caused by…Bidenomics!

You might think that birthday boy CO and I, as two of the state’s most influential citizens, spend a lot of time conferring on such economic issues, perhaps over expensive cigars and Kentucky’s finest bourbon.

But you’d be wrong. Because CO sent me a text last week, and it was about something far, far cooler: the recent hellfire missile strike that our military used to take out a smelly terrorist chieftain in Iraq earlier this month.

Did I mention that the missile in question was one that used six gigantic flying blades rather than the usual explosives, and that it is called “the flying ginsu”?! (I know: how can a country capable of that kind of awesomeness be losing a shipping war to a ragtag bunch of Houthi pirates?)

(You know the reason: Bidenomics!)

So the Iran-backed leader of Kataib Hezbollah, Abu Baqr as-Saadi, was riding in a car when a missile dropped onto his car, with the aforementioned flying blades being released right before impact. Thus turning his car into a convertible, right before turning as-Saadi into “a-Salad”.

Yes! The Flying Ginsu! It slices, it dices, it circumsizes and it beheads!

More please.

Finally, you probably haven’t heard about this, but a great American died at the age of 74 on February 12^th.

His name was Chuck Mawhinney, and he was the deadliest Marine sniper in Corps history, with 103 confirmed kills and another 216 probable kills during his 16 months in Vietnam.

His biggest single day was, ironically enough, Valentine’s Day of 1969. He took up a position along a river that a platoon of Viet Cong wanted to cross, and he picked off 16 of them, persuading the rest to retreat.

Nine days later, he turned 20!

According to news stories, after the war he lived quietly, working for the forest service and fathering three sons, and not even telling his wife about his sniper service. It wasn’t until a fellow Marine sniper wrote a book mentioning him in 1991 that he got his first public attention.

His obituary contains many indications of what a great man he was, starting with the fact that, “His friends, neighbors and co-workers had no idea that the soft-spoken man had killed at least 103 enemy combatants.”

(Just like the mild-mannered Kiwi I met in Europe who had urinated in Hitler’s bathtub in the Eagle’s Nest, Mawhinney was no braggart. As opposed to, say, I would be, if I had done anything anywhere near that cool. “Hey, I know you’re just doing an oil change for me. But have I mentioned that I killed several hundred commies in Vietnam? And that I pissed in Ho Chi Minh’s bathtub?”)

In what turned out to be the last year of his life, Mawhinney was approached by a writer named Jim Lindsay, who got him to agree to let Lindsay write a book about him. That book came out recently, and it’s called, “The Sniper: The Untold Story of the Marine Corps’ Greatest Marksman of All Time.”

And it is the next book that I will be reading.

“He listened to other people tell their stories,” said Lindsay. “He never told his story. Nobody knew he’d been in the war or what he’d done. He was a good man. He was a good father, a good husband and an asset to the community. He was a pretty cool cat.”

Indeed. We should all be so lucky to have an obituary like that. Plus, he killed between 103 and 319 Communist soldiers!

RIP, Charles “Chuck” Mawhinney. Semper Fi.

Also, a very happy birthday to the Founder of the Feast, our very own CO!

Also, as ever…

Hamas delenda est!

A Few Thoughts About How Far Left the Dems Appear to be Moving (posted 2/5/24)

With every passing week, I’m increasingly struck by how fast the gap is growing between red and blue states, and how wide that gap is getting. And also by what seems like the single factor that explains it: while the political right has more or less maintained its position on the political spectrum, the left has moved far, far to the left.

Elon Musk made the point back when he was thinking about buying Twitter. He shared someone’s simple drawings of his political position. The drawings featured three horizontal lines, labeled “2008,” “2012,” and “2021,” and three stick figures, labeled “conservative,” “me,” and a leftist.

In all three drawings, the conservative stick figure was on the right side, and the stick figure labelled “me” was in the same spot, roughly in the middle of the line. But in 2008, the leftist figure was labeled “my fellow liberal,” and the “me” character was a little left of center, and close to the liberal.

In 2012, the leftist was shown racing to the left, and was labeled “my fellow liberal?” and the “me” character was now just barely left of center.

In 2021, the leftist was standing to the far, far left, labeled “woke ‘progressive’,” and the center line had shifted so far that the “me” character was now about 1/3 of the way right of center.

That drawing sums up our national politics pretty well. It seems like an ideological bookend to Reagan’s old statement, “I didn’t leave the Democrat party; the Democrat party left me.” Musk has the same message to all the lefties who worshipped him 10 years ago and excoriate him as far-right now: he didn’t move, but they went so far left that they lost their minds.

We all see this in just about every big political issue of the day.

On abortion, Dems as recently as Bill and Cankles McPantsuit used to chant the mantra that abortion should be, “safe, legal and rare.” That never made much sense. (What other constitutional “rights” could you apply that to? Would you say that people should exercise their freedom of speech safely, legally and only rarely? Should they use their freedom of religion that way?) But it was at least a nod to the inherent tragedy of abortion.

Dems were also queasy about late-term abortion, insisting that it basically never happens, and trying their best to avoid the subject.

