Tag: writing

Tennessee Trip, Israel Takes Iran Apart, + Book & Video Recommendations (posted 6/18/25)

I’m back from Tennessee, and still processing the trip. 

Heartbreakingly, mom didn’t recognize me three different times over the week, but only for about 10 minutes at a time, and the good moments outnumbered the bad.  I had to remind her literally a few hundred times that she lives there, and that I was visiting from Florida while my sis and her husband were in Memphis for a week.  “So you’re my babysitter,” she said, but without rancor.

She wears glasses on a cord around her neck, and has hearing aids.  When I took her to church on Sunday morning we were cutting it close on time, so I didn’t notice that she had neither her glasses nor hearing aids until she couldn’t hear the sermon very well, and also couldn’t follow along in her Bible.

“You’re not much of a babysitter, are you?” she said in the middle of the service.  And because her hearing aids were at home in the charger, she said it loudly.  We got a few looks.     

I’ve always been able to make mom laugh, and she’s never so much herself as when she’s laughing.  She’s always loved running jokes (I come by it naturally), and I got her with a stupid one dozens of times.  I’d ask, “Why did the chicken cross the road?” and she remembers that cliched old set-up well enough to roll her eyes and start to make some dumb reply, which I’d interrupt with, “Be-CAWS!” in my eerily accurate chicken voice.

Each time she’d get startled, then remember that I’d got her with that one many times before, and she’d laugh at the stupidity of the joke and my shamelessness in repeating it.  If being startled and then belly laughing could cure Alzheimer’s, I’d be up for a Nobel prize in medicine. 

We took day trips to small towns in the area each day. On Saturday we went to the small town of Pulaski, but arrived to find the downtown cordoned off and the place jammed with people celebrating Flag Day.  (Because: Tennessee!) 

But because it’s 2025, there was also a small group of protestors doing their “No Kings” thing.  There were maybe 30 of them, and you could tell that we weren’t in Seattle or LA: they skewed older and well-behaved, and their signs weren’t obscene, and they had American flags.  That could be because they know their audience in Tennessee – folks don’t take kindly to violent rioting by Mexican-flag-waving d-bags there – but I prefer to think it’s because they are well-meaning people who are exercising their free speech rights and protesting for a cause they believe in. 

Of course, I think it’s silly to believe that Trump is a fascist or would-be king on the verge of establishing his monarchy.  One subtle clue that that’s not the case: over a thousand groups protested in 50 states, and nobody was beheaded or pierced by crossbow bolts, and there was no drawing or quartering.  No one was even arrested or hassled, unless they were violent.   (In which case I would have rooted for a healthy bout of crossbowing.)   

Of course my sweet mom didn’t know what was going on, but when she saw all of those people holding flags and signs and waving, she waved back happily.  Which is one more poignant memory for me.  Mom was happy to encourage people waving American flags, and the protestors now feel like they’ve reached at least one supportive old lady – not knowing that she’s got Alzheimer’s and has no idea what ideas they are supporting. 

So God bless us, everyone, I guess.

Meanwhile in the larger world, Israel was making me very happy by dropping a whole series of kosher kabooms all over the Iranian nuke program and the top people involved in it! 

People didn’t think Israel could top the exploding pagers, then the exploding walkie-talkies, then the killing of various Sinwars and Nasrallahs (plus assorted Achmeds waiting for their chance to move up from triple A – and yes, the “A”s all stand for “a-hole”) with drones and missiles.

And Israel said, “Hold my Manischewitz and watch this.” 

I love every detail.  The Israelis built a drone base inside Iran, from which they launched drones to destroy a bunch of Iranian missiles and launchers.  They devised a ruse to keep a bunch of top Iranian generals in one place so that they could wipe them out with one missile.  (Sure, those guys buy their missiles wholesale and not retail, but there’s no sense in wasting them!) 

It’s a sign of the mullahs’ dysfunction that they steer young Iranian science nerds away from fields that would improve the world and the lives of the Iranian people, and toward developing Jew-killing nukes instead.  And since Friday night, Iran has become a much less nerdy place, inshallah. (That’s Islam talk for, “I regret all of my decisions.”)

I enjoyed the hilarious clip that CO (peace be upon him) posted of the Iranian Rachel Maddow, aka the gal reading the news when a “Hebrew Hello” hit very near the newsroom.  (She’s got more burka and sex appeal than Rachel, but less America-hatred.)  And though my Farsi is a little rusty, I think I’ve come up with a pretty accurate translation of what was said in that short video.

She starts out with the usual, “Death to America!  Death to Israel!  Trump is a fascist!  We like the cut of Gavin Newsom’s jib.  We will wipe out the evil pig-dogs with our swords of justice and—”  BAM!  WHAMMO! KAPOW!  (Yes, I did watch a little Batman when I was a kid, thanks for asking.)

The lights went out and came back on, and everything on camera shook for a few seconds.    

“Aaaiiiiieeeee!” she continued. “I’ve soiled my beekeeper outfit. Forget that pig-dog comment.  MAGA!  And also MIGA! (Make Israel [and Iran] Great Again)  I for one welcome our new Hebraic overlords!”

And, scene.

One other highlight was the pic of where an Israeli missile hit one specific apartment’s bedroom, killing a top Iranian general and the leaving the rest of the building remarkably undamaged.  Reports that his three mistresses staying in the apartment at the time – two of them goats – were also unharmed have not been confirmed.

Finally, I’ve got a quick book and a song recommendation.  The book is “The Promise,” by Robert Crais.  Crais has written over 20 detective novels featuring main characters Elvis Cole and Joe Pike, and I thought I’d read them all.  But I had somehow missed The Promise (2015).  I especially liked a great sub-plot involving a military K-9 with a second career as a police dog in this one.  (As always, they had me at “K-9.”)

The video is for Oliver Anthony’s new country/blues song, “Scornful Woman.”  He released it two weeks ago, and I heard about it on Joe Rogan’s show right before I headed up to TN.  Anthony went from unknown to a famous singer/songwriter with his anti-politician song “Rich Men North of Richmond” less than two years ago.  His songs are always raw and personal, and now that his wife has filed for divorce, this one is 3 minutes of pain from a talented musician.

The video and song were recorded in a small house in West Virginia during a snowstorm in January, and the visuals are great: an old barn and three big dogs in the snow and in the house, and Anthony and two other musicians recording in make-shift conditions inside.  Interspersed video clips of firefighters battling a burning house echo the lyrics perfectly.

Anthony sings and plays a Dobro resonating guitar and drums, and he’s joined by two virtuosos, one on the violin – although in this context, it’s really a fiddle – and one on the electric guitar.  (“Hey Martin,” you might be asking, if you don’t have my vast musical expertise, “What’s the difference between a violin and a fiddle?”  A violin has “strings,” whereas a fiddle has “strangs.”  You’re welcome.)

The song slides back and forth between grieving and furious, and Anthony’s delivery elevates his plain but evocative lyrics.  (When he rhymes “nightmare” with “right there,” both simple lines cut deep.)  And the two instrumental solos tear through the small house like the fire imagery does. 

The fiddle player goes first, somehow ripping a guitar solo out of a violin.  And when the guitarist closes things out, he wails on his instrument like it owes him money, and possibly slept with his best friend, too.  The final effect suggests three talented musicians who just went through horrific divorces and are dealing with it the way men do: by howling and breaking things.

The pivotal lines are a cri de coeur: “And the court said fifty-fifty, but the math don’t seem right, with a scornful woman.”

Whoo.  The song is great, and painful, and it makes me very grateful that I miraculously closed on my smoke show wife 36 years ago, and have never had to feel her scorn.

Hamas delenda est!

While I Spend Time in TN, LA Goes Crazy and Israel Goes Roman on Iran (posted 6/14/25)

So I drove up to Tennessee on Tuesday to spend a week with my mom while the sis and her husband take a vacation, and it’s been a little rough.  Mom’s still putting up a game fight, but her Alzheimer’s is breaking our hearts as it continues on its cruel path. 

The ratio of lucid moments to foggy ones is diminishing, but she’s at her best in the daytime, and we’ve had some laughs and some good food.  I’m storing up more good memories, and trying to appreciate every moment with her before I head back to Florida on Monday.

The nature of this kind of visit has imparted a little fogginess to my own thoughts, and put me into the kind of weird, suspended animation that I always feel while traveling.  The world is still going on around me, but I’m disconnected from it in a way I’m not when I’m at home and in my own element.  I catch a few snippets of news during the day, and then a bit more before bed, with insufficient time to digest most of it.

Of course, I managed to be here during a slow news week, right?

Holy cats!  Before leaving home I barely had a chance to consider Greta’s Grifter Flotilla being stopped by the Israelis before they could deliver to the starving Gazans their desperately needed bounty of… four cheese sandwiches and a bag of chocolate chip cookies that someone had already half finished.

I sensed fodder for a solid column out of the Doom Pixie’s prevails, but that story was quickly pushed to the back-burner by the developing story of the LA riot, during which the leftists have beclowned themselves six ways to Sunday. 

And that was just by last Sunday.  Since then, they’ve beclowned themselves twenty-two ways to Thursday, with much more beclownation to come. 

