Tag Archives: donald-trump

Do Blue states produce stupidity, or does stupidity produce Blue states?

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Blue states have more problems than Red states. On average, the people in Blue states are less law-abiding and less law educated.

The dysfunctional big cities are mostly in Blue states – Chicago, L.A., New York, Baltimore, Seattle, Portland, Detroit, East St Louis, Minneapolis, and – I’ll admit it – my own former city, Denver.

Blue states have the worse budget woes. California, Illinois, Washington, New York and now Colorado are facing severe shortfalls. Their remedy is of course to raise taxes, not to cut spending. You see, the official color of Blue-sters is green.

In Colorado, there’s the TABOR Amendment to the state constitution which requires voter approval for these tax shakedowns. Naturally, the Democrat politicians are scheming to dodge the Amendment, even though the people of the state have already foiled them in their dodges three separate times. Ah, but this time the Democrats have 100% Democrat appointees on the Colorado Supreme Court.

That’s right, even the Blue-ish people of Blue Colorado (isn’t it a cruel irony that “Colorado” means “color red”?) refuse to allow their elected Blue-sters to raise taxes beyond the rate of inflation. But the Blue-ster politicians may still find a way to do it.

In all Blue states, there’s a psychological denial of the fact that if you raise taxes too much, people will move away. In California, they’re proposing a “one-time” 5% tax on the wealth of billionaires, as assessed by government assessors (how convenient that they do the assessing).

Apart from the fact that this tax is almost certainly unconstitutional, and vague to the point of being unenforceable, it ignores the fact that billionaires are typically smart enough to dodge it by . . . [wait for it] . . . moving out.

Duh.

One might think that even a Democrat state legislator in California would know that typical billionaires are smart enough to figure that out. But no, Democrat state legislators in California are not smart enough to figure out that the billionaires will figure that out.

We’re talking world class stupidity here.

This Blue state stupidity has gotten too obvious to ignore. The country used to mock the people of Mississippi. But recent data shows that Mississippi students are now doing better on standardized tests than California students.

People used to mock the kissin’ cousins of Appalachia. But we now have a deep Red Vice President who went to Yale Law School after growing up poor and barefoot in deep Red Appalachia, while the new mayor of deep Blue New York is an unredeemed Marxist with nary a clue about how to balance a budget, manage people, avoid Jew-baiting, or tie his shoes. And he was voted into office by a million deep Blue voters who don’t know Karl Marx from Groucho, and don’t care that they don’t.

So, I have a question along the lines of, “What came first, the chicken or the egg?”

In Blue states, did the stupidity of the people make the states Blue? Or did the Blue states make the people there stupid?

I think it’s mostly the latter. The people who flocked to California a generation or two ago weren’t stupid.  Heck, they launched Hollywood, they invented Silicon Valley, they made surfing cool (and that’s no easy feat). Fifty years ago, I wished everybody could be California girls.

But after the people got there, something weird happened. Maybe it was in the water or the drugs or the collective fashion-consciousness.

Whatever it was, it became cool to be leftish, to be druggy, to be counter to whatever is the culture. The more extreme, the more cool – all the way up to, and stopping just short of, Charles Manson.  

Yep, there was general agreement even in California that Manson was a step beyond cool. You could say that, in California, Charles Manson was literally too cool.

Of course, in the rest of the world, Manson was a murderous psychopath. California probably would not say that; too judgmental.

Once this mass hysteria took root in California, it spread like crabgrass. Fashion is like that. Hula hoops, bell bottoms, long hair and moustaches, streaking, gender mutilation, electric vehicles, dumbing down the school curriculum, you name it.

One day you’ve never heard of it, the next day you can’t live without it, and the following day you wouldn’t be caught dead in it.

And so, Leftism was the fashion of the day. Except it lasted for a generation. A generation lost in space.

