writing – Page 3 – Martin Simpson

Three Leftists Make Fools of Themselves (posted 3/31/25)

Before I get started today, I want to let everyone know that I’ve made another short video – this one on the topic of our crazies vs Democrat crazies — which I’ve posted on my website (Martinsimpsonwriting.com). You can find it under “Videos” at the top of the screen.

It’s a little different than the ones I made before, and it contains several added features: a small portrait of Cassie the Wonder Dog; a chance to see my scraggly poison ivy beard before I shave it off, and a very brief cameo from the late great Sam Kinison. So check it out if you’re so inclined, and let me know what you think.

On to the usual political malarky.

I’ve still got a column on immigration on tap, but I couldn’t miss the chance to mock a few of our leftist antagonists before posting that one… starting with the Good-Year Governor of my old home state of Illinois, J.B. Pritzker.

He gave a speech last week at the lefty thinktank Center for American Progress, in DC. (He kept calling them “CAP,” and I’m sure that I’m not the only one who keep instinctively adding an understood “dunce” before the CAP.)

He wants to waddle for president in 2028 – which would be easier for him if he wasn’t running Illinois into the ground – and his 20-minute speech and subsequent Q&A was an early step down that road. I’d like to tell you that I watched the whole presentation, but even my prodigious will power is not inexhaustible.

But I watched most of it, and that was enough to conclude that he’s no worse than most national Democrats right now. (You can find that description beside “damning with faint praise” in a dictionary of common sayings.) He can speak in complete sentences, but only if they are filled with a combination of banalities and fashionable progressive lies.

He attacked Elon as a wealthy oligarch, apparently forgetting that he inherited his own billions from mommy and daddy, and used a portion of that wealth to buy a governor’s seat. He also attacked Trump because he heartlessly withheld masks and ventilators which would have saved the lives of many people in the early days of covid, purely because Trump “[sees] people’s lives [as] a game.”

Which would have been a great point, if we didn’t already know that Trump didn’t do that, and that masks and ventilators didn’t save people’s lives any more than draconian Democrat lockdowns did. Beyond that, Pritzker offers only glittering generalities, and dishonest insults of conservatives.

The presentation was billed as, “Pritzker Drops the Hammer on Trump and Musk for ‘Cruel and Incompetent Recklessness.’” I couldn’t help thinking that “Cruel and Incompetent Recklessness” would be a great campaign slogan for what the Dems have done to Chicago and Illinois over these last several decades.

And I think Pritzker would do a lot better for himself if he tried dropping a fork and spoon for a change, instead of a hammer.

Speaking of dropping a hammer, I came across a social media post by Tim Miller – a former RINO and current weasel who writes for the never-Trumper site The Bulwark – which quickly resulted in him being hammered from all sides.

Miller captioned a link to Musk’s DOGE interview with Bret Baier, this way: “Prepare to be lectured to by a guy who has never pleased a woman.”

Which is doubly rich, considering that Musk has about 114 children (which presumably means that he’s pleasured at least a woman or two in time), and that Tim Miller is not exactly the kind of fella whose entry into a room results in a wave of panties automatically dropping. And that’s before you take into account that Miller is gay.

A more skeptical guy might ask how Miller even has the chutzpah to opine on what it takes to please a woman in the first place. But not me. Because I can easily imagine Miller walking toward a group of women, who all look at him and think, “Oh boy. What’s it going to take to get rid of this creep?”

But then one of them whispers to the others, “That’s Tim Miller. And he’s super gay.”

And just like that, all of the women in the group are pleased that he won’t be hitting on them. So good job, Tim. Because just by being gay, I’m sure that you’ve pleased way more than your share of women.

My favorite story of the last week was NPR’s CEO Katherine Maher testifying in front of a House committee. Maher is a standard-issue AWFL, and exactly who you’d expect to be the CEO of NPR. Or PBS. Or some crooked leftist NGO.

She had to face the worst situation a public official can endure: being questioned by competent people who have the facts at their disposal, when you have left an obvious paper trail proving that you are clearly guilty of everything they’re about to expose you on.

Unfortunately for her, she doesn’t seem to have been sharp enough to realize any of that. After posting endless tweets about her super-white New England upbringing, and how she’s woke enough to condemn her northern neighbors for their complicity in the slave trade centuries ago, I couldn’t help but think of another New England tradition: putting bad actors in a pillory in the town square.

But this was even better. Because it was like they locked her head and hands in place, and then GOP officials started paddling her, while the angry crowd threw rotten fruit and vegetables at her head.

Her testimony had it all, including ridiculous assertions, unconvincing confessions, and bald-faced lies.

When asked why she’d called Trump a “deranged racist sociopath,” she said that she regretted her words today. I’ll bet she does, after November 6^th!

Brandon Gill went to work on her, and it was beautiful to watch. He asked whether she believes that “America believes in black plunder and white democracy,” which she had tweeted in reference to a book she loved called The Case for Reparations.

Maher not only denied that she believed what she tweeted, she said she’d never read that book. Then Gill read her tweet, which said, “I appreciate the day off today to finally fully read The Case for Reparations.”

D’oh!

She also denied knowing of a book called “In Defense of Looting.” Until…wait for it… Gill read the tweet she posting saying that she’d read that book.

When Gill asked her, “Do you think that white people should pay reparations?”

Finally, she gave a definitive answer. “I have never said that, sir.”

And Gill brought the paddle down hard. “Yes you did. You said it in January 2020. You tweeted, “Yes, the North, yes all of us, yes America. Yes, our original collective sin and unpaid debt. Yes, reparations. Yes, on this day.”

Yikes. That’s Harry-met-Sally level stuff. Except that none of us will have what she’s having!

She finally fell back to repeatedly saying that, “My views have evolved since then.” And eye rolling could be heard throughout DC.

Especially when she denied that NPR is politically biased. Which was followed immediately by Jim Jordan pointing out that in the DC area, editorial positions at NPR have 87 registered Democrats and zero Republicans. Ms. Maher was shocked – Shocked! – to hear that.

As much fun as it was to watch Maher getting hoist on her own petard, the larger issue is that NPR and PBS should obviously be defunded, for many reasons.

First, even if it wasn’t obviously politically biased, there is no reason to force Americans to support government tv and radio channels. There are tv channels for every interest under the sun, from cooking to travel to Korean soccer to fishing to game shows. And PBS’s worthwhile shows – my wife watches Antiques Roadshow, and we both like Rick Steve’s travel stuff – would be snapped up and shown on regular, free-market channels.

Second, they are obviously biased, and that’s doubly insulting in a country that is politically divided.

Third, it’s typical of the totalitarian streak on the left that they would expect us to pay for their propaganda. Conservatives are glad that our right to own guns is in the constitution, but we’d never expect that American lefties should be forced to buy our guns for us. And we appreciate conservative outlets like Fox and the Daily Wire, but we’d never expect American lefties to have to pay for those.

