Plain Speaking
When President Trump told his thousands of fans at the Fargo, North Dakota, rally, “The Democrats want to take away your Second Amendment, erase your borders, throw open the jailhouse doors and destroy your freedoms,” he sounded, if not like a raving lunatic, at least like someone who is engaging in super-charged hyperbole, tinged with a touch of paranoia. That is until you stop and think about it and realize that in fact he was understating the reality.
When President Trump told his thousands of fans at the Fargo, North Dakota, rally, “The Democrats want to take away your Second Amendment, erase your borders, throw open the jailhouse doors and destroy your freedoms,” he sounded, if not like a raving lunatic, at least like someone who is engaging in super-charged hyperbole, tinged with a touch of paranoia. That is until you stop and think about it and realize that in fact he was understating the reality.
Those on the Left really are out to do all of those insane things. And while they’re at it, they want to hurl obscenities and throw tantrums. The weirdest thing of all is that they regard themselves as the custodians of the planet. Inasmuch as they talk incessantly about a clean environment, a nice first step would be for them to start with their own foul language.
What is truly startling about progressives is that they are so much in the tank for open borders that they’re even reluctant to see alien criminals arrested and deported. They even go so far as to call for an end to ICE. Apparently, the fact that ICE agents arrested 33,000 felons in 2017, 5,000 of whom belonged to violent gangs, including the vile MS-13, cuts no ice with those liberal loons who equate ICE with the Gestapo.
So it’s no big surprise that after Ms. Ocasio-Cortez defeated the old war horse Joe Crowley in the Democratic primary that just took place in New York’s 14th Congressional District, left-wing candidates around the nation will be adopting her anti-ICE position in their own campaigns.
If the Democrats actually run and win with this item on their platform, the next time you’ll see me, I’ll look like that guy who was always popping up in New Yorker cartoons, dressed in sackcloth and sandals, carrying a sign that reads “The End is Near.” Or, perhaps, “The End is Here.”
Speaking of border enforcement, when I listed the 41 Republicans in the House who joined with the Democrats in voting down the piece of legislation that included the things that Trump was calling for — his big, beautiful wall, an end to chain migration and the visa lottery — a few people let me know that the reason the conservatives on the list, including Louie Gohmert, gave for voting it down was that they opposed a pathway to citizenship for the so-called Dreamers.
I assumed that was the case, but it just made additional steam come out of my ears.
I replied: “Some of them may be conservatives, but that doesn’t mean they’re very bright. The Dreamers aren’t going anywhere, so they might as well be provided with the pathway.
"Three quarters of a loaf is better than no loaf at all. It’s high time these guys realized that they will never get rid of all the illegals who are here already. After all these years, they should have understood that they will never have a better shot at immigration reform than the bill they just torpedoed.
"If they don’t understand by now that politics is the art of the possible, perhaps they should retire from Congress and get jobs that would pay these buffoons what they are actually worth on the open market.”
Seeing footage of the Las Vegas cops on “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” as they lurked in the stairwell of the Mandalay Hotel while Stephen Paddock continued firing down on concertgoers 32 flights below, makes you wonder if they got their training at the same place as Scot Peterson, the deputy who stayed outside the high school while Nikolas Cruz mowed down students and teachers in Parkland, Florida.
I can certainly see the appeal of staying out of harm’s way until the psychos run out of ammo, but that’s not the way the job description reads. Otherwise, even I could be a cop.
It does make me wonder, though, why it’s only soldiers who can be charged with dereliction of duty.
Speaking of which, while watching Rod Rosenstein and Christopher Wray being filleted by people like congressmen Jim Jordan and Trey Gowdy, I found myself wondering what Trump was thinking when he appointed those two despicable skunks to such high-level positions in the Justice Department.
Immigration, Mr. President, isn’t the only place that requires better vetting.
Bob Hunt of Arcadia, California, sent me a poll indicating how trusting Americans are of their news sources.
On average, 72% of us believe that the media tells us things that reporters and pundits know to be false or intentionally misleading; 25% don’t believe it.
When you break down the poll results politically, 53% of Democrats know they’re being lied to, but they seem to like it; 41% are so stupid, they actually believe the garbage they’re being fed by MSNBC, CNN and The New York Times. The split among the dummies who still identify themselves as Independents is 79%-20%. To their credit, 92% of Republicans agree with Trump’s assessment of the fake news media. However, that leaves 7% who believe whatever they read or hear. That must include such alleged Republicans as John McCain, Jeff Flake, Rod Rosenstein, Christopher Wray and Robert Mueller.
That still leaves 1% unaccounted for. I can only imagine they’re actually Democrats who were thrown by the question about their party affiliation.
Bob Marcks of Scottsdale, Arizona, sent me a picture of two guns. The first was labeled a teacher’s gun and was a regulation pistol. The second, labeled a librarian’s gun, had a silencer attached.
After posting the FBI crime stats showing that blacks, who constitute a mere 12% of the nation’s population, commit well over half the homicides and armed robberies, I heard from Bill Reed, who just might be the smartest person in Springvale, Iowa.
He pointed out that I had missed the mark by a mile. Perhaps two miles. That’s because those crimes are nearly exclusively committed by black males, which lowers their percentage of the population to 6%. Furthermore, the majority of those violent crimes are committed by black males between the ages of 18 and 34, which lowers the percentage another three or four points.
“And yet,” as he writes, “the Left bleats that so many young black men are in prison and they blame it on racism.”
After I wrote about the soaring suicide rate among America’s young people, my friend Art Hershey wrote: “When the days where everyone gets a trophy ends, these poor kids lack the ability to handle life’s simplest problems. This is a sorry state that our do-gooder liberal society has created for our youngest and sometimes brightest.”
I replied: “I suspect that the brightest tend to survive because they have actual resources. Unfortunately, thanks to affirmative action for all, kids no longer receive honest grades in school. Everyone gets A’s and B’s, and their parents are all conned into thinking they’re raising young Einsteins. So why wouldn’t they spend a few hundred grand sending the young scholars to the college of their choice, so they can come out the other end with a bachelor’s degree in burger-flipping?
"It doesn’t help that the colleges themselves have turned themselves into nursery schools, complete with crying closets filled with graham crackers, stuffed toys and fuzzy blankets. The closest brush the young sprouts have with reality is being turned down for a date.
"We are raising a generation that will go straight from the infantile stage to old age with no more life skills than a newborn puppy.
"I believe it is just possible that the motivation behind the record number of suicides is nothing more mysterious than well-deserved embarrassment.”
Today’s joke was provided by Dick Frohman, who walks the plank in Indian Wells, California.
A pirate walked into a bar and was greeted by the bartender with: “Hey, I haven’t seen you in a while. What happened? You look terrible.”
“What do you mean? I feel fine.”
“For openers, what’s with the peg leg? You didn’t have that the last time I saw you.”
“Oh, that. We were in a sea battle and I got hit with a cannon ball. But I feel fine now.”
“What about the hook? That’s new. What happened to your hand?”
“We boarded a ship and there was a sword fight. A bugger sliced off my hand but I got fitted with the hook, and I’m fine now.”
“What about the eyepatch?”
“One day we were out at sea when a flock of birds flew over. When I looked up, one of them crapped in my eye.”
“You’re kidding,” said the bartender. “I didn’t know you could lose an eye that way.”
“Unfortunately, it was my first day with the darn hook.”