In that time, they really messed things up. They tried to abolish merit, and almost succeeded, substituting a hodge-podge of skin color, sex habits, and political leanings. They ridiculed 2,000-year-old religions, and hated 3,000-year-old ones. They canceled and sought to outlaw anyone who disagreed with that agenda.

The fashion-conscious people went along with it for a long time. To be on the wrong side of fashion in a fashion-conscious world (and all worlds are) is to be without a friend. Better blue than uncool.

In short, my conclusion is that the Blue states produced stupidity, not the other way around.

But finally – or maybe this is not final – the tide turned, the fashion changed, the chickens came home to roost, the Kool-Aid ran out, and the people awakened from their wokeness.

They’re discovering, one hopes, that they aren’t actually stupid, but were just mistaken. We will see what comes next.

Now that democracy has failed in America, let’s try it in Iran and Cuba!

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Half a century ago, American children were taught in elementary school that “representative democracy” was the highest form of government.

Part of me wondered even then, why should everyone get an equal say in things? That wasn’t how it worked in my elementary school, I observed, even as they taught that creed. The students and the janitor didn’t get the same say as the principal and the teachers.

Some people are smarter, more diligent, better educated, work harder, and pay more taxes. Shouldn’t they get more of a say in how those taxes are spent than people who are not smart, not diligent, don’t work, aren’t educated, and don’t pay taxes?

The only plausible answer to that question as to why everyone should get an equal say, is that everyone should feel like a stakeholder in the nation.

That’s a nice sentiment, but there are several problems with it. First, allowing – nay, begging – stupid lazy people to vote is a high price to pay to make them feel like stakeholders. Second, it doesn’t work. They still don’t feel like stakeholders.

Third, if you want people who don’t pay taxes to feel like stakeholders in the nation, maybe a good first step would be to ask them to pay some of the nation’s taxes.

As it stands today, the bottom 40% of earners pay about one percent of federal income taxes. Is it any wonder that those so-called taxpayers always want to increase taxes? It’s because they themselves never pay them.

The Founders recognized this fallacy with the democratic republic they created. They recognized that at some point the lazy stupid masses might come to realize that they could vote for a “redistribution” of the wealth of the smart hardworking producers. That’s undoubtedly the reason that the Constitution originally did not allow for income taxes; it took the 16th Amendment. (Nearly all amendments after the first ten were mistakes, BTW.)

In another genius of socialist branding, the stupid lazy masses have dubbed this legalized theft “fairness.”

But let’s leave the tax tangent and get back to the broader failure of American democracy.

What we have now is mob rule. Everyone has a microphone in the form of the internet, including me. With that microphone, they can get “clicks” on what they post. Those clicks are more or less exchangeable for cash.

Human nature being what it is, many people are owned by their desire for cash, and thus many internet posters are owned by their desire for clicks. They post stuff that is designed to generate clicks and cash.

That’s why we now have horrible creatures out there like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens who are willing to generate clicks/cash with blood libels of the Jews.

Barely better are the people behind “Instapundit” who post misleading headlines appealing to notions in my tribe such as all Democrats are transexuals who want to conduct “gender affirmation” surgery on children in schools while burning the flag in Satanic rituals in the playground. (I’m sure the leftist websites have similarly weird headlines about Republicans, but I don’t see them because I don’t go to those websites.)

It’s political porn; it panders to the worst instincts of political junkies; it’s addictive; and it’s destructive to them, us, and our society.

And it works – for the perpetrators anyway. Ask Tucker.

(I have a friend who says he habitually clicks into Instapundit, but only to get the links. Uh huh. And I’m sure he got Playboy just for the articles.)

Speaker of obscenity, there’s the legislative branch. That’s the branch of government where a majority of the people elected to do the voting are supposed to enact and repeal laws.

Except it takes more than a majority to do both enacting and repealing. The Senate filibuster rule (another thing not in the Founder’s Constitution, or even the current one) means that it takes 60 of the 100 Senators to enact or repeal almost any law.