But it’s not enough for lefties to pretend that their right to abort their children is in the constitution – they’ve got to force us to pay for those procedures, which we find morally repugnant.

Similarly, it’s not enough for lefties to demand their own tv and radio networks. We must be forced to pay for the whispering androgynous soy people to spread their soporific propaganda on our dime.

Finally, the one refrain you hear constantly from advocates for NPR and PBS is that government money makes up such a small part of their funding that it’s barely worth talking about.

I think it’s time to treat them like Katherine Maher, and call their bluff. Because if the taxpayer “contribution” is so small, I’m sure they’ll never miss it.

Hamas delenda est!

Poison Ivy and Good Political News (posted 3/14/25)

Before I get into today’s helping of good news, I have to share a brief story, and only because it comes with a moral.

For the last 10 days, I have been enduring a bout of poison ivy that would kill a lesser man, and drive many men to madness. I received this affliction because I tried to do a good thing for my community.

Our little neighborhood has a small and charming pond in it, and a few weeks ago, our neighbors called for a community “clean the pond” day. We would have happily joined in, except that they scheduled it on a Sunday morning, and I was in church on Sunday morning, repenting of my vicious mockery of Democrats that you have all witnessed many times here in CO-ville. Along with many other sins which are not important now, so tend to the log in your own eye and mind your business.

Anyway, when the clean-up was over the neighbors had piled limbs and pond fronds and other debris around the pond, and I took several truckloads of that stuff to our local dump.

But because I like to go above and beyond, and because my wife bought me a chain saw for Christmas – after 35 years of marriage, that woman really gets me – I offered to cut down two dead crape myrtles that were leaning precariously over the pond. And apparently, concealing some of the most virulent poison ivy known to man.

Before I realized what was happening, I had scratched both of my forearms, one side of my neck, one cheek, and a spot a few inches below one eye. And then the blisters and the maddening itch came, and after 5 days of what turned out to be totally inadequate doses of steroids, I am now on a much stronger regimen.

The facial outbreak has kept me from shaving for a week, so I’m rocking a scraggly hobo beard that only partly distracts your eyes from the angry red blistering. And my forearms are tough to look at. They would easily win a “Worst Forearms in a Leper Colony” contest. And that description still doesn’t do them justice.

The closest I can come is, if Maxine Waters’ melting face was a pair of forearms…

Yes. Exactly.

I told you there was a moral to this story, and there is: Never do good deeds for your community.

HA! I kid. The real moral is one of the offshoot benefits of an optimistic outlook: Having something taken away for a time makes you appreciate it much more than you otherwise would.

Growing up without money can make you appreciate hard work and thus getting a little money. Being lonely for a time can make you appreciate finding a good friend or good spouse. Being bullied can make you stronger and more empathetic, and inclined to intervene when others are bullied.

And being sick for a little while makes you appreciate good health in ways that you never would otherwise.

For example, I normally have a regularly passable face and two normal forearms, none of which I’ve given much thought to. But in a few weeks, when this hideous cup of disfiguring hives and scrofula has passed from me, I’m going to look in the mirror and wink at my suddenly handsome self, and then go out in public and look for an excuse to point to things in front of other people, just to show off my pristine forearms.

Okay, now on to good political news: the Democrats are continuing to shoot themselves in the feet in various and sundry ways.

For example, for a day or two, a succession of MSM talking heads tried to argue that Trump was hiding from or avoiding the press because he didn’t want to take questions about the stock market downturn.

Exhibit A was CNN’s Kaitlin Collins, who I find intriguing, mostly because of an odd, chameleon-like quality she has. From some angles, she looks like an attractive woman, but then the camera moves slightly, and she’s got a mannish transgender thing going on.

On Tuesday, she did a snarky little segment about Trump “keeping the press away.” Which was ridiculous, as many commenters immediately pointed out, by way of giving the numbers of press questions answered in their first month in office by Obama and Biden (a little over 100 questions each), as compared to Trump’s… wait for it… 1006!

Then, within 30 minutes of her criticizing Trump for avoiding media, he took questions from the media for 30 minutes! D’oh!

Speaking of biased media figures, there are a lot less of them still employed lately. A partial list of the resigned or fired includes Joy Reid, Jim Acosta, Norah O’Donnell, Chuck Todd, Jonathan Capehart, Lester Holt, Chris Wallace and Andrea Mitchell. In addition, the inaccurately biased polling outfit 538 has been shut down, and the entire NYT editorial board is out.

Which reminds me of the old joke, “What do you call 1000 Hezbollah terrorists getting blown up by pagers?” Answer: “A start!”

In a story I missed the other day, Rosie O’Donnell has deported herself to Ireland. Which is great news for us, but a tough break for the Irish. First the potato famine, then the Troubles, and now this!

Other Europeans are also coming to some well-deserved grief. Recent stories came out that would shame many virtue-signaling Ukraine supporters, if they were capable of feeling shame. Polls of 7 nations show that they all strongly think that Ukraine should receive more support – in numbers ranging from 52% up to 66%. But the same polls also show that they think that THEIR COUNTRY should pony up support for Ukraine by much lower numbers, ranging from only 11% to 29%. Hypocrites!

Reports also show that the Europeans who trumpet their support for Ukraine most loudly have also been giving more money to Putin – buying Russian natural gas and oil – than they’ve given in support to Ukraine. Which is something that Trump warned them about 6 or 7 years ago, and they laughed in his face.

My favorite example of those with delusionally high opinions of themselves is an Austrian economist named Gunther Fehlinger-Jahn. Partly because of his ridiculous name. “Gunther” is a perfect start, followed by what sounds like a hyphenated term for a German sex crime. (“Und vat vere you doing when Gretchen accused you of fehling her jahn?”)

But mostly because he said this in an actual tweet that I swear I am not making up: “I call to confiscate all American military assets in Europe and hand it over to our emerging European Army in case of America leaving NATO.”

Oh, is that what you’re calling for, Gunther? I’d love to see you try it.

I picture a battalion of whiny Greta Thunbergs being whacked in the head with rifle butts by a battalion of Pete Hegseths.

Meanwhile, in blue cities in America, Democrats continue to make bad choices. While they actually have an opening to hit Trump over his ad-hoc-seeming tariffs and the falling stock market, they decide instead to focus their attention on… wait for it… defending Hamas supporting antisemites like Mahmoud Khalil, garden variety criminals, and illegal aliens.

Within the last two weeks, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu (as in “woo doggy, is she stupid!) has championed the latter two groups, in what looks like an ambitious campaign to single-handedly debunk the stereotype that Asians are all really smart.