Melting-face Maxine Waters – a fright wig atop a fright face – got a door slammed in her face by a no-nonsense employee when she tried to awe him with her congressional privilege.  Later she confronted some armed National Guardsmen and challenged them to gun her down, warning them that, “If you’re gonna shoot me, you’d better shoot straight.”  (“Whew!” said Mayor Pete.  “I’m safe.”)  

Tragically for the nation, no one took Waters up on her offer.  So she was still un-shot when she later gave a press conference in which she categorically denied that there had been any violence during the violent riots.

Unlike most of the lying leftists, who were smart enough to downplay or excuse the violence of their mobs (“It wasn’t a problem until Trump called out the guard, 99% of LA is totally peaceful,” etc.), Mad Maxine swung for the fences, denying what PWFE (People With Functioning Eyes) had actually seen. “Don’t think that somehow, because they called out the National Guard, there was violence.  There was no violence! I was on the street!  I know!” 

Some were tempted to believe her, because she did look like she had been on the street.  More specifically, like she’d been tossed onto the street and landed face-first.  And then bounced several times, still face-first.

But even those who tried to be cagier, and just downplay the violence, were humiliated by a combination of inept staffers and a loving God with a great sense of humor.  Two Dem congresswomen – the one whose name I remember is Judy Chu – appeared on a CNN interview, with their heads in a small box on the screen, while most of the screen was showing live coverage from LA.  

So as Judy prattled on about how the protestors were really remarkably restrained and peaceful, right beside her stupid head was a giant video of clouds of black smoke roiling up from burning cars, and clips of rioters throwing rocks and chunks of concrete at cop cars.  Many commenters observed the parallels to the infamous video from a blue city in 2020, in which a “journalist” insisted that the protests were “mostly peaceful,” as he was framed against the hellish conflagration of an entire city block behind him.  

Two of the most iconic images of the latest unveiling of the left’s true nature have been the moron on a motorcycle riding around a burning car while waving a Mexican flag, and the Waymo cars being devoured in roaring fires.

The fact that they were Waymo cars brings extra layers of irony to the rioters’ behavior.  If they had attacked vehicles that are logically associated with what they are ostensibly outraged by – an ICE van, cop cars – that would still be evil, but at least comprehensible as the kind of political gesture that narcissistic social justice warriors would make. 

But Waymo has never done anything to these troglodytes, other than offer an innovative way to get across town that is much cheaper than the car they can’t afford.  (Because living in mommy’s basement and whining on Bluesky has no monetary value whatsoever.) 

And the technological sophistication it took to develop and deploy driverless vehicles poignantly contrasts with the mindless urge to destroy that motivates the thugs who can barely make a Molotov cocktail work.  (And that involves fire, one of mankind’s first discoveries!)

That technology also highlights the petty cruelty of the rioters.  They call a vehicle made by a company that has done nothing wrong, and it faithfully shows up, and welcomes them with open doors.  And the mouth-breathing scavengers set it on fire, and dance around its flaming corpse.  

But then the horrific story of the first-ever Boeing Dreamliner crash in India…battled for news time with a handful of super-satisfying arrests of some of the worst of the bad bunch of leftist nihilists who are being quickly caught during riots. 

But that was bumped by Senator (guess which party?) Alex Padilla’s painful theater-kid turn when he interrupted Kristi Noem’s press conference by trying to bum-rush her while hollering dishonest non-sequiturs with all the persuasive power of a bag lady disrupting a city council meeting with a shrill screed about the Bilderbergers and the Trilateral Commission. 

Then last night, the news starts coming in from Israel:  Netanyahu has gone full Michael Corleone at the Christening, and today he’s settling all family business.  Initial reports are that Israel killed a bunch of top iranian generals and nuclear scientists, and blasted the most prominent nuclear enrichment sites, along with some missile batteries that Iran might use to retaliate against Israel.  And new waves of strikes are on the way as we speak.

Reading about that made me wish that we’d consulted with the IDF months ago.  Because if they could pull off that pager masterpiece, I’m sure they could have equipped some Waymo vehicles with ball-bearing-laden plastic explosives, or exotic poisonous snakes in tiny catapults, or a noxious gas that causes explosive diarrhea and temporary blindness when the doors open.  Then our guys could just wait at a parking lot full of Waymos, until one-by-one, the vehicles get called by some anarchist creep, and pull out and hum away, carrying their surprise for the malevolent revolutionaries.

Am I saying that we should set up violent nihilists to become diced, blind, envenomed and beshitten because of their own evil schemes?

I’m saying we should have that conversation.

Okay, I might not be able to write another column until after I get back home on Monday night.  But in the meantime, pray for our law enforcement, root for the Israeli badasses bringing the karma to Iran, and as always…

Hamas delenda est!

My Birthday, and More Dems Behaving Badly (posted 5/28/25)

Before I left on the cousins’ trip, I’d made some notes on a few “lefties behaving badly” stories.  Even though those examples are now two weeks old, and there have been hundreds more similar stories since then, I like to think that these stories are evergreen.  So I will share them with you now.

But first, I have to acknowledge a painful reality.  Today is my birthday, and I am 63 years old.  Some of you who have seen my most recent video – in which I was rocking my gray, poison-ivy beard – are probably saying to yourselves, “No way, Martacus!  You don’t look a day over 61 and a half.”

But sadly, that’s not the case.  I can verify for you youngsters that all of those cliches about life going by too fast are true.  I remember the 1980s like they were yesterday.  Even when I’m feeling my age, I like to think of myself as middle-aged. 

Which I am… assuming I live to be 126.  (And on that day – mark it on your calendars: May 28th, 2085 – I’ll STILL be more fit to be president than Joe Biden was.)

I didn’t tell you this just to get a bunch of gratifying “happy birthday” wishes.  (Although, considering how little time I have left on earth, a rousing round of “happy birthday to you” wouldn’t hoit.  Just be sure to sing into my good ear.)  I’m also telling you because of an embarrassing error I made many years ago.

When I created a personal Facebook page – which I neglect for months at a time, so if I haven’t responded to your post there, please don’t take it personally – my tech incompetence and short attention span quickly raised its ugly head.  I lost interest shortly after starting to complete the various “profile” information fields, and thus left the default setting for date of birth, which was January 1st.

So over the years, I’ve received some very sweet “happy birthday” messages from people… on New Year’s Day.  Please forgive me for my sloth.  My only social media activity takes place on this wonderful CO site and my own WordPress page, so I apologize for my inattention elsewhere.

But enough about me behaving badly.  Let’s move on to lefties doing so…

You may remember when a handful of Democrat elected officials led a mob of low-IQ protestors and tried to force their way into a NJ ICE facility back on May 9th.  That story continues to unfold hilariously, with congresswoman LaMonica McIver having since been arrested and charged with assault.

She made a classic blunder: when you’re going to participate in an unruly mob and assault a government official while cameras are recording, try not to be an obnoxiously loud, plus-sized person wearing a bright red coat. 

I think Sun Tzu said that.

But the Red Menace was not the only one arrested that day.  She was joined by Ras Baraka. 

Despite having the name of a Klingon warlord, or possibly a Jamaican reggae band, Baraka is actually the mayor of Newark New Jersey.  He’s done such a bang-up job with Newark – as everyone knows, when you think of stellar governance, you think of Newark – that he’s now planning to run for NJ governor.

And what could be a better way to launch a gubernatorial bid than to get some national attention by being arrested in a high-profile incident?  Unfortunately for Ras, he is apparently taking his PR cues from Cory “Spartacus” Booker, because in a press conference after his arrest, he compared himself to David.

I don’t mean David Hasselhoff (although the mayor’s clarity of thought suggests that he too may have a problem with the bottle), or David Schwimmer (though the mayor would be well advised to PIVOT from his recent strategy). 

I mean the Biblical David. 

Because we all remember the story of how King David overcame Goliath by yelling incoherently until the Philistines freed a bunch of foreign criminal gangbangers, don’t we?  Good grief!

Speaking of famous Davids, do you know what’s funnier than the Dems picking Lil’ Davy Hogg for their DNC co-chair?  Giving him the boot less than three months later! 

I can’t wait to see who they replace him with, since their fig-leaf reason for dumping him – as opposed to the real one: he’s a narcissistic zygote with no life experience whose first decision was to spend $20 mil trying to primary a bunch of old Dems – was that the committee who elected him wasn’t “diverse” enough!

Man, I’m hoping that they roll out a previously unknown niece of Que Mala!  Or maybe Joy Reid?  I hear she’s looking for a gig.

Anyway, have you noticed how quickly the Dems dropped the main talking point that they’d been beating into the ground for the last year?  No, I’m not talking about “Trans women are women!”  That was second place.

First place by a mile was, “We have to defend democracy!  Our precious, sacred, inviolate democracy.  Oh, won’t someone please think of the democracy!”

And then Trump won the electoral college, and all seven battleground states, and the popular vote.  And all of a sudden, they’re not so excited about democracy anymore.  So how can we be surprised when they elected Davy Hogg – fair and square, and oh so democratically! – and as soon as he turns out to be the petulant child he obviously was when they elected him… they un-elect him!   