That means that the minority party – the political party that the people decided should be fewer in number than the other party – has a veto over any enacting or repealing of the laws.

That’s a bit weird. The “rule” is that that majority rules, except that the minority gets a veto. Huh?

It gets worse. Not only does the minority get a veto, they can shut down the government unless the majority concedes its power to them.

The minority shut down the government for over a month last fall, demanding that the majority pretend that the minority was the majority and the majority was the minority, by repealing part of the tax bill that was passed by the majority months earlier.

Now the minority is doing the same on a narrow issue, with the result that people are waiting hours in TSA lines at the airport. (I say fire TSA anyway; it’s all theater.)

The latest is the minority’s filibustering of a law to require photo ID when you vote, just as you’re required to have photo ID when you board an airplane, borrow a book, or cash a check – a law that is supported by 80% of Americans.

Maybe the majority should formally concede that it is effectively the minority. Then they can turn the tables and demand those minority filibuster rights. At which time the minority would say, “Not so fast, we’re  the minority, so we’re in charge here!”

Yep, that’s American “democracy.” Don’t even get me started on the European kind.

And sooooo . . . .

Let’s impose this farcical system on Cuba and Iran. Given their history of ecumenical largess (I have no idea what that phrase means, but it popped into my demagogue head; help me here, Tucker) they’ll surely be every bit as successful with it as we currently are.

OK, don’t go away mad. Here’s a tidbit to brighten your day. Donald J. Trump is not a Democrat, and I’m not even sure he’s a democrat.

But bear in mind that the greatest leader of the ancient world – the one who brought the greatest good to the greatest number – was Augustus Caesar. He wasn’t either.  

Are the Dems rooting for Iran because Iran is America’s enemy, or because the new Supreme Leader is gay?

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Given Iran’s half century of cruel barbarism in the Middle East, it’s hard to understand why the Democrats seem to be rooting for them in the current war. I have two theories.

One is the obvious one. The Dems are not so much rooting for Iran, as rooting against Iran’s enemy. Bad as Iran is, its enemy is even worse in the eyes of the Dems.

Iran’s enemy, you see – or at least the Dems see – has a history of its own cruel barbarism going back to at least 1619. Iran’s enemy has engaged in genocide against native people. Iran’s enemy has wrongly oppressed workers of the world who sought freedom in the workers’ paradises of the Soviet Union, Cuba, Venezuela, Red China and Eastern Europe.

Dems believe that Iran’s enemy has raped the earth, ruined the climate, undermined the sacraments of diversity, equity and inclusion, elected a man with bad orange hair to the Presidency, increased the wealth of everyone but at the cost of especially increasing the wealth of the wealthy, made “woke” a four-letter word, and is rapidly driving Starbucks out of business.

Iran’s enemy is of course America, which happens to be the Dems’ primary enemy as well. So, in a textbook example of “my enemy’s enemy is my friend,” the Dems see Iran as their friend.

That’s all that matters to the Dems. Forget about Iran’s atrocities. Forget about the hostage-taking, the baby-beheadings, the rapes, the murders, the incinerations. Forget about the imprisonment of people for political beliefs, the torture of dissidents for dissenting, the belligerent development of a nuclear bomb for use on Israel, and the throwing of gays off tall buildings for being gay.

(Correction: A reader has informed me that Iran does not throw gays off tall buildings; they pay ISIS to do that. Homer nods.)

Which brings me to my second theory. It has been reported that Iran’s new Supreme Leader who assumed the supremacy after the supreme demise of his supreme father is . . .

. . . gay.

President Trump, a supporter of gay rights, was reportedly pleased by the news. He laughed.

Gayness is not a sin, in my view. It’s barely worthy of mockery. For cheap mockery material, it’s on the order of baldness.

But under these circumstances it’s notable. The new Gay-atollah could be a second reason why the Dems are rooting for Iran.