On March second, one Lemark Jaramillo – 32, with a criminal record dating back to his high school days – chased two terrified people into a Boston restaurant with a knife. Luckily, an off-duty Boston cop was there, and after Jaramillo wouldn’t follow orders to drop the knife, shot him.

I wouldn’t have thought it possible for anyone to say anything more idiotic than what his girlfriend, Jennifer Geddes, said after Jaramillo assumed room temperature. She said, “Lemark was a good guy. He didn’t deserve this.”

A local story reported, “The two had been dating for a decade, and Geddes said he was loving and close to her children.”

Then… wait for it…

One. Sentence. Layter…

“Geddes had however taken a restraining order out against Jaramillo in 2018 after he was charged with assaulting her…and pulling out a knife.”

Because of course he did.

So how did Mayor Wu top that clueless statement? By giving a press conference in which she said, “My condolences and all of our thoughts are with the family of the individual whose life has been lost.”

Perfect.

Ten days later, in a Boston Public Radio interview, Wu blew off criticism that she has also been releasing criminals wanted by ICE, because ICE hasn’t presented her with completed warrants before she can release the miscreants back onto the streets. “ICE is choosing not to go and get these criminal warrants, [and then claiming] so and so was extremely dangerous and a threat to the community.”

You had arrested them and were holding them in your jail, which we know you are generally loath to do, and ICE then identified them as wanted illegals. But that wasn’t good enough for your tender sensibilities, so you released them, forcing ICE into the more dangerous situation of having to chase them down and arrest them in public.

But as grim as this story is, I’m an optimist, and can look on the bright side.

Someday soon, my face and forearms will be returned to attractive good health. But these Democrats will be self-beclowning, rake-stomping boneheads until the day they die.

Hamas delenda est!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I mean, “was.”

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

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

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

Hamas delenda est!

Various Schemes Backfire on Dems, Including Mourning the Key-Holder of Yosemite (posted 2/24/25)

For many, many years, ever since I was just a hilarious zygote with a dream, I have loved watching the best laid plans of bad actors blowing up in their faces.

I remember watching Wile E. Coyote painting a black tunnel entrance on a rock wall, then – after watching the Road Runner somehow race through the tunnel – smashing himself against it.

I enjoyed hundreds of cartoons featuring bad guys setting traps involving dropping anvils on heads, disguising quicksand pits, or giving their nemeses exploding cigars, only to be crushed by those anvils, sunk into that quicksand, or having their beaks blown around to the side of their heads by those exploding cigars.

Which brings me to the Democrats’ entertaining travails over the last 9 years.

When Trump considered running in 2015, many Democrats loved it. They mocked him and dared to run, and they gave him hours of free publicity on their tv programs. Many of them crossed over to vote for him in primaries, and some contributed money to his campaign. And then they got what they asked for, good and hard.

It still warms my heart to remember them in the Javits Center on election night, after Cankles McPantsuit had thundered out of the gate, only to snap a fetlock on the first turn. They stood around with shell-shocked expressions, soot all over their faces and the stub of a detonated cigar clamped between their teeth.

But soon they had wiped off their faces and got back to their wicked ways, using every under-handed tool at their disposal to try to hamstring Trump’s first term, and ensure that he lost in 2020. They launched the Russia hoax and the resulting Muller investigation to tie him up for most of his first term.

By the time the 2020 election rolled around, they weaponized covid as an excuse to hide Biden from the public during his campaign, and conspired with 51 dishonest deep state hacks who pretended that they didn’t know that Hunter’s laptop was Hunter’s laptop.

Ironically, their success against Trump in 2020 laid the foundation for what looks to be a much more successful Trump second term now. Between Biden’s awful performance for four years, and Trump’s time in the wilderness – which provided him the space to learn from the tactics the left used to undermine him during his first term – Trump approached his second term a much wiser politician than he had been in 2017.

But first he had to win again. And the left once again used tactics that backfired on them in the most hilarious and schadenfreude-tastic ways possible. They launched a four-pronged lawfare attack – five-pronged, if you count looney E. Jean Carroll’s patently absurd accusation that cost him time and money (until it is inevitably overturned on appeal).

But just like most of their other efforts against Trump, this one backfired again. The more bogus charges they pressed against Trump, the more popular he got. His own base rallied around him, and open-minded independents did the same, and before the Dems knew what hit them, Trump had dispatched the Cadaver and steamrolled the Cackler.

Now that Trump has been in office for a month, the hits just keep coming. One of his most potent weapons is DOGE. It would have been logistically tricky for Trump to try to create that agency, but luckily for him, Barry O had created the US Digital Service ten years earlier, providing Trump with a ready-made cudgel to re-name, and then begin bashing the deep state with.

Also luckily for him, many deep state creeps had also outed themselves, secure in the belief that Trump would never be president again. They left a treasure trove of social media posts and MSM appearances that basically screamed, “I’m a hateful, anti-American jerk, please fire me immediately!”

In fact, most of the Democratic elite seem to be following a knee-jerk strategy of doubling-down on everything that hasn’t been working for them. They are grabbing the “20” position on every 80/20 issue, and then hanging on to it like a ballplayer hugging a base after trying to stretch for a double and being called out.

My favorite recent example involves the National Parks. Trump wants to cut 1000 park service workers nationwide. While that amounts to just two positions from each national park, it represents an opportunity for the left to score a few points, because the park service is one of a handful of government agencies that the public enthusiastically supports.

Unlike cutting the leftist slush funds flowing from USAID, and firing rapacious IRS agents and corrupt educrats like Randi Weingarten, cutting park rangers could give many citizens pause.

But the Dems seem to be addicted to stupid. Instead of making a disciplined, reasonable defense of park service priorities and workers, the most visible push back took the form of in-your-face protests and angry leftist cliches.

One group hung an upside-down American flag on El Capitan, and released a hyperbolic statement that “national lands are under attack,” and urging citizens to consider “your public lands on strike.”

Some lefties also protested the cuts carrying signs saying, “Silence is violence!” – a tired cliché that is transparently false – and, “All cops are bastards.” Sure, the police have nothing to do with the funding of national parks, but hey, most Americans hate cop-bashing, so why not turn them against you, too?

The most ridiculous rake-stomping leftist self-own on this issue came from the Washington Post.

Unexpectedly!

Some earnest young WAPO staffer thought he could really stick it to Trump by touting an example of a model employee doing essential work at a national park whom Trump has unfairly fired. So he came up with… wait for it… a locksmith at Yosemite!

I know what you’re thinking: Are there a ton of intricate, Get-Smart-style series of high-tech doors scattered about our national parks? Is there some kind of retinal-scan/finger-print-accessed barrier that encloses Old Faithful, or a bank vault that must be defeated before you can gaze upon El Capitan?

Nope.