That’s the Democrats, people.  Gaslighters gotta gaslight, and they are the gold standard of gaslighting.  If they’re not trying to convince us that Tampon Tim Walz is a man, they’re trying to convince us that Michelle Obama is a woman, or that Joe Biden was in tip-top shape all through his presidency.

It’s been great fun lately to watch all of the top Dems scrambling for cover when asked about their scandalous cover-up of Biden’s obvious dementia.  Someone obviously came up with a lame talking point, which was shortly spouted by Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, and a dozen others: “We’re not looking back, we’re looking forward.”

That’s comically inept.  Can you imagine it working with any kind of scandal?  Could Letitia James get away with saying, “All of my fraudulent mortgages are in the past. Let’s look forward!”

Or could Bill Clinton have had a much more tranquil 1998 by saying, “Oh, come on!  Who can even remember who was taking Chicom cash from Charlie Trie, or banging cocktail waitresses two at a time so that customers couldn’t even get a drink at the White House bar?  That’s all past stuff.  I’m looking forward now.” 

Still, I guess we can be grateful that no Democrat will tell any more tired lies about January 6th, or refer to Trump’s 34 bogus convictions, since those are both in the past, right? 

But my favorite example of Democrat self-beclowning from the first half of May came from smelly Eric Swalwell.  During congressional questioning of Kristi Noem about whether proven MS-13 member Kilmar Garcia is an MS13 member, Swalwell took the obviously wrong position, and bragged that he was correct because of his very accurate “bullsh*t detector.”

Hey Eric, it’s probably not a good idea to brag about how you are incapable of being fooled.  Because we all remember that time when a Chinese spy sidled up to you, batted her eyes, and whispered, “Me love you long time.” And you didn’t think, “Wait a minute, that’s a line from the Vietnamese hooker in Full Metal Jacket, and I’m a 4 at best, and that’s before taking my low IQ and flatulence into account.  And she’s a lot younger, and a 7 or 8.”

But no.  Your bullsh*t detector must have been on the fritz.  And it stayed that way for several years, until the FBI came to you and said, “You know that Chicom cutie who pretended to fall for you, even though she would never fall for someone who looks and smells like you in a million years?  Yeah, she’s a spy.”

Well done, Eric!  You keep doing you, and we’ll keep laughing at you.

Hamas delenda est!

Response to Last Week’s Posts About Debating Lefties, + My Dark Secret (posted 5/15/25)

By the time you read this, I’ll be on the road up to Tennessee, and then on to Illinois.  I think I’ll be posting a column tomorrow on the Dems’ entertaining, continuing implosion, and I’ll do my best to post at least one or two columns next week from the road.

Last week I posted a slightly edited version of an email exchange I recently had with an old friend of mine who is a committed lefty, on the subject of the rule of law, and the potential for a “constitutional crisis” that may arise if SCOTUS doesn’t shut down the dozens of district court judges who are filing frivolous lawfare TROs against every move he makes.   

Many of you asked how he responded to the points I made, and many said that they have stopped even trying to discuss politics with the lefties in their lives. 

I haven’t heard back from my friend about my last two responses yet.  He received the first one the night before he was leaving on a two-week trip, and said that he’d need time to go through it and think about it, and I sent him the second one while he was on the road, and said we could talk about it when he gets back.

But over many years of such exchanges, I think that each of us has changed the other’s mind on individual points, but not on any of our larger beliefs.  (E.g. I think I’ve been able to prove to him that individual lefties have been corrupt and that some conservatives have governed better than some lefties, but not that leftism itself is based on false premises and doesn’t work in the real world.)  He’s one of four leftist friends of mine, and I think that statement applies to all four of them.    

Since none of them are the deranged, extremist, “you’re cancelled if you don’t agree with me” types, I’ve still been able to discuss politics with them, to varying degrees.   And I appreciate that, for a couple of reasons.  As I’ve mentioned before, I enjoy clarifying and testing my arguments in good-faith debates.  (Teaching argumentative and persuasive writing was a good fit for me!)

I also think that my friends and I have served a very useful moral purpose for each other: reminding all of us that the other side is not made up entirely of malevolent idiots and worse.  It’s very easy to watch bad-faith hypocrites and liars like Biden, Schumer, Grandma Squanto et al and start thinking of all Democrats as irredeemable creeps.  (And there are plenty of GOP morons who can make regular conservatives look like idiots!)  But knowing my friends reminds me – and I hope that knowing me reminds them – that that’s not the case.

In a way, this point dovetails nicely with my Christian faith.  We’re supposed to be as aware of our own flaws as we are of others’ flaws, and it’s good to be reminded of other people’s foibles in a way that doesn’t lead us to demonize them.  People make ridiculous choices in many areas of their lives, not just in politics.

Some people willingly drink ouzo.  Some are vegans.  Some root for FSU.  Some like soccer.  Some don’t like dogs. And some vote down-the-line Democrat.  What are we going to do?  Uncle Jesus tells me I’m supposed to love them anyway, and reminds me that I might have made a few stupid choices along the way myself.

I mean, you wouldn’t know it by looking at me, with my smoke show wife, my great kids, and my Wonder Dog, living my best life in the Free State of Florida.  But even I have had some dark chapters in my life. 

What I’m about to share with you needs to stay between us, and if you repeat it, I’ll deny it.  Like Joy Reid when her homophobic posts came out, I’ll just claim that my email was hacked.  (Joy Reid is this angry racist lady who used to be on tv.  Or on MSNBC.  Which is kind of like tv, except without the viewers.)

So if others are in the room or reading this over your shoulder who can’t be trusted to keep their mouths shut, please go somewhere else, or ask them to leave. 

Okay.  Here it goes. 

I was basically a Democrat until I was in my late 20s.

I know. I just threw up in my mouth a little, too.  And Cassie just looked at me with her head turned sideways, because I forgot that she can read.  Annnndddd… now she’s trotting out of the room, giving me a withering look back over her shoulder. 

Please, let me explain! 

I was pretty a-political as a teen and young adult.  I was one of those weird young men who was preoccupied with sports and girls, with an added layer of voracious-reader book nerd. 

Then I went to grad school for seven years (the PhD took me an extra year because I wrote a novel instead of my dissertation in my fourth year), where I was surrounded by lefty professors and students.

The pressure to conform was pretty strong.  If taking a lefty position in class was more likely to get me the 4.0 that I was looking for, okay.   If pretending to have read Das Kapital and Noam Chomsky’s latest drivel increased the chances that a female classmate would overlook my pedestrian appearance and thrust herself upon me, I’m in.  (If not like Flynn, at least like a young, proto-Martacus.) (100-year-old movie references for $100, Alex.) 

Whew, this is tough to write.  In the years since, my shame has driven me to confession about this multiple times.   And I’m not even Catholic!  I’d just randomly stop in a Catholic church and step into the shame booth.  (Have I mentioned that I’m not Catholic?)  But even then, I’d be tempted to falsely confess to murder or robbing a nun, just to avoid saying the words, “I once voted for Jimmy Carter.”

In my defense, I’d never paid enough attention to politics to be a down-the-line lefty.  I’d always had enough common sense to know that affirmative action was just reverse racism, and that abortion was wrong, for example.  And as I was forced to read leftist literary criticism – anti-Americanism and CRT were already making themselves felt, even in the Midwest, in the 1980s – I started to feel more and more repulsed.

By the time I finished my PhD, I had resolved never to read Lacan, Derrida, Marcuse or any of those weirdos again.  In fact, I started to read a lot of history, and then military history.  And then I came across Thomas Sowell, and Milton Friedman, and eventually VDH. 

Within two years of getting out, I was a confirmed conservative.

My transformation was completed a few years later, when I realized that the vow of poverty that I’d taken when I became an English professor was not a joke.  I started researching ways to buy fixer-upper real estate so that I might be able to retire before age 90. 

Some real-world experience with entrepreneurial risk-taking quickly cured me of the last vestiges of my youthful dalliance with liberalism, and I started down the road to becoming the conservative stalwart you know and admire today.      

Thus I became the old political cliché: a soft-hearted, naïve liberal at 20, but a reality-appreciating conservative by 30. 

My example does give me hope, though: sometimes it seems as if everybody is in their own bubbles, and people cling so stubbornly to their own priors.  But I made the change, both through reading ideas from the other side, and from life experience.  My guess is that the latter changes a lot more minds – the old “a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged” idea. 

But as a bookish type with a taste for logic and argument, my conversion began and moved pretty far along purely because of reading and thinking, before I staked my meager life savings on several real estate investments, and thus sealed the deal.

So while it often seems that our politics are so polarized in recent years, I still retain some cautious optimism that at least some liberals are persuadable.  In fact, their own party’s insane race to the far left is pushing some of them toward our side by default.  

I think many of these types now feel – or soon will – like Reagan did when he said that he didn’t leave the Democrats, the Democrats left him.  Elon certainly does.  A year or two ago he posted a cartoon showing him standing in the same place, but the leftists running so far to the extreme left that his unchanged position – which was once a little left of center – is now firmly on the right. 