It would be a DEI “resistance” exercise by the Dems, now that ordinary DEI has been outlawed or at least discredited. As in “I want the gay guy to win!” Or “I want the gay guy to beat Trump!” Or just “I want the gay guy!” (“But the bushy beard? Eww!”)

As for that newly-supreme-and-outed gay man serving as the putative Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran while cowering in a corner somewhere, he has yet another thing to watch out for. He has to watch out for not just bombs in the sky, but himself in the sky. Stay away from tall buildings, my friend.

Rubio/Vance vs. Harris/Newsom in 2028 – seriously?

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Predictions are hazardous, especially about the future and especially about politics, but the best prediction right now is that the 2028 Republican nominee for President will be either JD Vance or Marco Rubio, and the Democrat nominee will be either Gavin Newsom or Kamala Harris. The ones not nominated for President will likely be nominated for Vice President.

Before we employ these people for these important jobs, let’s do what employers do: Let’s look at their resumes.

(I’ve tried to present this in a neutral manner, unlike Wikipedia which unabashedly spins the tone and even the substance of the bios to favor Harris and Newsom and to disfavor Vance and Rubio.)

JD Vance:

  • Grew up poor in Appalachia with an alcoholic and drug-abusing mother.
  • Joined the Marines.
  • Graduated Ohio State University, summa cum laude.
  • Graduated Yale Law School where he was an Editor of Yale Law Journal.
  • Clerked for a prominent federal court judge, and then worked at a prestige law firm.
  • Worked for Peter Thiel’s venture capital company.
  • Wrote a NYT best-selling book about his life, later made into a hit movie directed by Ron Howard; the book sold three million copies, and the movie had over four million viewings.
  • Elected U.S. Senator for Ohio.
  • Elected Vice President of the United States.
  • Sports a lousy beard.

Kamala Harris:

  • Daughter of an Afro-Jamaican father and Indian mother.
  • Graduated Howard University (no listed honors).
  • Graduated University of California Hasting College of Law (no listed honors).
  • District Attorney for Alameda County, then appointed to state positions by an older politician she was dating, Willie Brown.
  • Elected first woman, first African-American and first South Asian-American Attorney General of California.
  • Elected Senator from California (first African-American, first South Asian-American, second Black woman).
  • Elected first woman, first African-American, first South Asian-American Vice President, and given responsibilities for discovering and remedying the “root causes” of illegal immigration under the Biden administration.
  • Defeated in 2024 election for President.

Marco Rubio:

  • Born to legal Cuban refugees in Florida.
  • Graduated University of Florida.
  • Graduated University of Miami Law School, cum laude.
  • Elected to Florida legislature, then elected first Cuban-American Speaker of the State House of Representatives.
  • Adjunct Professor at Florida International University.
  • Elected U.S. Senator from Florida and served ten years, was member of numerous committees and subcommittees.
  • Defeated in the Republican nomination for President.
  • Appointed Secretary of State by President Trump.
  • Widely considered very active as Secretary of State, with the NYT dubbing him “Secretary of Everything.”

Gavin Newsom:

  • Born into a prominent San Francisco family, where the father was close friends of the Getty oil family.
  • Played college baseball.
  • Started a successful winery with one of the Getty’s, and went on to other successful business ventures.
  • Appointed to political positions by the same mentor that Kamala Harris had (but didn’t date him).
  • Elected Mayor of San Francisco.
  • Elected Lieutenant Governor of California.
  • Elected Governor of California.
  • Had “severe dyslexia” as a child according to Wikipedia, and it’s still “pretty severe” according to Newsom.
  • Sports good hair.

So, there you have their bullet-point (can I still say that?) resumes. Which do you want to run the country?

Democrats condemn Trump’s “misogyny” for saying “we’re going to have to bring the women’s team” as well as the men’s to the SOTU

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In the raucous locker room celebration of the Gold Medal win by the men’s hockey team on the final day of the Olympics – an upset win for the ages – the team received a phone call from President Trump. They put the President on the speaker.