The WAPO describes the locksmith in question, in a quote that I swear I am not making up, as, “The sole employee with the keys and the institutional knowledge needed to rescue visitors from locked restrooms.”

Institutional knowledge?! We’re not talking about what would happen if Oppenheimer or Edward Teller quit the Manhattan Project, are we? I mean, this is Gus the janitor, holding a fistful of keys in front of a locked bathroom door! Even the kind of brainiac SCOTUS judge who can’t define “woman” can intuit that you put the male key into the female lock and then turn it, can’t she?

As a landlord with 29 years of experience, allow me to share some institutional knowledge with the National Park Service: You can take the one key that unlocks all the bathrooms in Yosemite to Lowes or Home Depot, and you can make a dozen copies of it for a little over $2 each. Then you can hang one of those keys on a hook in 12 different Ranger Stations, and voila! National crisis averted!

Hey, wait a minute. I just noticed something else in that WAPO jeremiad. It described the Nobel-worthy locksmith to the stars as someone who could “rescue visitors from locked restrooms.”

Does that mean that some dimwit visitors have locked themselves INSIDE a bathroom, and need to be rescued?

Good lord! Would any of us, if we were walking by a park bathroom and heard someone frantically shouting that they were locked inside, not stop and say, “Hey buddy, you should see either a latch or a raised ridge on a button on the lock. Turn that a quarter turn to the right, and then open the door, you moron.”

But here is the scenario that the hysterical WAPO leftist wants you to believe:

Gus the Yosemite janitor is passing by when a panicked bystander grabs his sleeves and yanks him toward a park bathroom.

Gus: What’s going on here?

Bystander: There’s a woman in there, and without your help, she’s going to die!

Voice from the Bathroom (VFB): Help! Is there anyone out there?!

Gus: I’m a park employee. What’s the problem?

VFB: I’m trapped, and I’m running out of oxygen!

Gus: You can’t run out of oxygen in a public bathroom. There’s an air gap under the door, and several windows at the top of the wall.

VFB: Don’t contradict my lived experience! I’m telling you my truth!

Gus (skeptically): Are you a Democrat congressman?

VFB: Congress-person!

Gus (nodding): Okay, AOC. Just open the door and come out.

VFB: How am I supposed to do that?

Gus (sighing): Do you see a metal latch right above the doorknob?

VFB: Yes! What should I do with it? Should I lick it?!

Gus: What? No! Why would you lick it?! It’s a deadbolt lock, and you use it to open a door!

VFB: Don’t man-splain to me!

Gus (rubbing the bridge of his nose between his index finger and thumb): Stupid juicy booty–

VFB: What did you say?

Gus: Never mind. (under his breath: Your words, not mine.) Just grab that metal latch, and turn it– (He gasps, grabs his chest, and his face turns red. He staggers, loses consciousness, and falls to the ground.)

Bystander: Oh no! Now we’ve lost this man’s institutional knowledge!

VFB: What’s happening out there? What should I do?

Bystander: Make your peace with God, because you’re going to starve to death in there!

VFB (raising her fist and howling to the ceiling): F-ing Trump! This is all your fault!!

And, scene.

Hamas delenda est!

Dems Jump on Colombian Tariffs and NJ Gov. Murphy Antagonizes Hulk Homan, and Both Quickly Regret It (posted 2/5/25)

One challenge about writing about politics right now is that the lightning pace of developments is continually making whatever you write almost immediately outdated. For example, think of the poor Dems who jumped on the “Trump tariffs Colombia” story.

Trump was on the golf course, learned that Colombia’s president said he wouldn’t accept planeloads of Colombian criminals back, and fired off a “here come the tariffs” threat. Then he laced a drive down the middle of the fairway on a par 5.

AOC immediately got off her juicy booty [her words, not mine] and wrote a tweet about the apocalyptic coffee shortage that would engulf America in 1000 years of darkness. Ana Navarro started wailing about how she wouldn’t receive any Colombian flowers for Valentine’s Day. (Yes, sweetheart. THAT’S why you won’t be getting flowers!)

And Grandma Squanto strung her bow and started putting on her warpaint over the imminent Colombian catastrophe. (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

But the lefty outrage tweet storm had barely gotten off the launching pad when the Colombian president submitted like Que Mala in a job interview with Willie Brown. Before Trump could putt out on that par 5, he’d won, and the lefty hysterics had to quietly lower their dresses from over their heads, and slink away in humiliated silence.

Well I’m having a similar problem, except in the opposite direction. Before I can finish lacerating some idiotic lefty plan of attack, the attack blows up in the lefties’ faces, confirming my correctness while also rendering my response obsolete.

The latest example is provided by dimwit NJ governor (from guess which party) Phil Murphy. (Rumors that Punxsutawney Phil is smarter than Phil Murphy have not been confirmed. But don’t need to be. Because, duh!)

In a televised interview this weekend, Murphy bragged that he has been harboring an illegal above his garage, and dared the Feds to come and get her. This was a classic case of a beta male cosplaying as a tough guy. (See: Davy Hogg growing the kind of pathetic beard that a gender dysmorphic gal grows after she’s been injecting testosterone for a few months.)

It was also classic Murphy. (Rumors that “Murphy’s Law” was coined about this doofus have not been confirmed. But c’mon.)

So I read about this last night, and started writing a sarcastic little bit of deathless prose about it, to the effect of, “Murphy is going to regret confessing to a crime on video after Tom “Yippie-ky-yay MFer!” Homan hears about it. Because that lean, mean deporting machine is going to make poor Phil not just THINK he’s seen his shadow – he’s going to be afraid of his own shadow!”

I’d started with a few trenchant “Phil Murphy is dumber than Punxsutawney Phil” and “Murphy’s Law was named after this dope” jokes, and was just involving the ghost of Sam Kinison in the fun (“Hey Phil, you know one thing that might not be a smart move for a sitting governor to do? [begin Kinison filter] CONFESSING TO A FELONY ON CAMERA, YOU DIPSH*T! OH!! OHHHHHHH!!!” [end Kinison filter]), when the news broke:

Phil Murphy furiously backpedals, claiming that his statement that he was harboring an illegal had been “misinterpreted.”

D’oh! Can you morons at least give me enough time to take some batting practice on your moronic actions and words before you unravel like a cheap suit?

Regardless, I love Murphy’s lame response. First, because it was delivered by a “representative” of his, undoubtedly a poor schmuck who has to be questioning all of the life choices that led him to becoming a rep for Phil freaking Murphy.

Second because it is SO dumb. Murphy’s comments have been “misinterpreted?!” He literally said, “We said, let’s have [the illegal] live at our house above our garage. And good luck to the feds coming in to try to get her.”

That’s not some obscure paragraph from Finnegan’s Wake or the Book of Revelation that requires a lengthy, tortured exegesis to interpret. The guy said that he’s been harboring an illegal in his garage, and dared Hulk Homan to come and get her.