A similar process happened for RFK Jr., Tulsi, Dave Rubin, Joe Rogan, Adam Carolla, and many more.

So I enjoy debating my lefty friends, even though I don’t expect that any of them will necessarily undergo the conversion that I did. 

But even if they only become more aware of and turned off by the extremists on the far left, they will be doing themselves and the nation some good.

Our country would be better off with a sane, center-left liberal party, and a much more marginalized and impotent far-left fringe (rather than the radicals who are steering the Democrats today). 

Such a centrist party could mitigate the damage done when the Dems next have power, and could even be cooperative partners with some conservatives on a small range of issues where we have some common ground. 

If I’m being honest, I can’t say that I see that happening anytime very soon.  But we’re cautious optimists around here, and I’m trying to keep that hope alive!

Hamas delenda est!

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Another Self-Detonating Hero, and You’ll Never Guess Why the Dems Are Worried about Fetterman (posted 5/9/25)

After two over-long columns on the serious subjects of lawfare and the courts, today I’m returning to the kind of material that is right in my usual wheelhouse: a quick rundown of recent stories requiring juvenile mockery. 

But I appreciate the many thoughtful comments that you all posted on my last two columns.  I’m going to share a little more next week to answer your questions about how my buddy responded to my emails, and also about my conversion from being a liberal in my callow youth, to the wise old conservative you know and love today.  

First up, we have a new candidate for the leftists’ “Self-Detonating Hero” designation, so get ready for a fusillade of “unexpectedly”s:

He is a pro-Hamas, anti-Semite Columbia student (unexpectedly!) from “Palestine” (unexpectedly!), here on a green card (unexpectedly!) named Mohsen Mahdawi. 

Mahdawi was taken into custody by ICE, but has been temporarily released on bond on the order of a US District court judge in Vermont.  (Unexpectedly!)  Of course that judge was appointed by Ronald Reagan.

HA! I kid because I love.  He’s an Obama appointee.

Unexpectedly!  

And the Dems are already beginning to transfer their schoolgirl crushes from Kilmar to Mohsen, like a 13-year-old girl replacing her Donnie Osmond poster with a Shaun Cassidy one.  (I’ll take “Timely late 1970s pop culture references” for $100, Alex.)

Mohsen looks like an Arab Luigi Mangione, and he’s got the soft-spoken peace-loving protestor routine down pat.  CBS and the NY Times have already given him tongue-bath interviews. (Unexpectedly!)  So start your countdown clocks, because you know he’s going to blow up in their faces soon.

I just came across a group called Canary Mission, who documents and publicizes people and organizations who promote hatred of the US, Israel and Jews, and they’ve put together a great two-minute video of Mohsen spouting some soothing talking points about how his activism “is centered in the energy of love.” 

Hilariously, the video intersperses Mohsen’s assertions with video clips and pics that belie his words.  He says, “Antisemitism has no place in our movement.”  Cut to him holding a microphone wearing a keffiyeh, in the middle of three other people, under the chyron, “Mohsen surrounded by anti-Semites.”

He says, “My compassion is also for the Jewish people.”  Cut to him standing on campus, using a bullhorn to drown out a small group of students calling on Hamas to release the red-headed Bibas babies, whom they eventually murdered, along with their mother.  (In that clip, Mohsen has a hateful smirk on his face that made me wish the IDF had placed one of their pager charges in his bullhorn.)     

My favorite part of the video is when Mohsen mournfully accuses the IDF of killing six of his cousins and his uncle.  Cut to a photo lineup of scowling “Palestinian” terrorists, one of them holding an AK-47, identifying them as his cousins and uncle. 

It reminded me of a mafia movie scene in which an old gangster looks through wedding pictures.  “There’s Sammy the Bull, Fat Tony Salerno, Frankie the Blade Lucchese,  Big Paulie and Little Paulie Genovese.  All of them upstanding Italian Americans, unjustly harassed by the police!” 

I hope the Dems go all-in on dreamy peacenik Mohsen as their newest poster boy.  Then, pics of him in a suicide vest, proudly holding up a copy of Mein Kampf can show up in 3… 2… 1…

While the Dems are hot and bothered over Mohsen, they’re very worried about another one of their own, Lurch Fetterman.  Last week New York Magazine ran an alarmist story about his health, with the tagline, “John Fetterman’s Struggle:  The senator insists he is in good health.  But staffers past and present say they no longer recognize the man they once knew.” 

If you didn’t know what a left-wing rag NY Mag is, you might think that Fetterman has had another stroke, or a heart attack, or is possibly collapsing on a regular basis and bleeding from the eyes.

But if you were a certain hilarious genius with a fully functional wizard hat, you might guess that Fetterman is continuing to make more sense, which his leftist handlers regard with alarm.  And you’d be 100% right.

Expectedly!

The story actually has various members of his staff hysterically getting their dresses – or in some cases their gender non-binary onesies – over their heads because Fetterman has demonstrated such ominous signs of dementia as… wait for it… disbelieving that the IDF is bombing “Palestinian” “refugee” camps full of “innocent civilians,” and… wait for it again… considering not voting against Pete Hegseth’s nomination for SecDef! 

One of his key advisors who quit last year captures the tone of the article: “I hope Senator Fetterman gets the help he needs.”

The story is unintentionally funny, and it perfectly sums up the elite left in a nutshell: When Fetterman shuffled around like a stuttering, lobotomized mental patient who would vote for whatever they put in front of him, they praised him to the skies!  But now that he’s occasionally making sense, they think he’s lost his mind.  Perfect!  

Speaking of losing one’s mind, did you catch the CNN interview with a Sinaloa cartel member?  They put him in a disguise and altered his voice, and the interviewer talked to him as if he was an aggrieved victim of unfair accusations.  She said, “According to the Trump administration, you are a terrorist.  What do you make of that?”

The guy answered, “Well, the situation is ugly, but we have to eat.” 

Of course you do.  And of course the CNN dope didn’t push back at all.  Because who among us hasn’t been in that poor criminal’s situation?

I remember my junior year in high school, when I’d smuggled some fentanyl into study hall, shot two of my rivals execution-style, and sex trafficked several of my female classmates for cash, and I got caught.  Boy, was my dad mad when he got called down to the principal’s office with me!

But I said, “Dad, if I didn’t sell drugs, pimp out my girlfriends and assassinate my competitors, what would I do for lunch money?” 

And everyone agreed that I’d made a compelling case.  So I spent a year in juvie and missed my graduation, but four short years later I got a job as a reporter at CNN.  True story.

Anyway, I can’t believe that even CNN can be this stupid.  They hate Trump and would do anything to discredit him, but do they really believe that a violent cartel thug giving him a thumb’s down is going to help the Dems and hurt Trump?!

You keep doing you, CNN!

Hamas delenda est!

Third Round of Moron of the Month Candidates (posted 4/28/25)

As the end of the month nears, it’s time for the next elimination round in our April Madness “Moron of the Month” competition, featuring the Northern Division.    

We begin with Michelle Obama, nominated for the newest narcissistic dumpster fire episode of her struggling podcast.  She opens strong, by simultaneously playing the race and victim cards:

“We don’t articulate, as black women, our pain.  Because it’s almost like nobody ever gave us permission to do that.” 

Now I’m not going to pull a Lizzie Warren, and claim that though I appear to be a white guy, I actually identify as a Cherokee warrior, or a black woman.  (#wemustneverstopmockingher) Because that would be stupid. 

And I can’t claim an extensive and far-reaching knowledge of black women in general.  But from what I’ve seen and experienced, I know that if somebody asked me to identify an ethnic and gender cohort who are known for being shrinking-violet, passive types, I would not instinctively say, “Black women!”

In fact, if you asked me to name which gender generally tends toward a stoic, not-wear-their-pain-on-their-sleeves behavior, I’d say males. 

If you pushed me to choose the most stoic ethnic group among women, I’d say Russian women, though I’m not sure why.  I just picture them sitting in a crumbling, freezing apartment, wearing clunky shoes and an itchy, heavy dress the texture of a horse blanket for people, at a wobbly wooden table with legs that are different heights, sipping from a bowl of ice-cold beet soup, and not complaining. 

But even if I could be convinced that women in general, and black women in particular are loathe to complain or share their pain, I would still never believe that Michelle 0-freaking-bama ever displayed that tendency.  Because she has been complaining non-stop since the day she walked onto the national stage.

There’s a reason that her secret service code name was “Scowling Wookie.”  True story.  (By the way, Barack’s code name?  “Pete Buttigieg.”  You know why.)

If you still doubt me – and how dare you? – listen to this excerpt from a few minutes later: “As black women, we are so easily labeled as angry and bitter!” 

She said, angrily.

Holy cats.  If I never hear someone preface a statement with their race and gender again, it will be too soon. But if you insist on doing the tired old, “As a [insert defining modifier here] [insert second modifier here]…” at least bring some variety to the table!  For every 100 “As a Hispanic woman…” toss in an occasional “As a third-degree Mason with an extra finger on my right hand…” or “As a philatelist with eyes that are slightly different colors…” 

Have some consideration for the listener, you boring, identity-politics hack!