In the course of the hilarity and fun, Trump invited the team to this week’s State of the Union Address. Almost before the invitation was out of Trump’s mouth, the team accepted. “We’re in!”

Amid the laughing, shouting and carrying on, Trump quipped, “I must tell you, we’re going to have to bring the women’s team, you do know that!” The team laughed and roared its approval. Trump chuckled, “I do believe I would probably be impeached” if the women (who also won gold) were not invited.

The women’s team were no-shows, citing scheduling conflicts.

The men, in contrast, were able to clear their conflicts. Chants of “U S A, U S A, U S A” predictably ensued as they entered, for which even the Democrats felt obligated to stand. Mind you, these Democrats would not even stand for:

“If you agree with this statement, then stand up and show your support: The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens. Not illegal aliens.”

Over the course of the week, the Democrats found a way to be offended by the President’s locker room quip. The offense they settled on was “misogyny.”

The basis for this misogyny, apparently, was that Trump’s quip that he would “have to” invite the women to the SOTU implied that he didn’t really want the women to come, and he was inviting them only to avoid being impeached.

Trump said a lot of true things Tuesday evening – about an hour’s worth too many. None was truer than when he gestured to the silent, stony Democrats and said, “These people are crazy.”

Are the Supreme Court Justices “black-robed despots” deserving our “utter contempt”?

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Although this is not what I hoped for, it is what I predicted. The Supreme Court struck down the bulk of the Administration’s tariffs. All three liberal Justices went against the tariffs, and half of the six conservative ones did as well – which included two appointed by President Trump.

Not bothering with any legal analysis, the President instead declared that the six Justices who went against him are “very unpatriotic” and “fools” that he’s “ashamed of.”

He went on to call them “pooh-pooh breaths.” OK, I made that one up.

Years ago, another public figure employed similar language to criticize the Supreme Court. He characterized the Justices as “black-robed despots” for whom he had “utter contempt.”

That was after the Court unanimously declared racially segregated schools to be unconstitutional. That public figure was Alabama Governor George Wallace.

Bullying the Supreme Court didn’t work back then, and it’s not working now.

Let’s take the President’s name-calling one epithet at a time. First, the President says the Justices are “unpatriotic.”

OK, Mr. President, here’s something non-legal that you should be able to understand. At big law firms, each of these Justices could be making ten to twenty times their present income. They instead choose to be judges to serve the people as best they can.

Deciding a case against you, Mr. President, does not make them unpatriotic.    

They’re “fools” you say? At least seven of the Supreme Court Justices are extraordinarily smart lawyers with sterling backgrounds, and the other two are no slouches.

In contrast, your own legal background consists of being sued a lot.

And, Mr. President, you say you’re “ashamed of” the Justices?

Frankly, it comes as news to the country that you’re capable of shame. I voted for you three times, and your shamelessness continues to astonish me.

So, disagree with the Supreme Court – I sometimes do. Criticize their legal reasoning – it’s occasionally wrong.

But recognize that the job of a judge is not to be a Republican or a Democrat. The job is to apply the law of the land to the facts of the case.

If you personally don’t understand the law applicable to a case, or if you don’t have all the facts, then you aren’t criticizing. You’re just spouting off.

When that spouting off crosses the line into name-calling of dedicated professionals, you’re just being childish. I want more than that in my President.

Glenn K. Beaton practiced law in the federal courts, including the Supreme Court.

Confession: I failed to avoid shunning Epstein

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The latest from The Establishment is that the nation’s Secretary of Commerce visited Epstein Island a decade and a half ago, back when he was an executive at a Wall Street investment bank. He brought along several adult women as well as at least four underage children.

OMG !!!

He did some ‘splainin yesterday. He claims the children were his offspring (though he offers no DNA evidence) and the women were his wife and multiple “nannies.”

That’s exactly what he would say, right?