(And don’t try to steal “Hulk Homan,” because I am hereby copywriting it. But I am open to a joint venture with any t-shirt printers in CO Nation to produce a line of clothing with images of Homan’s head on top of a giant, green, muscular body.)

Then: one… hour… lay-tair…

Murphy’s miserable, flop-sweating rep is fidgeting in front of cameras like a slightly more masculine Karine Jeanne-Pierre. “No, no, no. When the governor said, ‘I’ve got an illegal living in my garage,’ what he meant was, ‘I definitely DON’T have an illegal living in my garage.’ See? It’s just all a big misunderstanding. And a misinterpretation. You remember when Tampon Tim Walz said, ‘I’m just a knucklehead?’ It’s like that.”

By the way, during the Dems’ covid hysteria, Phil Murphy had New Jersey residents arrested for going to the gym. Because “no one is above the law.”

Also, according to Title 8 of U.S.C. 1324, penalties for harboring an illegal immigrant include fines up to $250K and imprisonment for up to 5 years.

But after he’s done three years inside, we’ll let Phil walk out into the prison yard.

If he sees his shadow, he’s got two more years in the can.

Hogg/Warren 2028!

More Good News, Plus a Throwback to January of 2021 (posted 1/8/25)

I wasn’t planning to write another column today, until Mark Zuckerberg made his amazing about-face yesterday, admitting that content moderation on Facebook had “gone too far” and announcing that he’s going to “restore free expression” on the site.

First I pinched myself, to prove that I wasn’t dreaming. Then I checked the calendar, to confirm that it’s not April Fool’s Day. Then I re-read his statement, specifically the part where he says that he’s getting rid of his armies of blatantly biased “fact checkers.”

Then I went outside and crouched down low, scanning the skies above me to be sure that there were no flying pigs swooping low enough to collide with me.

But no. I wasn’t dreaming, it’s not April first, and there were no porcine aviators darkening the skies over our great country. A famous and influential censor has apparently seen the error of his ways, and is repenting.

I don’t know whether Zuckerberg has actually learned from experience and had a change of heart, or is only tactically retreating in the face of a free speech ascendancy that’s been energized since November 5^th. (I’m generally cynical about lefties who gain a “newfound respect” for free speech.)

But the beautiful thing is that it doesn’t really matter. The end result is more free speech, and that’s a very good thing for our nation, and even better for conservatives. Because our ideas are better than leftist ones, and when both are allowed space in the public square, ours thrive and theirs wither.

This also comes at a particularly good time for me, because as regular readers may know, after an eight-year run on the CO site with no Facebook warnings, in the last month I’ve gotten two “offensive speech” warnings, and had two of my columns pulled from this site.

In addition, several of my columns were slapped with ridiculous FB critiques. For example, when I discussed the fact that “climate change” isn’t going to roast or freeze us all to death within the next 18 months, FB kindly put a text box at the bottom of the column – and on every response and comment! – saying something like, “To learn the truth about climate change, go to climatechangewillkillusall!.gov.”

But those joke-blockers were as ham-handed as any know-nothing Soviet apparatchiks, and I assume that anyone with an above-AOC-level IQ knows that such “corrections” are absurd.

And as far as the hate speech strikes and possible banning, the vaunted FB algorithms have proved no match for the brilliant subterfuge of my cunning plan to use… wait for it… pig Latin! (It’s like the way the US Army used Navajo code-talkers in WWII, only more juvenile.)

Thus, my comments on “ranny-tays” have flown under the radar. (And no, no matter how many times I’ve been tempted, I haven’t had to deploy the “o-gay uck-fay ourself-yay” yet. Because I’m a gentleman.)

Anyway, Zuck’s retreat is good news, and another green flag that things are turning around. He specifically said that he’s going to end the fact-checking “completely,” replacing it with a “Community Notes” model that Elon uses on Twitter/X.

Which is another win for me, because I expect that my columns will be getting a mountain of community notes, along the following lines: “This guy is always right!” And, “How does he do it?” and, “We should probably sell all that we have, give it to the poor, and follow him.”

So with the 20^th only 12 days away, we may end up testing Trump’s prediction that we will get tired of winning, saying, “Please, please, it’s too much winning!”

Finally, since people seemed to enjoy yesterday’s throw-back excerpt from one of my columns from the dark days of January 2021 – new readers apparently weren’t aware that I can write the hell out of an inaugural poem, for example – I decided to close with another blast from the past.

By the way, if you haven’t checked out my WordPress site (Martinsimpsonwriting.com), you should give it a look. If you click “subscribe” there (it’s free), you’ll get an email letting you know when I’ve posted a new column. It also includes archives of my old stuff, which means you can go back and re-live the ecstasy of January 2017 or the agony of January ’21.

Many people say that the entire collection is an example of wisdom literature. Like the book of Proverbs, or the Analects of Confucious, or the Kama Sutra.

Well, not the Kama Sutra. If you’re getting THAT out of it, you are really reading it wrong!

Anyway, here’s another throwback excerpt from 1/12/21, when I was desperately seeking any silver lining in the dark cloud of the impending Biden administration:

“The Dems are such horrific politicians that they are going to over-reach and alienate all but their hard-core base, and to the extent that we can have even fair-ish congressional elections in the future, they should be sailing into a serious repudiation in the mid-terms, a la Obama’s 56-seat House bloodbath in 2010.

Biden has one orthopedic shoe in the grave, and Kamala is a human toothache, and all of the faces of the national Democrat party look like the Elephant Man’s family reunion, morally speaking. They are not going to wear well.

If they were even room-temperature smart, they could do much more damage by posing as unifiers and throwing a few, pitiful bones to the spineless GOP members who always seem happy for even the most meager of scraps. Instead, they are so driven by their own malice that they can’t help themselves: they’re going to double-down on their frothing hatreds, and pursue their “enemies” (i.e. half of the country). Anyone who is not a completely lost cause is going to be repelled by that.”

Okay, so I missed the optimistic mid-term projection. The only red wave we had was in Florida and (oddly enough) New York. But as for the rest of my predictions?

I think I can say, as Willie Brown said after he “interviewed” Que Mala for her first job in politics…

Nailed it!

12 days and counting, people…

A Flashback to a Very Different Inauguration… in January 2021 (posted 1/7/25)

I’ve mentioned in several recent columns that whenever I’m feeling a little down, I can always cheer myself up by watching a few videos of election night coverage in 2016 and in 2024.

But last night, as I was thinking about how miserable we all were four years ago, it occurred to me to go back and read some of my columns from January of 2021, just to remember how grim the beginning of Biden’s reign was, as we prepare to celebrate its end.