Also, gosh Michelle, I wonder how YOU ever got stereotyped as angry and bitter?  I’m sure it was unrelated to you saying that until your annoying husband got elected, you’d never been proud of your country.  And I’m sure it had nothing to do with the bone-jarring hits you used to dish out when you roamed the middle as a blitzing linebacker for TCU. 

I’m almost convinced that she acts like this because she believes that Americans like their first ladies the way they like their coffee: bitter and black.

Let’s skip ahead in the transcript a few minutes, and see what new topic she’s onto now:  “…that the first label they put on us, as black women, is that we ARE angry…” 

Ugh.  Really?  Okay, let me skip forward say, 20 more minutes.  (By the way, I just looked at the red bar on the bottom of the screen, and this episode goes on for an hour and 9 minutes!  Good lord!  To anyone who’s ever complained that my columns are too long, hang your head in shame!) 

Okay, dropping the cursor on the red bar again…now: “…and going to therapy, just to work all that out.  Like, what happened that 8 years that we were in the White House?  What did that do to me, internally, my soul.  We made it through.  We got out alive!  I hope we made the country proud.  My girls, thank God, are whole.  But what happened to ME?”

Man-oh-manischevitz!  “What did it do to me internally?!”  That’s something people who survive a mine collapse ask!  “We made it through? We got out alive?!”  That’s what guys said after the Bataan Death March.

I’ve had enough.  I’ve heard that her podcast is doing very poorly, and I can see why.  But I checked, and this insufferable woman has got 149,000 subscribers.  For a new podcast featuring someone as famous as she is, that’s lousy.

But if I can borrow a phrase from Michelle, how do you think that makes ME feel?  Even though I’m not a celebrity, I’ve been producing top-notch columns for you people for 8 years, and my WordPress site (Martinsimpsonwriting.com) has only 276 subscribers!

And before you remind me that if I’d only give in to the constant stream of requests to post some tasteful nudes of myself, I’d quickly have way more than 149K subscribers, I will tell you all for the LAST time: I want people to subscribe to my site for my mind, not because I’m a tantalizing bit of eye candy!

What I’m trying to say is that, as a white, male, hilarious genius with a firm jawline and a dusting of mild, adult-onset asthma, I think…

Oh, forget it. 

On to the second MOM candidate: Ben and Jerry.

Regular readers will remember that I wrote about the lefty ice cream company in late March, when their TDS-suffering CEO Dave Stever was fired by Unilever, the giant corporation that bought B&Js 25 years ago. 

Now they’re back in the news, because Ben and Jerry (or Mao and Jerry, or Ben and Lenin) are mad, and they want to buy the company back from Unilever.  They’ve been trying to gather investors, but it seems like the old commies are having difficulty finding capitalists to join forces with them. 

Unexpectedly!

The stories I’ve seen about the attempted buy-back point to a very odd arrangement, in which Unilever has owned the company for decades, but still had a relationship with B&J that involved tolerating their customer-alienating politics, and contributing $5 million a year to the Ben and Jerry Foundation, which advocates for causes like defunding the police, keeping men in women’s locker rooms and white people out of “positions of power in society,” cheerleading for abortion, and returning the US to the Indians who had stolen it from other Indians just before whitey got here.   

After years of increasing tension, Unilever has finally lost patience.  They told B&J that the business is not for sale, announced a July name-change to The Magnum Ice Cream Company, and issued an ultimatum that before they would continue to contribute to the B&J Foundation, they’d require an audit of it.

Ben and Jerry seem strangely unenthusiastic about that idea, perhaps because they’ve handled their foundation with all the competence and honesty with which the Clintons handled their foundation, or Jeffrey Epstein handled his Epstein Foundation for the Support of Wayward Under-Age Girls.

The WSJ summary of the story says that, “After tolerating decades of radioactive politics, Unilever appears keen to decontaminate Ben and Jerry’s.” 

That sounds about right.  Let’s give the final word – the final laughably clueless and self-indicting word – to Ben Cohen: “Ben and Jerry’s is a company with a soul.”

Yes it is.  And you literally sold that soul to a ginormous corporation for a king’s ransom 25 years ago, you capitalist pig in a Stalinist sheep’s clothing. 

I hope the new flavors from your brand are “Reagan Rocky Road,” “Elon Musk Mint,” and “Ayn Rand-berry,” and that you choke on them.   

Our last nominee is Mother Jones, for their April 12th story entitled, “Bad News for Man’s Best Friend: Dogs are Environmental Villains.”

I’m as shocked as you are by this.  Because I can’t believe that moldy old Mother Jones is still around, either! 

But it is, and apparently it hasn’t lost a step since its halcyon days of 57 years ago, when it was advocating for Timothy Leary, Ho Chi Minh, and hairy armpits on women.   And now that Nixon is dead, those lefty fossils have turned their ire on the real existential threat: dogs!

I probably don’t even have to tell you what they hate about God’s greatest gift to mankind, because you can already guess.  They claim that “the environmental impact” of dogs is “more insidious than is generally recognized.”

I’ll bet.  Since considering anything about dogs “insidious” is ridiculous.

You should reserve the word “insidious” for only the worst of the worst things in life.  Like communism, pedophilia, or the increasing popularity of soccer.

Not dogs, you idiots! 

They say that dogs “pollute waterways.”  But do you know what else pollutes waterways?  Skinny dipping with your super-gross white-guy dreads, Mother Jones writers!

They say that dogs disturb and kill shore birds.  But consider this, shore birds: Dogs don’t have wings, and you do!  So either flap your freaking wings and fly, or else be a lazy but tasty snack, Jonathan Livingston Seagull!

They don’t like the carbon dioxide that dogs produce…but I can’t help but notice how all the lefties at Mother Jones continue to obnoxiously inhale and exhale, while ignoring the agonal breathing of Mother Earth.   

They object to the environmental damage caused by dog feces, and yet they don’t have anything to say about either the human feces that covers their Mecca, San Francisco, or the fact that their president pooped on the Pope.  Which is probably why he died recently. 

I mean the Pope, not Biden. 

Or do I?

The article does mention a few benefits of dogs, including their contribution to the physical and mental health of their owners, and also their “vital roles in conservation work, such as in wildlife detection.”  Leave it to Mother Jones to make even a compliment to dogs sound pointless. 

“Wildlife detection?”  What does that even mean?  And I thought you just said that dogs are often detecting the hell out of shorebirds, and that that was a very bad thing?

I don’t need to defend dogs, but I will touch on a few benefits anyway.  They’re beautiful, loyal, and in the case of Aussie Shepherds, majestic and brilliant.  They can chase down and maul criminals and terrorists.  They can detect drugs, but then refrain from snorting all of those drugs and getting addicted and end up picking up bags of cash from corrupt foreigners to give to their awful politician fathers, like some laptop-losing degenerates I could mention.

They’re also great for the health of your children.  Because by carrying gross stuff into your house and then romping with your kids, they strengthen the kids’ immune systems, and prevent them from turning into frail bubble-boys raised on participation trophies and trigger warnings, and then either dying young because they touched a peanut, or – worse – turning into an obnoxious soy-boy DNC Vice Chair. 

Dogs are better than many people, and all of the staff at Mother Jones, and if there’s not a feasible way to release some of the first newly non-extinct dire wolves into their offices, I have a Plan B.

We tell them that we have a new breed of dog that is carbon-neutral, non-feces-producing, non-polluting, and gluten-free.  And then we introduce them to…wait for it…

Robot Flamethrowing Dogs! 

Please register your choice of the Northern Division options in the comments.

Hamas delenda est!

Two Cheers for Rosie O’Donnell, & Handcuffs for Letitia James? (posted 4/23/25)

I have no central theme today, just a couple of noteworthy stories I’ve seen recently.

I’ll start with an unusual one for me, because it made me heartily say, “Two cheers for Rosie O’Donnell!” 

I can’t give her three cheers.  Because, as I mentioned just now, she’s Rosie O’Donnell. 

But we live in a world seemingly full of blowhard lefty narcissists who always insist that if the next Republican presidential candidate wins, they’ll leave the country.  And then they never do! 

But to her credit, Rosie put her money where her extremely large mouth is, and she actually followed through.  When Trump won, she moved to Ireland and applied for Irish citizenship.  And seriously: good for her. 

Obviously I think she’s off her rocker, politically speaking.  But if she’s convinced – against all evidence after his first term – that Trump is worse than Hitler, and will bring a nightmarish reign of oppression down on America, she demonstrated the courage of her convictions by leaving.  And as odd as this sounds, I think she’ll probably be happier for it.

Because there are millions of her political co-religionists in this country who believe that crap, and I don’t think it’s working very well for them.  You’ve seen them.  And you’ve heard them screaming, at their protests, and in courtrooms, and at various crime scenes.  “Abortions for all!  Death to Jews!  Bring back foreign criminals!  Death to America!  Heterosexual sex is gross!  Pay me not to work!  Screw you, dad!”

Do they seem happy to you? 

I’m reminded of a quote from one of my favorite books, John Milton’s Paradise Lost.  It appears early on, in a scene that is best-known for Satan’s monologue after he’s been cast out of heaven.  (His hubris is summed up: “Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven.”)