If a nanny is just a nanny, the way a cigar on rare occasions is just a cigar, then OK. But how many nannies and cigars do you really need for any given occasion?

When you travel to Epstein Island with multiple nanny-women or multiple cigars, I say something carnal is afoot. Something sickeningly sick.

And now I have to confess my own little sick, sick, sickness. Jeffrey Epstein’s tentacles reached far, far, far away. I can no longer deny that his tenacious, rapacious, tenaculous tentacles wormed their circuitous, serpentine, systematic way into . . .

. . . The Aspen Beat.

Yep. I’m not proud of it, but I do want everyone to know about it. I’m not at liberty to divulge details – this is a family blog, after all – but Epstein and his delightful, delicious delicacies . . . and I . . .

‘Nuf said.

And so, I join the company of Bill Gates, Donald Trump, Bill sometimes-a-cigar-is-not-just-a-cigar Clinton, Larry Summers, What-a-Prince Andrew, Kevin Spacey, Woody “Woody” Allen, Alec Baldwin, Brad Pitt and, well, just about everyone who is anyone.

Well, not exactly everyone. Still without an appearance on Epstein Island are Stephen Hawking, Pope Leo XIV, Amelia Earhart, Abraham Lincoln, Mother Teresa, Bad Bunny (whose 30 minutes of fame just seemed like 30 hours), Donald Trump’s modesty, and the New England Patriots’ offense.

But really, which group would you rather party with? See ya on the Island. 

Even the Californians are fleeing Colorado – go figure

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Last year, more people moved out of Colorado to other states than vice versa. Interstate “net migration” was negative.

After factoring in births, the state’s overall population increased less than half a percent. That’s the lowest since the oil and gas bust of 1989 nearly a half century ago.

These figures put Colorado in the bottom half of population growth. We’re 29th of the 50 states. Neighboring Utah grew at the fifth-highest rate, so Colorado can’t blame it on the demise of the carbon-spewing, environment-wrecking, injury-causing, traffic-jamming ski industry which is mired in a record snow drought.

Colorado used to be cool. It was young, vibrant, virile. Colorado often led the nation in the youth and fitness of its residents.

It was the state to move to. Hardly anyone was born here. Even I wasn’t, though I’ve lived 90% of my life here. If you said you were born here, you were either a cowboy or a liar. (Nobody is both.)

Like a lot of low-density farming and ranching states, Colorado was a red state before “red state” was coined. Then it was a purple state for a brief transition in the late 20th century. Now it’s a deep blue state.

Colorado has not had a Republican governor for 19 years. The next one won’t be, either. The state legislature is overwhelmingly far-left Democrat, and routinely passes full-blown whack-job legislation that even the Democrat governor opposes.

All seven of the state Supreme Court Justices are Democrat appointees (who became a laughing stock after the real Supreme Court issued a 9-0 smack-down of their disqualification of Donald Trump from the 2024 state ballot).

Colorado College, once a gem of a liberal arts college, has fallen to a ranking of 370 in the latest Wall Street Journal college rankings, which puts it somewhere between Howard (that’s spelled with a “ow” not a “arv”) and the University of Alabama.

Alumni donations to the school are down as well. Perhaps all this has something to do with the fact that CC’s obsession with DEI (call it CC-DEI) drove them over a cliff into abandoning the SAT.

That’s right, today’s CC students get admitted not with test scores, but with skin color. The SAT was an inconvenient obstacle to that.

Needless to say, most sizeable Colorado cities including Denver (ruled by Democrat mayors for the last 73 years), Boulder, Fort Collins, Longmont, Lakewood, Durango and Greeley are “sanctuary cities” where local law enforcement is prohibited from cooperating with federal officials enforcing the nation’s immigration laws.

So how did Colorado go from paradise to parasite?

It’s not because the politics of the people changed. Rather, it’s because the people themselves changed. Back when Colorado was a hip place to move to, the hipsters moved here in droves. Hipsters, in case you haven’t noticed, tend to be Democrats.