What I found is that even while they were funny in parts (unexpectedly!), there was a lot of dread just beneath the surface. And that makes our current happiness all the sweeter. Since many readers may not have been following the CO site four years ago, I thought I’d share a few excerpts with you this week, starting with part of my column from 1/25/21:

“I’ll be honest with you: I didn’t watch a minute of live tv on inauguration day, because I knew what I would have seen if I’d watched. A sickeningly obsequious media, a doddering old man slurring his way through a string of banalities projected in very large print on a teleprompter, and some of the worst people in North America elated by the triumph of a noxious ideology over the imperfectly realized but heartfelt ideals of our great nation.

Though it felt more like a Lamentations kind of day, my thoughts actually went to the famous passage from Ecclesiastes (or, as Joey Gaffes calls it, “eckle-stopholeese. Sorry, expialidocious. You know, you know the thing. The one right before the Palms.”):

“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.”

And for me, Wednesday was a time to mourn, and a time to cast away stones, and a time to vow to lick ‘em tomorrow. Also a time to watch 8 hours of HGTV shows on the DVR, and to drink Scotch, and to mourn some more.

So when I woke up Thursday – mostly sober, with a yard full of stones, and knowing how to renovate a cramped and tired single-story into an open floorplan with a chef’s kitchen and a farmhouse sink – I cautiously dipped into a few podcasts and websites I trust, and got a glimpse of the tragicomic farce that was the inauguration of Joe Biden.

I was sad to see that once again, so many violent conservatives raged out of control, showing grave disrespect for a new president’s inauguration. Here are some excerpts from the Reuters story I read on Thursday:

“Black-clad activists among hundreds of demonstrators protesting Biden’s swearing-in clashed with police a few blocks from the White House, in an outburst of violence rare for an inauguration. At least 217 people were arrested in the melees, police said.

The burst of civil disorder followed a fierce presidential campaign that left the country divided. In the violence, knots of activists in black clothes and masks threw rocks and bottles at officers wearing riot gear, who responded with volleys of tear gas and stun grenades as a helicopter hovered low overhead.

At one flash point, a protester hurled an object through the passenger window of a police van, which sped away in reverse as demonstrators cheered. Multiple vehicles were set on fire, including a black limousine. A knot of people dragged garbage cans into a street a few blocks from the White House and set them ablaze…”

Oh, I’m sorry. Those were not actual quotes from a real Reuter’s story about Biden’s inauguration last week – they were actual quotes from a real Reuter’s story about Trump’s inauguration 4 years ago. (The only edit I made was changing Trump’s name to “Biden” in the first sentence.)

Thanks to the MSM’s egregious bias, I’d forgotten that that even happened. This January 6th is a day that will go down in infamy because of the Democrat-lite violent actions of a few hundred bonehead Trump supporters, but there will be no comment on millions of leftists looting and rioting for 6 months all across the country.

Don’t forget it: in the very first hours of the Trump presidency, violent leftist thugs were already committing assaults, arson and property damage, and hundreds had to be arrested.

But some goofball wearing Viking horns broke into a government building, so we had to have a grim, militarized inauguration in the middle of a mostly empty capitol.

That being said, the mood was just about appropriate to the sadness of what was happening. Though the MSM lickspittles declared that there were no cheering crowds only because of covid, does anybody really believe that?

Or is the more logical explanation that NO ONE is enthusiastic about Joe Biden, and he couldn’t draw a crowd to save his life? (Which explains why all summer, when leftists were turning out by the tens of thousands for daily “We hate America!” riots and “Criminals are our heroes!” rages, Biden was talking to dozens of misfits and misanthropes in a series of strip mall parking lots, and being continually startled when they honked their horns each time he made it through a paragraph without collapsing.)

There were barricades, and empty streets, and some terrible slam poetry.

And by the way, you can track America’s decline through the quality of poetry associated with presidents. Walt Whitman wrote four poems about the death of Lincoln (among them “O Captain, My Captain” and “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”) that are still worth reading today.

Gifted poet Robert Frost read his poem, “The Gift Outright” at JFK’s inauguration.

Over 30 years later, mediocre poet (at best) Maya Angelou wrote a mediocre piece for Bill Clinton’s inauguration. It is justifiably forgotten now, but I remember banal repetitions of “a rock, a river, and a tree.” Poetry interpretation is subjective, but my take was that Slick Willie liked to take his interns to picnic at a river, where he was hard as a rock, and they ended up climbing a tree to get away from him.

But I’m more of a prose guy, so that might be way off.

Anyway, Biden’s inaugural poem was delivered by an unknown young woman, and of course the media is now swooning over her, and she’ll probably get rich and famous over this “poem.”

But, to paraphrase a line attributed to Dorothy Parker, this isn’t a poem to be set aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

Here are three consecutive lines from the poem, chosen at random:

“We’ve braved the belly of the beast, we’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace.

And the norms and notions of what just is isn’t always justice.

And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it, somehow we do it.”

Off the top of my head: “the belly of the beast” is a tired cliché; “beast” and “peace” don’t rhyme; “just is” and “justice” don’t rhyme; the third line changes verb tense in a way that doesn’t make sense. (By the way, my last sentence rhymed better than anything in this terrible poem.) Also, there is no referent for the “it” in the last line – what can that line possibly mean?

On the other hand, “knew it” and “do it” at least rhyme, even if they are stupid.

Good lord! At the rate we’re going, if Comma-la manages to get re-elected in 2024, her inaugural poem is going to start with, “There once was a man from Nantucket.”

I know that some of you are probably thinking, “Sure, Martin, you may be a hilarious genius, an amazing father and husband, and a role model for us all, not to mention a fine figure of a man. But you’re no poet, and you probably couldn’t do any better.”

To which I say, hold my Scotch and stand back, as I compose a poem – live, right now, this very minute — that is more fitting for the inauguration of Joe Biden than the actual putrid poem above:

Ode to Joe

C’mon man, he’s got a plan.

Look fat– don’t question that.

You know, the thing,

Ring a ding ding.

He defeated Corn Pop

Zippity boop bop.

Don’t give him a quiz:

he don’t know where he is.

Stay in your lanes

Or he’ll put y’all back in chains.

Even Frank Luntz

Knows he’s a dunce.

Boom! Admit it: you feel pretty foolish right now for doubting me. Because that poem has all the hallmarks of deathless verse: the lines all rhyme, it works on multiple levels, and it contains a subtle allusion to Frank Luntz.

Where was I? Oh yeah, our long national nightmare, just getting started….

Finally, in a move that I’m afraid sets the table for much more of the same to come, a few hours after Joey Gaffes signed an executive order mandating that everyone wear a mask on federal land, he went to the Lincoln Memorial. Which is on federal land.

And what was Joey wearing? No, not a vacant expression.

Well, yes. That’s his look.