Now the activist left is super abortion-positive! They urge each other to “shout your abortion,” and vacuous actresses give acceptance speeches in which they say how glad they are that they were able to get abortions so that they could increase their career success.

The same goes for gay and trans issues. Obama ran in 2008 as anti-gay marriage, citing his “Christian faith!” (This at a time when many people across the spectrum supported “civil unions” as a compromise that would allow gay couples the civil rights of married couples while maintaining traditional marriage.)

Of course he was lying, which he tacitly admitted when he flipped his position the minute public opinion shifted enough to allow it. But as the old saying goes, “Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue,” and our society could still tell the difference between the two just a few years ago.

The trans craziness is an even starker example. Even a short time ago, if a crazed doctor started chopping off children’s healthy sex organs and chemically castrating them because they were “really” the opposite sex, that doctor would have been jailed or committed to a psych ward.

And if men demanded access to women’s and girls’ showers and athletic competitions, or seriously injured females in physical sports, they would have been jailed immediately. Assuming they survived the community-sanctioned beatings they would have gotten from those girls’ fathers.

Leftists used to tacitly welcome illegal immigration, since they knew most illegals would become future Democrat voters. But they weren’t crazy enough to completely open the borders, and ship the illegals all over the country, and give them cash and prizes to come in.

And while Dems were never exactly “tough on crime” or fans of the 2^nd amendment, they would at least jail repeat offenders, and require high pre-trial bail before letting them out.

When I was a wee lad in Illinois, Chicago was run by Democrats, just as it is today.

But in 1968, when crowds of mostly young leftist dopes caused trouble in Chicago, Mayor Daley sent cops wading into the crowds with tear gas and billy clubs, and carted them off to jail, even if only for a short time. And those were protestors who actually had some legitimate complaints (being drafted into an increasingly unpopular war), and who were being obnoxiously disruptive, but not burning down entire city blocks and injuring hundreds of cops for months on end.

And now violent criminal aliens are allowed into the country, shipped up to NYC, and allowed to physically beat NY cops, and not only are they not jailed and deported, they are released immediately, without even having to post bail?!

I know you all know this, and I do too, but I’m still regularly shocked by how far our blue cities have fallen, and how fast!

Ugh! The only cold comfort I can get from many of these stories is that so many Democrats are now receiving the karmic arse-whipping that they deserve, providing me with a refreshing spring of schadenfreude, and the ongoing opportunity to mock them.

Speaking of which, have you heard that Stacy “A-1” Abrams has just laid off most of the staff of her “voting rights” (i.e. voting fraud) group, the ironically named “Fair Fight?” It seems the rotund, race-baiting election denier raised around $100 million between 2018-2021.

Annnnndddddd… they’re bankrupt!

She’s gone 0-2 in GA governor elections, and 0-for-three years in legal battles to advance the cause of stealing elections. After her group lost their most recent legal challenge against the conservative group “True the Vote,” they are now $600K in the hole, with nothing to show for it.

Also in Georgia, Fani Willis’ multiplying problems continue to entertain and delight. Just like most of Trump’s pursuers in the bogus lawfare cases against him, she is finding out how stupid it was to throw rocks at Trump when she was living in a glass house.

Or in her case, a glass house of ill repute.

Yes, it’s extra funny when someone embroiled in a sex scandal has a name like “Fani.” (Remember how much fun we had with Anthony Weiner?)

Just as it was extra funny when an old video resurfaced from when Fani was running for DA in April of 2020. In an interview with local television, she laughingly asserted, “I certainly will not be choosing people to date that work under me (sic).”

So she’s definitely made a 180-degree turn on that issue. In fact, if I wasn’t such a refined and classy gentleman, I might even say that she went from cowgirl to reverse cowgirl on that issue.

But I definitely would NOT say that “working under her” is exactly the right phrase to describe boy toy Nathan Wade, whom she hired for an unreasonably high salary to go after Trump. Nor would I say that Wade’s previous inexperience – having worked only with low-level criminal cases, and not a single felony trial – makes him a perfect example of the Peter principle.

Because I am obviously far too mature for that.

However, at least one sexually compromised leftist is going unpunished. (Which probably disappoints the little weirdo.)

I’m talking about the legislative aide who was depraved and stupid enough to record himself in a Senate hearing room engaging in a squalid display that, even though it wasn’t baseball-related, involved a great deal of pitching and catching. And then he was stupid enough to post that video online.

When that behavior caused a scandal – unexpectedly! – the little creep insisted that, “I love my job and would never disrespect my workplace.”

Yes, everybody can see that you loved your job. Some might say you loved it too much.

And if you don’t think that making a gay porn video in your office is disrespecting the workplace, what more do you think you’d have to add to achieve that? Scented candles and circus animals?

Don’t answer that!

Anyway, the creep was allowed to resign, and the Capitol police have just announced that they won’t be pressing any charges.

On an entirely unrelated note, remember when the MSM and the Dems (but I repeat myself) got the vapors because the J6ers walked through the capitol building – fully clothed, and most of them with police escort?

That was a horrific “defilement of the sacred seat of government” that sent them all to their fainting couches in shock.

And yes, please feel free to make your own “defiling the seat of government” joke here. Because as I may have mentioned, I’m way too refined and classy for that.

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!