Legalizing pot in Colorado also helped. In case you haven’t noticed, heavy pot smokers tend to be Democrats, as well.

Swarms of Democrats fled the hell of Democrat-controlled California. Utterly devoid of any perception of cause-and-effect (notwithstanding their preaching about “science”), they bring with them the Democrat policies that caused the hellish effect that they fled in California to inflict on the heavenly refuge of Colorado.

It’s the same everywhere. Californians flee their self-made hell but ignorantly bring with them the policies that created it. That pattern continues for a while, until the hellish policies of the newcomers turn their new heavenly refuge into a hell of its own. The next thing you know, people are fleeing that heaven-turned-hell, too.

Even then, Democrats remain incapable or unwilling to connect the dots between the hellish policies they enact in the statehouse and the living hell they produce on the ground.

And so, they flee to another new heaven – maybe Montana, maybe Idaho, maybe Utah. Naturally, they again take the same hellish policies that caused them to flee Colorado and, before that, caused them to flee California.  

I wish these people who faithfully chant “I believe in science” would learn about cause and effect.

Is Trump threatening war in retaliation for not being given the Peace Prize?

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President Trump did some good things toward peace last year, for which I’ve congratulated him.

Among other things, he derailed the Iranian quest for nuclear weapons with which to make good their never-ending promise to destroy what they call the “Little Satan” of Israel and then the “Big Satan” of America.

He also supported Israel in its effort to contain Hamas and other Islamic terror groups. Israel’s efforts entailed some pain and suffering, but it was the only option to prevent another massacre like October 7, a massacre that Hamas explicitly vowed to repeat.

More recently, he decapitated a narco-klepto-regime in our own hemisphere, Venezuela, that had gotten very cozy with the outlaw states of the world and inflicted horrible misery on its own people.

But the Nobel Peace Prize Committee chose to give their prize to someone else. They have their reasons. One possible reason, which they will never admit to, is that they hate Jews, hate Israel, and hate anyone who helps the Jews of Israel secure their ongoing existence. So, Trump’s efforts to help achieve peace in the Middle East may have actually hurt his chances for the Peace Prize.

In any event, the Prize Committee has explained that the cutoff for “good deeds” considered in Committee determinations was long before Trump’s Middle East triumph. That seems fair enough. Deadlines are deadlines.

As for Venezuela, the actions by Trump to remove the dictator came not just after the cutoff, but after the Prize had already been awarded.

The person who won the Prize was the opposition leader of Venezuela who has literally risked her life for her people for years.

Before the Prize was awarded, she thanked Trump for his support. After the Prize was awarded, and after the dictator had been removed, she was effusive in her thanks to Trump.

In fact, in a visit to the White House last week, she offered the prize to Trump. He accepted it. The physical Prize in now in his possession.

However, the Nobel Committee has declared that transferring physical possession of the Prize does not accomplish a transfer of the Prize itself. The winner is and will always be the Venezuelan opposition leader to whom it was awarded.

It’s a little like an Olympic gold medal. If physical possession of a medal is transferred from the medal winner to someone else, by gift, sale, theft, accident or otherwise, the medalist is still the person who won it, not the transferee.

All this did not sit well with the President. He openly campaigned for the Prize. After it was awarded to someone else, he said again that it was he who deserved it. When he was offered a gift of it by the winner, he accepted the gift and now proudly displays it as if he actually won it.

That was all awkward enough. Over the weekend came the Peace Prize coup de grace.

Trump has been agitating to take possession of Greenland. That’s not as crazy as it sounds but, as always, Trump has pursued this latest prize ham-handedly. He’s even made noises about a military invasion.

The current owner of Greenland is Denmark. They’ve held the place for roughly a thousand years – since long before Columbus sailed. The Danes are not happy with Trump’s invasion threat. Nor is the rest of Europe.