But let me rephrase that: What was he NOT wearing? If you guessed “pants,” you probably had a 50/50 chance of being right. But in this case, it was a mask.

When a reporter called out, “Where’s your mask?” Biden leapt and spun around, startled, and said, “Who are you? Where am I?” When he noticed the statue of Lincoln out of the corner of his eye, he leapt in the opposite direction, and said, “Who is that?! And why is he so huge? Oh no! Am I shrinking?!”

When an aide explained that he was not shrinking, and that the giant statue was of Lincoln — and then that it wasn’t a statue of Lincoln, Nebraska, but of Abraham Lincoln — Biden visibly calmed down.

Until a reporter called out, “You just made it illegal to be on federal land without a mask. But you’re on federal land, and you don’t have a mask.”

Biden once again leapt in fright, and said, “Where am I? What? Who are you?”

The reporter said, “I’m a reporter, and you’re breaking the law by not wearing a mask.”

And Biden raised his hands and felt his wrinkly, unmasked face, and shouted, “Ahhh! Arrest me!”

Then Dr. Jill took him by the hand, and pulled him toward the stairs. “Let’s go home. You need to get a good night’s sleep so you’ll be ready to get up tomorrow and start wrecking the country.”

And, scene.

Look on the bright side, people: we’ve survived 5 days. Only 3 years and 360 days more.

Avenatti/Hunter Biden 2024!”

Remember the sick feeling in our stomachs back then, CO Nation? Well now we’ve survived 3 years and 352 days. Only 13 more to go!

Remember: JOY cometh in the mornin’ (…of the 20^th)!

Stupid Criminals, Foolish Victims, & Leftist Govs Produce Predictable Failures (posted 12/11/24)

Earlier this year I wrote about some new categories that would become regular features in my columns, including headings like “Unexpectedly!,” “We Don’t Hate the Media Enough,” “Schadenfreude Corner,” and “Stupid Criminals.” Since I haven’t returned to them in a while, I’ll do so now:

Stupid Criminals

Nowhere do political theories show up more clearly than in crime stories. Most everyone makes room in their thoughts for both punishment and rehabilitation, but conservatives believe that you get more of what you reward and less of what you punish. So their laws tend more toward punishment.

For example, in red states like Texas and Florida, our stance on the death penalty can be summarized by the saying, “If you kill someone around here, we’ll kill you back.”

Meanwhile in blue states, there’s a lot more focus on rehabilitation, and assigning responsibility to anyone or anything rather than the criminal. E.g. criminals aren’t moral agents with free will, but the helpless pawns of the system, institutional racism, or capitalism.

Therefore, in NYC, the judicial system doesn’t look at Jordan Neely and see a habitual drug abuser and violent recidivist terrorizing the citizenry, but a charming Michael Jackson impersonator unjustly attacked by a so-called “Good Samaritan.” Because: racism.

But those two examples are extremes, and many stories fall in between them, at least in part because denizens of some blue cities are starting to realize that their earlier views might have been AOC-level stupid.

Take the case of two armed robbers in New Orleans named Cecil Batiz and Teony Juarez, two teenaged Mensa members who decided to terrorize a clerk and rob a convenience store on December 3^rd. After pointing pistols at the clerk and grabbing a bunch of cash, they both demonstrated that they’d forgotten one of the prime rules of robbing people: keep your head on a swivel.

Because while the morons were paying attention to their take, the clerk pulled his own pistol and demonstrated that he knew the prime rule of both suppertime and shooting criminals: everybody gets a first serving before anybody gets seconds. So he shot Cecil in the abdomen, and then Teony in the arm, as he was returning fire before bravely running out the door.

Then the clerk gave Cecil seconds, as he lay on the floor trying to get his gun up. Cecil took the room-temperature challenge, while Teony was only wounded, and later arrested. And the good citizens of New Orleans, upon watching the video of the clerk getting the drop on the criminals, cheered like the Saints had just hit a game-winning field goal.

New Orleans’ DA is a George Soros-funded jerk named Jason Williams, so you’d think that the store clerk is in trouble. But it turns out that in October of last year, Williams and his mom were carjacked, after which Williams said that he had changed his thinking about crime and punishment.

When asked about the robbery gone wrong, Williams noted that “it’s painfully obvious to anyone who saw that video what those two people were doing in the store” and that “once somebody puts a gun in your face, the rules change.”

Yes! Even a once-blind lefty can sometimes see the light!

But not so fast, cautious optimists! Consider the opposite case of Darcie Bell, over in…

Schadenfreude Corner:

Darcie is a leftist right out of central casting: lives in San Francisco; wears Rachel Maddow glasses and a face mask (because of course she does) in her social media pic; has posted many times calling for the police to be defunded.

But now she’s decided to move out of San Fran, as she shares in a X post: “I’m like moving out of my house because I can’t afford to live here anymore.” Even though she’s got graying hair, note that she still includes the superfluous “like” as if she were an annoying teenager.

But with even less excuse, since teens do that as an unconscious verbal tic when they speak, and Darcie actually wrote the word out in a tweet!

Anyway, the poor dear has been priced out of her feces-caked liberal paradise. But that’s not her only complaint: “My kid just broke his femur at one of your many, underfunded SFUSD schools, and there was no nurse present to help him.” Not one our OUR schools, Darcie, one of YOUR schools.

And did you ever wonder why, when you are paying such high prices and taxes, your schools are still underfunded and sub-par? Which party has been running those schools for the last century or more, sweetheart?

She concludes thusly: “Lmao. WTF is this city?”

Answer: This is exactly TF what you voted for this city to be!

But the funniest part of Darcie’s story is yet to come. Because when she loaded all of her belongings into a U-Haul truck to make her move… wait for it… and put down your drink …some low-life scumbags stole the U-Haul!

Cue Nelson Muntz, pointing at Darcie Bell: “HA! HA!”

She turned to social media and asked for people to look for the stolen truck. But apparently there are a few wise guy conservatives still left in San Francisco – Christopher Silber, I’m looking at you! – because many people pointed out that she could call the police. Except, oops, she hates the police, and wants them defunded.

Ms. Bell didn’t appreciate that viewpoint, because her next post sounded a little more like angry Joy Reid or sulky Sunny Hostin: “I haven’t found my sh*t! The cops didn’t do sh*t! U-Haul made me file a f-ing police report! There’s cameras all over this city. They haven’t done sh*t! I just want my stuff back!”

Cue the sad trombone, followed by Nelson Muntz saying, “HA HA!”, followed by Sean Connery saying, “Suck it, Trebek!”

And lest you think that Darcie may finally have learned something…

Cue Doctor Evil: “How about NO!”

Because her last post before “muting” her X thread said, “I don’t care about the people who stole it, people steal sh*t, I just hope they take the stuff they need and I can recover the personal stuff.”