Shortly before that famous line, Milton captures an essential truth of human psychology in just two lines: “The mind is its own place, and in itself/ Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”  

I first read that as an undergrad, and though it stuck with me, it didn’t make a huge impact.  Mostly because I was pre-occupied at the time with weightier philosophical questions.  Questions like, “What’s the chances she’ll go out with me if I ask?” and, “Or her?” and, “Or maybe her?” 

Also, “Why can’t the Bears draft a decent quarterback to save their lives?”

But the older I get, the smarter John Milton gets.  (He’s like my dad in that way, God rest his soul.) And I’ve been around long enough to watch strong-willed people find the silver lining on every dark cloud, and make some hellish circumstances into a little slice of heaven. 

And I’ve seen people like Rosie – and Joy Reid, and Keith Olberman, and Noam Chomsky, and a cast of thousands like them – do just the opposite.  They’re living in the best country in the world, blessed with wealth and opportunities, and surrounded by signs and wonders.  But they find fault wherever they look, and wallow in their own self-created misery.

They look at a shining city on a hill, and see only a Mordor-ian wasteland of sexism, racism and a plethora of politically incorrect phobias.

They look at a flawed, bloviating president who loves the country and is doing some good things, and they see Orange Hitler.  They look at a rich genius who is sacrificing a lot to try to root out waste and fraud, and enable the government to more efficiently serve its citizens, and they see an evil oligarch.    

They look at Maxine Waters and Elizabeth Warren and they see a racist, hideous crone and a phony white lady pretending to be Sacheen Littlefeather—

Okay, I’ve got to give them those two.  Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, as they say. 

Also: #wemustneverstopmockingher

Where was I? 

Oh yeah, Rosie.  She made a hell out of America for herself, but Ireland seems like a cool place to me, so here’s hoping she can make a heaven for herself there.

Apparently two of her grandparents were Irish, but even so, she is reportedly worried because her application for Irish citizenship has not yet been approved.  And I think I speak for all of us when I say…

Oh no you don’t, Ireland!  No do-overs or give-backs!  You gave us Guinness, Liam Neeson, Yeats, and C.S. Lewis, and we gave you Rosie O’Donnell. 

Sure, you made a terrible, terrible trade.  But what’s done is done.  She’s your problem now. 

But to soften the blow, I suggest we start a go-fund-me to get Ireland to keep Rosie, along with any other nation who’s willing to take any other leftist celebrity irritants we can persuade to honor their vows that they would leave America if Trump won. 

If we can pay a great Salvadoran (you say, “Nayib,” I say, “BUKELE!) to take the worst of our criminal illegals, we should be willing to open our wallets to get other countries to take the wretched refuse of our teeming lefties.

Speaking of wretched, I’ve got to end with a great story from Schadenfreude Corner: the tale of Letitia James’ impending criminal charges!

No charge against Trump was more bogus than James’ lies about him wildly over-valuing Mar-a-Lago in order to get a more favorable loan rate from banks.  She claimed at one point that Mar-a-Lago was worth $18 million, by relying on the low-end of a tax assessment (which are always lower than true market value), even though that assessment was 10 years old, and every real estate expert around said it was laughably low.

Later, she stated that the property should be valued at closer to $75 million, but then in an X post she listed the value as $25 million.  Trump was similarly inconsistent, valuing it in financial statements at between $426-612 million, but also bragging that the real value should be over a billion.    

All of which is moot, because the giant international banks from whom Trump sought the loan always do their own appraisals, rather than relying on biased owners.  Valuation of unique, high-end properties are especially difficult to nail down, but you don’t get to be Deutsche Bank by relying on sellers’ fraudulently high valuations.

All of which is even moot-er, because Trump paid back the loans with interest, and the banks said that they’d be happy to do business with him again.  Many NY lawyers and real estate investors agreed that this kind of a victimless case of a loan taken out and then repaid in full had ever been pursued before.

And now it turns out that lyin’ Letitia is a real estate investor herself, and that she was actually committing the kind of fraud that she accused Trump of committing.  For example, she bought several properties with her dad as co-signer, but falsely listed them as “husband and wife.” 

(Rumors that she learned that trick from an Ilhan Omar “Buy Real Estate With Your Brother/Husband” seminar have not been confirmed.) 

She claimed a property in Virginia as her principal residence, allowing her to get a lower mortgage rate.  Which was problematic, since she could not legally be the Attorney General in New York if her primary residence wasn’t in the state.  Also, the neighbors of the Virginia house reported that they’d never seen James there. 

She also bought a 5-unit building that she fraudulently claimed had only four units, allowing her to… wait for it…get a lower mortgage rate.   

So James was allegedly perjuring her hypocritical arse off, as she was using taxpayer dollars and her powerful position to wrongly go after Trump.

The cherry on top of this delicious schadenfreude sundae is that James’ half-billion-dollar, illegitimate verdict against Trump will eventually be over-turned, and she will almost certainly be convicted of a raft of felony charges.

My hope – sure, you can even call it a prayer – is that those two verdicts will come down around the same time. 

Because if I know Trump, he’ll find a way to be outside the courthouse where James will be led out in handcuffs, holding a gigantic, novelty check for the hundreds of millions of dollars he’d had to put in escrow, being refunded to him after he was vindicated in court.

Hamas delenda est!

Three More Candidates for Moron of the Month (posted 4/14/25)

By now you’ve all seen that CO has temporarily stepped back from the page for a few days, which I feel like puts a little more pressure on me to make you laugh on a Monday morning.  But much like Walter Clayton Jr. (from the national champion Florida Gators – have I mentioned that?), I’m a clutch player. 

So it’s Martacus’ time to shine! 

In my Friday column I introduced three candidates for “Moron of the Month,” and by popular acclaim, Jasmine “Fake Lashes” Crockett beat out the too aptly named Chase Strangio and drama queen Spartacus Booker to move on to represent the Eastern division in the next round.

Today we’ve got three more worthy competitors, this time from the Western division.  (Just like in the NCAA tournament, geographical names for the divisions are meaningless.)

First up we’ve got Elie Mystal, a public “intellectual” (and yes, those scare quotes are mandatory) with degrees from Harvard (because of course he has) who would be best known for his rabid America- and whitey-hatred, except for the fact that every African-American appearing on MSNBC is an unpatriotic, rabid whitey hater.

So he’s best known for his truly ridiculous, giant gray puff-ball of an Afro.  Which makes him look like he’s closing in on 70, when he’s actually only 46.  I have two theories about that:

1. He got so sick of all of the Fat Albert jokes that he dyed his hair gray to stop them.  (Though I’m not sure that, “Hey, hey, hey… it’s Old dumb Albert!” is a whole lot better.)

2. Just like soldiers who live through horrifying combat sometimes go prematurely gray, I think maybe morons who think too many horrifyingly stupid thoughts go through the same thing.   

Though he’s little known to the general public (because he writes for The Nation, and often appears on MSNBC), Mystal has been making a name for himself in moron circles for quite a while. 

He wrote an execrable book in 2022 called, “Allow me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution.”  I planned to write a review of it called, “Allow me to Vomit: A White Guy’s Review of F.A. Mystal’s “A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution.”  But I couldn’t make it through the first several pages. 

Earlier this month, he came out with his second book, “Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That are Ruining America.”  And it has single-handedly made a liar out of me, because I spent many years telling my students that there is no such thing as a stupid question.

Then I read the table of contents of Bad Law.  Consider the following chapter titles, along with the obvious answers to each:

Chapter 2: How Did Immigrants Become “Illegal?”  [By breaking our laws, you moron.]

Chapter 4: Why Do We Incarcerate So Many People? [Because they break our laws, you moron.]

Chapter 7: “Why Do We Give White Guys a License to Kill Black People?” [We don’t, you moron.]     

Chapter 9: “Why Can’t We Say Gay?” [We can, you moron.]

As you can already tell, Mystal has an IQ low enough to scare those nightmarish albino fish in the lightless depths of the Mariana Trench. (Latin name: “pescatorus LizWarrenus”) (#wemustneverstopmockingher)  

But he’s also got the second element of the one-two punch that so many elite leftists have: a narcissism as large as the great outdoors.

In an interview to promote Bad Law, he talked about how he is such a significant critic of the Trump administration that he’s had to hire security during his book tour, because he’s worried that Trump is going to have someone “snatch him up off the street.” 

(Make your own, “Watch out for a forklift with a presidential seal on it, Elie!” joke here.)

My favorite idiotic statement of his came on his appearance on The View.  I know.  And he might have been the dumbest one on the set that day.  Which…yikes!

When explaining why we shouldn’t abide by our immigration laws, he referred to how racist and awful America is (duh!), and said, “Every law passed before the 1965 Voting Rights Act should be presumptively unconstitutional.”

Let that sink in for a minute.  The only way to declare any law unconstitutional is to examine it in the light of our founding legal document: the constitution.  Which Elie apparently thinks was written after 1965? 

To which I can only say: “Hey, hey, hey… it’s innumerate Albert!”    