As a general matter, I have little geopolitical sympathy for the Danes or for the rest of Europe. They’ve been freeloading off America’s defense for three generations. And all the while, they impugn us with a moral and cultural smugness that is hard to bear.

The Greenland matter will get worked out. As usual in Trump spats with foreign powers, it will involve some gain for America (probably not outright possession of Greenland, however). Whether that long-term gain will be worth the short-term (hopefully) alienation of allies is something history will judge.

Meanwhile, we have negotiations by public tweets and non-confidential texts. In a text over the weekend, Trump told the Norwegian Prime Minister:

“Considering your country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America.”

This is weird on several levels. First, there is the petulance of a sore loser. That needs no elaboration.

Second, the President seems to be suggesting a substantive change in America’s priorities and policy simply because he personally did not win the Peace Prize derby. He suggests that before losing, he had been thinking “purely of peace” but he “can now think about what is good and proper for the United States.”

Wait a minute! He’s been preaching “America First” for years. Now, we find out it’s America First only since last fall when he lost out on the Peace Prize. If he’s awarded the next Peace Prize (fat chance!), will we be back to something other than America First?

Finally, there’s the irony of it all. The President seems to be willing – nay, he seems to be begging – to be manipulated: “Give me the Peace Prize, or I’ll wage war on Greenland!” Is that an effective pitch for a Peace Prize?

Maybe I’m missing something. But if this is “the art of the deal,” then someone is not playing with a full deck.

We can buy Greenland by buying the Greenlanders

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We don’t need to invade Greenland. We can instead buy the Greenlanders. Here’s my scheme.

First, let’s review what’s at stake. Greenland is the size of Texas. It’s strategically positioned in the North Atlantic. It extends almost to the North Pole (a spot that is on ocean ice north of Greenland).

We already have an air base in Greenland above the Arctic Circle which serves to provide early warning of incoming Russian missiles and bombers. And we also have our own bombers and missiles stationed there.

Greenland is rich in natural resources, including petroleum, fish, fresh water, gold, lithium and rare earth metals.

The population of Greenland is only about 57,000 people, 3,000 polar bears and 50,000 seals. The largest town holds only 18,000 people – smaller than the enrollment of a typical liberal arts college.

Denmark claims to “own” Greenland because it was settled by a few hundred Vikings – you know, pirates – thousands of years after it was settled by Native Americans. Greenland is technically a Danish colony today. In today’s world, however, that doesn’t give the Danes a claim to it. If anything, it makes the Danes “colonizers” and gives Greenlanders a claim against Denmark for reparations.

At some point, Greenland will be absorbed by one of today’s superpowers. It’s just too good and too vulnerable to pass up. Denmark is not in a position geographically, militarily or economically to resist a takeover. As for Greenland’s own military, well, there isn’t one.

The official language of Greenland is Eskimo. It’s not officially called that, however. (In fact, Eskimos aren’t officially called Eskimos anymore, either. They’re now called Inuit. Don’t ask why. That would be racist. But it has to do with raw meat.) The official language is officially called Kalaallisut. But most inhabitants and nearly all educated ones also speak English.

Given that 88% of the island claims to be Inuit, their loyalty to Denmark – the colonizers – is doubtful.

Of course, the U.S. could conquer Greenland with the Nantucket Police Force in a weekend. But there’s a better way.

Offer the Greenlanders money. Say, about a million dollars per man, woman and child. Since there are only 57,000 inhabitants, the total bill would come to only $57 billion.

That’s chump change. It’s less than 1% of the U.S. annual federal budget. It’s less than 4% of the outstanding student loan debt in America. It’s about what Somali immigrants defraud us out of in a couple of years.

I can see it now. We’ll annex Greenland. The Greenlanders will be thrilled and wealthy. We’ll build Trump Towers all along the coast, legalize gambling, and recoup from the inhabitants our $57 billion in a matter of months.

Pass the raw whale, please.