Darcie, Darcie, Darcie. Thieves don’t steal a U-Haul because they need it! They steal it because they are thieves, and because they have the work ethic of Hunter Biden, and because boneheads like you allow and excuse theft.

But here’s a thought that should comfort you. In your leftist theology, private property is theft. So you really didn’t have any right to your “personal stuff,” and those thieves were really just redistributionists, following Obama’s commandment to “spread the wealth around.”

I mean, you don’t want to be an evil capitalist, greedily clutching your precious “private” property, do you?

Finally, we have a couple of blue states clocking in with entries in the “Unexpectedly!” column:

First up is California, where Ken-Doll Newsom signed a bill mandating a $20 minimum wage in September of last year. Ten months later, data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics show that CA had lost 6,166 fast-food jobs.

But those losses were worse than meets the eye, because they followed the same period a year earlier, when CA had added 17,528 such jobs, for a net comparative loss of nearly 25,000 jobs.

So a leftist politician substituted his arrogant judgment for that of the millions of free citizens participating in a voluntary free market…and thousands of people lost their jobs.

UNEXPECTEDLY!

Meanwhile, my late, great, home state of Illinois has been suffering under the governance of a succession of far-left goofballs for many decades. The latest party boss is Governor “Goodyear” Pritzker (D-irigible) – #putdownthatcomicallyoversizedturkeyleg – who has managed to add to a pension shortfall that has now reached $172 billion!

That’s right. Illinois Democrats have managed to over-tax their citizens and over-promise pension windfalls to their government workers to produce “the worst public pension debt bomb in the country.”

Illinois’ debt is almost twice as much as that of the six surrounding states combined, and it’s more than the shortfalls of the 33 best-performing states, COMBINED.

So a state presided over by a far-left governor, dominated by a giant city presided over by a string of far-left mayors, has produced an economic disaster.

UNEXPECTEDLY!

Hamas delenda est!

Facebook Censors Finally Catch Up With Me (posted 12/4/24)

Well, it’s finally happened. After a blissful 8 years of writing one snarky column after another with no interference from the powers that be, I have received two notices within the last week that two of my columns have been removed from this site (i.e. the Cautious Optimism FB site) because they violated “hate speech” rules.

This was a little perplexing to me, because I am almost universally thought of as quite lovable. In fact, it is often said that to know me is to love me.

And though I regularly poke fun at the most fun-poke-able of our political opponents – I’m looking at you Grandma Squanto (#wemustneverstopmockingher), Imhotep Pelosi (“Aiiieee! The mummy walks among us!”) and Que Mala – mocking is not hating.

Odder still, the two columns of mine that were flagged were from 11/7 of this year and 5/5 of last year, so I’m not sure what would cause such a delayed reaction to both.

The November column was written the day after the election, and as you may remember, I was giddy with a potent mix of relief and actual joy (not that faux stuff that Que Mala tried to build a campaign on). Thus I was bouncing around from topic to topic, and I wasn’t sure what part was the potentially offensive bit.

So I went back to last May’s column, and the issue became a little clearer. In that one, I discussed an angry politician in Montana who is – how can I put this? – someone who believes himself to not be in line with what he was “assigned” at birth. I also discussed a Navy recruiter who presented as a person of the opposite sex.

So I am pretty sure what topic has triggered the FB watchers.

Side note: It was interesting to go back and read last year’s column, because enough time has gone by that I had forgotten what I wrote. So I read it like anybody else would, and got caught by surprise by a few lines here and there.

And as immodest as this sounds, I came to the same conclusion that many of you have: I am one funny weirdo!

For example, I hadn’t remembered referring to Churchill’s famous critique of the traditions of the Royal Navy as “Rum, sodomy and the lash,” and then saying that the US Navy now has its new recruiting slogan: “Hold the rum.”

I kill me!

Anyway, these warnings sounded ominous, and I didn’t want to risk getting this site shut down because of my hilarious yet allegedly hateful musings. So I went right to the top, and emailed the Great and Powerful CO to ask his opinion. He called me back on Monday, and I thought I’d give you a little peek behind the curtain to the discussion we had.

When I got the call, I was a little flummoxed. You’d expect it would be something like a call from Reagan or Trump: “This is the White House. Hold for the president.”

But no, it wasn’t even a minion on the line. It was just CO himself, calling from – I’m assuming – a SCIF at the CO Compound in Boca.

Naturally, I went directly to my home office and activated the translucent, soundproof and climate-controlled Cone of Silence, which I had installed after we bought this house. Because I watched just the right amount of Get Smart as a child.

My Cone of Silence descends from the ceiling to surround me – obviously – and it’s big enough to contain me and Cassie the Wonder Dog. Because while she understands English (duh!) – and ein bisschen deutsche, which she picked up during a youthful fling with a German shepherd – she doesn’t speak it, and thus couldn’t reveal anything she hears there.

Not that she would anyway, because she’s as trustworthy as the day is long. Unlike certain terrible presidents I could name, who swear up and down for months that they would never pardon their felonious junkie son, and then… wait for it… pardon their felonious junkie son.

So once we were both in our secure locations, CO put me on hold while he engaged voice-scrambling software as a security precaution.

By the way, CO’s hold music? All Beatles tunes. True story.

Anyway, once measures had been taken and our due diligence done, we had a high-level discussion. I can’t reveal the details here, of course. But the gist of it was that CO believes that mine is a once-in-an-epoch, national treasure of a mind that must be free, and he couldn’t live with himself if my thoughts were suppressed. (I’m paraphrasing loosely.)

He also said that even if it meant that the Cautious Optimism site were shut down, his only regret would be that he had but one site to lose for his country. (I know. I broke out in spontaneous applause, too.)

He also said that after January 20^th, he’d be reaching out to Tom Homan, Kash Patel and POTUS Maximus himself to see if they could call on Zuck to explain a few things. (I’m guessing that Luca Brasi would be played by Tom Homan at that meeting.)

So I’m going to continue writing here – my next column will be Friday – even though I may occasionally have to do a little of the ol’ “ixnay on the ranny-tay” talk.

In the meantime, let me ask all of you to read both of my offending columns, because I’d like to hear your opinions on their relative offensiveness.

Since you can no longer find them here on Facebook, please go to my WordPress page on your computer – Martinsimpsonwriting.com. On the right side of the screen you’ll find the monthly lists of my columns in reverse chronological order. The two columns in question are dated 11/7 of this year, and 5/5/23.

While you’re there, consider clicking on “Subscribe.” It’s free (although hitting the PayPal Tip Jar wouldn’t offend me), and once you’ve subscribed, you’ll get an email to alert you every time I post a new column, just in case any more of them get removed from the CO site.

In the meantime, as always…

Hamas delenda est!

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!