Our second contestant is named Greisa Martinez Rosas, a leftist activist and executive director of United We Dream.  Her group participated in one of the high-profile “Hands Off” rallies on April 5th, protesting against Trump and Elon.  In fact, her rally was in Washington, DC.

She spoke on stage at the protest, and was brazen enough to give her full name and shout, “I am an immigrant.  I am undocumented, unafraid, queer and unashamed.”

I don’t know what “queer” has to do with it.  Or, for that matter, what “queer” means.  Is it just a synonym for “gay?”  But if so, why list the “Q” and the “G” in your alphabet list of identities?  And if not—

Never mind.  I don’t care.  I like women, and I don’t understand the rest of you, but good luck with all of that.  Or congratulations, or my condolences, or good for you, or get well soon, or whatever.

Where was I?

Oh yeah.  For some reason, Griesa really needs for all of us to know that she’s illegal and unafraid. 

If she had admitted that when the late Joe Biden was still the president, or when Obama was, she would have had good reason for being unafraid.  Because those guys were busy circumventing the law (and making up new laws) to go after conservatives, and had no appetite for following our immigration laws.  

But there’s a new sheriff in town, and his sidekick is Hulk Homan™, and Griesa has made a big target of herself.  (That’s not a joke about her appearance.  Though if you put her in a line-up with the drug dealer/bowling ball illegal from a few weeks ago…)

So Griesa could have tried to fly under the radar, or maybe even gone underground.  But she decided the best thing to do was to go to the nation’s capital, clomp up onto a stage, and lean into a microphone to confess to being a criminal, in front of an audience of wildly cheering morons. 

Making her eligible for Moron of the Month.  And hopefully, a visit from ICE.

Rounding out the Western division nominees is Tania Fernandes Anderson.  Her campaign might be hurt by the fact that she’s unknown outside of the Boston area – she’s on the City Council there.  But don’t count her out, because she’s a five-tool player.  Or, to be more accurate, a five-tool tool.

Because she’s a BLM activist, a Democrat, a Muslim-American, a sanctuary city supporter, and a “former undocumented immigrant.” 

Okay, maybe the Muslim thing isn’t necessarily a problem.  And there are some decent Democrats.  But that still leaves the other three strikes, which are enough to call her out.  She’s the kind of sweetheart who recently slammed her fist on the podium and said, “What the f**k do I have to do in this council in order to get respect as a black woman?”

Not beating up city property and dropping F bombs would be a good start, Sweetie.

Anyway, Tania has just pled guilty in a federal corruption case, and won’t be bringing her special brand of wisdom to the Boston City Council anymore. 

It turns out that Tania couldn’t be expected to get by on her measly, taxpayer-provided salary of only $115K a year.  So she hired her sister and a son to staff positions before she’d even been sworn in – which is illegal – and then gave the sister a good salary and a $13K “bonus” from the taxpayers, and then took $7,000 of that back as a kickback.  When she was initially questioned about that, she denied that her sister was her sister.  She was also cited for failing to report almost $33K in campaign contributions, and exceeding legal state donation limits. 

By the way, two years ago she was demanding stronger protections for illegal immigrants and telling Boston to defy ICE.  Who could have guessed that a woman like that would turn out to be a criminal herself? 

Thus proving the old adage: It’s always the ones you most suspect.

When I read her story – in between fits of bitter laughter – I learned that she came here illegally, but that in 2019 “she became an American citizen.”  I’m not sure how that worked, but the good news is that her conviction may “threaten her immigration status.” 

Well let’s hope so!

In tough times like these, she would normally be able to turn to her husband, Tanzerious Anderson, for comfort.

I’m serious.  I’m not delirious.  Or trying to be mysterious.  His name’s “Tanzerious.”  (Don’t tell me that I couldn’t write poetry, if I put my mind to it.)

But Tanzerious won’t be able to help his criminal wife, because he’s currently in prison for murder.

Unexpectedly! 

So there are your choices, CO nation, and they are all worthy of your consideration.  Griesa and Tania both get points for brazenness, while Elie wisely kept a much lower profile, by only appearing on the little-watched MSNBC and the View.  And he has to get some points for that preposterous Afro.

But Griesa went to the shadow of the White House to confess her criminality. 

Then again, Tania gave me the chance to write “Tanzerious.”   

Happy Monday, and I await your verdict.

Hamas delenda est!   

Moron of the Month – Eastern Division Nominees (posted 4/11/25)

Even though we’re only one-third of the way through April, I’ve noticed that enough morons have already popped up in our politics this month to provide a roster of worthy competitors for a  “Moron of the Month” contest.

In fact, I’ve already got 6 potential nominees.  Maybe we can do this in rounds, like the March Madness basketball tournament.  (Which I may have previously mentioned that my fightin’ Gators won on Monday night.)

So here are my first three nominees, from the Eastern division:

1. My first choice technically didn’t make her nominated performance in April, but on March 31st.  But since she doesn’t recognize boundaries like those between male and female, I’m going to disregard the boundaries between calendar months to move her into the April competition.

The special gal I’m talking about calls herself “Chase Strangio.” And ze oh ze, is that name spot-on!  (See what I did there?)  She’s the “trans man” – “trans” being Greek for “not,” as far as you know – who argued at SCOTUS in December against the Tennessee law banning “trans” surgery for minors.

You’ll recognize her if you see her, on account of her sad little beard and mustache combination, which you normally only see on barely pubescent boys who are trying too hard, or confused girls who take testosterone shots.  (I call it “the David Hogg.”) 

Strangio appeared on CNN on the last day of March, where literally dozens of viewers saw her say the following, in her obviously female voice, “The president is lying when he says that there are men impersonating women and participating in women’s sports. There are no men impersonating women that I’m aware of.”

Said the woman who is impersonating a man.

2. My second choice needs no introduction, since he is the infamous senator Cory Booker, whom we should never stop mocking because of that time he called himself “Spartacus” with a straight face, and non-ironically. 

Regular readers might object that I occasionally call myself Martacus, but that’s ALWAYS with my tongue in cheek. Except for when my wife asks me to put on the Roman outfit and recite some famous Latin lines.  (And if you think that’s weird, how about you explain what strange things you and your spouse are into, Mr. “Plank-in-Your-Own-Eye?”) 

So once I’ve got the breastplate strapped on and the helmet in place – and no, I never forget the gladius – I’ll stride in and say, “Vini, vidi, vici.  But not in that order.”  And then my wife and I will laugh and laugh, because we both appreciate a sneakily off-color Latin joke. 

Perhaps I’ve said too much.

(By the way, one could make the argument that the fact that I know the Latin name for the Roman short sword is one more data point suggesting that one of my secret identities is in fact Martacus.)

Where was I?  Oh yeah.  “Spartacus” Booker.

That guy is a well-known moron already.  But when he started speaking in March and finished on April 1st, he took stupid to a whole new level.  Not just because it’s hard to speak for 25 hours straight, but because it’s really hard to speak for that long and say absolutely nothing of any substance at all!

Dim-bulb Dems praised Booker for his stirring “filibuster.”  But a filibuster is a purposefully long political speech made to forestall or prevent a legislative action.  Ted Cruz and Ron Paul have filibustered in recent years to stop a couple of terrible leftist bills from being brought up and voted on, and Strom Thurmond – in 1957, when he still belonged to the party of slavery, the KKK and Jim Crow – filibustered a Civil Rights Act. 

But Booker had no such purpose.  He just got up and rambled on like the worst drama-queen theatre kid in the worst Junior High production of Streetcar Named Desire you’ve ever seen in your life.  Except that instead of hollering, “Stella!” he yelled, “Donald!” 

It was the perfect encapsulation of the Democrat party in its current, rudderless state: A speech given by an idiot, full of sound and histrionics, signifying nothing.

3. The third candidate has not been on the political scene for long, but she’s already building up a body of work that might one day qualify for first-ballot entry into the Moron Hall of Fame.  This is Jasmine Crockett, the phony congresswoman who went to an expensive private high school and college, but who pretends that their curricula never covered “how to correctly conjugate the verb ‘to be’.”

Previous low-lights of hers include calling wheelchair-bound Greg Abbott “Governor Hot Wheels,” and calling black GOP congressman Byron Donald a race traitor because he married a white woman.  (Of course, she doesn’t mention that her favorite presidential candidate last time around – part black, part Indian, and all inarticulate – also married a white woman, Doug Emhoff.  But never mind that.)

She started the month strong, when – in a talk on the House floor on April Crockett’s Day (i.e. the first) – she expressed outrage that the Trump administration has been saying that we should “ignore the orders” of the far-left district court judges who have been found dozens of “legal” reasons why the President can’t go around carrying out the role of President.

Saith the Eyelashes, “Law and order [means] that you follow the order and go through the appeals process, even if you dislike what the judge did.”

Darrell Issa, (R)ational, then immediately pointed out that less than a year ago, Crockett co-sponsored articles of impeachment against Clarence Thomas and Alito because she disliked what they did, i.e. ruled correctly.

D’oh!   

The very next day, Crockett was dumb enough to admit on camera that she was a DEI hire.  (Sidebar: Sweet pea, everyone knew that the moment you opened your mouth.)  She said, “When I first became a public defender I had no criminal defense experience.  And I walked in and I told my boss Charlie and said, ‘You should hire me.”  And he said, ‘Why?’  And I said, ‘Because I’m black.’” 

And when Charlie (rumors that his last name was either “Brown” or “Manson” have not been confirmed) didn’t immediately say, “Get your no-experience-having black behind out of my office, you racist beeyotch!” he proved that he shouldn’t have his job either.

But as dumb as those examples are, she topped them on April 6th, when she tried to defend illegal immigrants, but staggered into a hilarious self-own.  Because she’s a moron.

In a speech that desecrated the Grace Baptist Church in Waterbury, Connecticut, she said that she “had to go around the country and educate people” (HA!) about how we need illegals, because no Americans will farm anymore.

Or, as the expensively “educated” imbecile put it, “The fact is ain’t none a y’all tryin’ to go and farm right now….We done pickin’ cotton.” 

In addition to making anyone within earshot dumber after hearing that, Crockett said the quiet part – the incredibly evil, quiet part – out loud, arguing that we need illegal immigrants, so that… wait for it… they can be our slaves!

Now THAT’s an old-school Democrat for you!

In your comments, please choose which moron should move on to the next round.

Hamas delenda est!

Thoughts on Immigration, Part 3 (posted 4/9/25)

I’ll start today by thanking everybody for your feedback on my Monday column. I normally respond to all comments, but I’ve had a lot going on the last several days, including watching the fightin’ Gators winning the NCAA basketball national championship! 

And that game went just the way we drew it up.  Have your best scorer play his worst game? Check.  Score the fewest points you’ve scored in a very long time? Check.  Trail by 12 points pretty late?  Check.  Lead the game for right around one minute out of 40?  Check.

But space that minute out wisely.  Take 17 seconds of lead time in the first half…and then the last 45 seconds of the game!

Also, it didn’t hurt that we played defense like Hulk Homan™ holding Gandalf’s staff at the southern border.  (“You shall not pass!  Or score very often…”) 

UF opened our basketball stadium and showed the game live on the big screen.  The place was packed, and it’s only half a mile from our house, so you could practically feel the ground shaking when the game ended! 

Anyway, I did read your comments, and I appreciate them.

This is the third and final part of my series of columns about immigration.  In the first part, I went through the evolution of our immigration laws, and pointed out groups who were specifically excluded from immigrating, including the stupid, insane, sick, welfare recipients and criminals.

In the second part, I discussed the reasons why many Americans were once either browbeaten or shamed into not deporting illegals, and how the lefties’ tactics to achieve that goal are no longer working.  Today I’m closing with a simple analogy, and a little analysis of how immigration rules should apply to visa holders and would-be naturalized citizens. 

The analogy is that a nation is like a house. 

Okay, I know that’s not especially deep or brilliant.  It’s no “faith is like a mustard seed.”  Or even, “Life is like a box of chocolates.”  But I think it can still be useful.

Your house has clear boundaries around it, i.e. its walls.  If we consider the slightly more expansive concept of “your property,” your house even has a series of exterior borders, such as your yard.  Often that is marked by a fence, or a hedge, or the edge of a lawn.  Sometimes there is another liminal space — a porch, a stoop or a patio – where you are not within the house yet, but you’re farther from the purely public space outside the yard.

If you’re a well-raised person, you feel a bit of natural reluctance to enter someone’s property without a prior arrangement to do so.  You might walk up to a door and onto the porch and knock on the door…if you’re delivering a package or you’ve told the resident that you’d be dropping by. 

But if it’s a stranger’s house and they’re not expecting you, it’s uncomfortable to let yourself in through a gated fence, and more so to walk up onto the porch.  Most of us, after knocking, will instinctively step back to the edge of the porch and try to put a pleasant look on our faces, so that the inhabitants can take a reassuring look at us from a safe distance before they open the door.  Most of us will be more polite than usual in such a situation.

Since you have the right to decide who comes into your house, and under what circumstances, you don’t even have to open the door. 

And only a sociopathic squatter, if nobody comes to the door, will just let himself in and make himself at home!

And if he does – and if the house in question is in a red state or smaller town where people have their heads on straight – he might be greeted with a warning gunshot to the chest or head.  Or at least the mind-focusing sound of a shell being racked into a shotgun.

If said squatter was lucky enough to find no one at home, and especially if it’s a big house, he would be wise to find a good hiding place, if he wanted to stay in the house.  Maybe an attic, or a basement, or the garage. 

You see where I’m going with this.  Illegal immigrants are the squatters here, and traditional, old-fashioned illegals at least had the good sense to hide, and make themselves as unobtrusive as possible.  Hence the saying from the good old days of 20 years ago which described illegals as “living in the shadows.”  They would hide from the authorities, work under-the-table jobs, and try super-hard to not be noticed.  When that didn’t work, they had the good sense to try to run.

But, like beleaguered citizens in a sanctuary city run by morons, we’ve created a new type of illegals: the entitled type.  In our lawn we’ve put up one of those idiotic signs saying, “In this house, we believe no one is illegal.”  And on our porch we’ve put up an even more idiotic welcome mat saying, “Welcome, MS-13!”

And beside our door we put a thrice-idiotic big plastic pumpkin filled with cell phones, hundred-dollar-bills, EBT cards and voter registration forms, and above that pumpkin a sign saying, “FREE!  But we’re on the honor system, so just take one of each.” (Spoiler alert: each day the first sociopath to arrive takes them all.) 

And for four years our demented grandpa who was in charge of the house – let’s call him Brandon – left the front door wide open.  And he’s the one who put the pumpkin there, because in his diminished state, he thinks every day is Halloween.

So now the squatters don’t even bother to hide in the attic or garage.  They raid our fridge, eat on our sectional couch, order pay-per-view imam sermons, and take over the master bedroom for themselves.

Sure, there are still some “nice” squatters, with the good sense to hide out in the garage with a hot plate and try to fly under the radar.  If they’re caught, they might offer to take care of the yard, clean and do our laundry if we just let them stay.

It’s no coincidence that in our blue cities and states we’ve had an unprecedented epidemic of literal squatters.  In a healthy country, no one would have the cojones to try to forcibly take over someone’s house, because they’d expect to be forcibly removed and jailed quick, fast and in a hurry.

But in recent years, squatters figured out that if we won’t enforce our borders and our laws, why would we draw that line at our houses?   And they weren’t wrong.

Obviously, we shouldn’t allow illegals to stay here, any more than we’d allow squatters to stay in our house.  Yes, we should prioritize removing the brazen sociopaths in the master bedroom first, but the “nicer” ones in the garage will need to go too, as soon as we can get to them.

People legally here on visas are more like house guests or roommates.  Some of them are here temporarily – on a student or working visa that is the equivalent of a one- or two-year lease.  Others are in a potential rent-to-own situation, with a green card that allows them to live here while they’re going through a process that they hope will eventually allow them to become citizens. 

But in those cases – and I cannot stress this enough – the roommates must be on their very best behavior.  Pay your rent on time.  Abide by all house rules.  Don’t make us sorry that we allowed you to move in!

That’s what’s been so infuriating about the entitled little Ivy League Marxists and junior jihadis, and the elite leftists who support and defend them.  We give them the amazing gift of allowing them to come to the greatest country in the world, to study at what used to be top-flight universities, and they immediately start acting like horrible roommates and entitled brats.

Khalid Mahmoud and many like him seem to double-major in anti-Semitism and campus disruption.  Helyeh (more like “Hell no!” am I right?) Doutaghi gets a professor gig, and then spends most of her time slandering America and the West as fascist colonizers, and promoting the jihadist ideology of our nation’s enemies. 

And when we cancel their visas and move to deport them, the usual suspects wail about it.  “They haven’t committed any crimes!  They haven’t gotten due process!  This is a free speech issue!”

No, it isn’t.  It’s a spoiled, horrible piece-of-crap squatting roommate issue!

They’ve done the equivalent of moving into my house, drinking all of my bourbon, then falling asleep on my best recliner and urinating on it in their sleep.  Then they wake me up in the morning by blasting some horrific Palestinian rap music (Lil Scimitar and the Infidel Beheaders’ “Throw the Jew Down the Well”).  When I go to the kitchen to make breakfast, I discover that they’ve eaten all the eggs and thrown out all the bacon, because it’s “haram.”  

Then, just when I’m watching the Gators celebrating the national championship, and our 7’9” redshirt freshman cutting down the net without the use of a ladder (that’s a real thing that happened on Monday night), they switch the channel to a Syrian soccer game.   

When I look at them with murder in my eyes, they inform me that Cassie the Wonder Dog is going to have to go, because Muhammad says that dogs are unclean. 

And then their first rent check bounces.

They’re in our house, and they’ve got no right to be here.  They’ve abused our hospitality, and they need to be thrown out, both because they richly deserve it, and “pour encourager les autres.”      So we’re calling our neighborhood cop to come over and give them a taser-and-billy-club-assisted eviction. 

And our neighborhood cop is Hulk Homan.™

Hamas delenda est!