Tag Archives: 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.

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.

The Left likes illegal immigration because it’s illegal

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The latest rationalization from the Left for illegal immigration is that nothing is illegal in America because America itself is illegal because it’s on “stolen land.”

That’s a non sequitur. An illegal act does not become legal simply because the victim is a trespasser. If a stranger breaks into your house while you’re on vacation and illegally occupies it, it’s not legal for another stranger to enter the house to shoot the first stranger while he’s sleeping.

Besides, all nations are on “stolen land.” All of Europe, for example, is on land “stolen” from Neanderthals that “modern” humans killed or assimilated. All the land in pre-Columbia America was occupied by Native Americans who “stole” it from other Native Americans who, in turn, “stole” it from other, other Native Americans.  

History tells us that people move around. When they find a place they like, they buy it or take it. Every group of people has done this, always.

Of course, the Left cannot condemn all the buyers/takers because that would condemn all of humanity. The Left reserves its condemnation for the buyers/takers who were white European free-marketers.

Why does the left single out white European free-marketers for condemnation?

Well, it’s because they’re white, it’s because they are (or were) European, and it’s because they’re free-marketers. The Left hates those things.

The fact that the Left hates white, European free-marketers might suggest that the Left are a bunch of Black radical socialists. Think Malcolm X.

Well, they certainly are socialists, by definition. But they typically are not Blacks. Most Blacks apart from those who make a living collecting political rents aren’t socialists.

No, the socialists are typically self-loathing, guilt-ridden white women blissfully ignorant of basic principles of economics who are affluent directly (or, more often, indirectly) through the free market that they love to hate, sheep-like, with all the analytical rigor and independent thinking of Glee Club.  Ayn Rand and Margaret Thatcher, these women are not.  

But that’s a topic for another column. Today’s topic is the Left’s fondness for illegal immigration.

It wasn’t always this way, but, then again, the Left wasn’t always so far left. Bill Clinton condemned illegal immigration. Barack Obama deported millions. Both probably reasoned, correctly, that illegal immigrants were taking jobs from poor and Black Americans who were core constituencies of the Democratic Party.

It wasn’t until President Autopen that the doors to the border were flung open and then unhinged. That’s because the people wielding the autopen of President Autopen were radical America-hating Leftists. While they wielded the pen that ran the country, the President whose name they affixed to Executive actions was asleep at the switch (and at the beach, and at the debate, and . . . you get the point – he slept a lot).

These America-hating Leftists wanted to flood the nation with poor, uneducated immigrants. If they could accomplish that in a way that flouts the nation’s laws, all the better. Not because it would be good for the immigrants, but because it would be bad for America.

The Left likes the illegal immigrants themselves well enough, but only because the illegal immigrants are the enemy of the Left’s enemy – America.

If the Left could find a way to exaggerate a disease in order to shut down America completely, they would do so, and they would very much like that disease.

Oh, wait a minute . . .

Anyway, now the entire Democratic Party is owned by these America-haters. Any Democrat who wants funding from the Soros family, or the teachers’ unions, or Hollywood – all of which have become America-hating Leftists – is required to pass an illegal immigrant litmus test.

The test goes something like this:

Do you favor immigrants coming to America illegally and staying here illegally?

Answer YES if you want political donations.

Answer NO if you don’t.

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. 

Why on earth did Pretti bring a gun to a protest?

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Alex Pretti did something foolish and illegal at the protest in Minneapolis. He interfered with law enforcement agents. There will be debates for days if not years about whether his illegal interference with the cops, the discovery of his gun, and his violent resistance justified them shooting him.

In considering that issue, I urge readers to consider it not from the warm comfort of their recliner while watching slow-motion videotapes interspersed with football highlights, but from the perspective of cops who are being taunted, spat upon, name-called, and threatened with being run over by organized protesters in the bitter cold, who suddenly discover in a scuffle that one of those protesters has a gun hidden in his pants.

(I’m glad to report that speculation that the gun was planted on Pretti by the cops appears to be disproven.)

But let’s put to one side the issue of whether the shooting was justified. Even now, we still don’t have enough facts to make that determination.

Let’s instead consider a threshold issue: Why did Pretti bring a gun?

Note that it’s not illegal in America for ordinary citizens to own a gun. And it’s not illegal to protest non-violently.

It’s not even illegal to bring a gun to a protest (despite claims to the contrary by a Trump Administration official).

In short, whatever illegalities Alex Pretti committed at the protest, he did nothing illegal in putting a gun in his pants and going there.

But why did he? Why did he hide a loaded gun in his pants?

Ordinary people carry guns routinely for lots of reasons. Most of those reasons are poor ones, in my judgment, but not illegal ones. Some ordinary people carry guns simply because it makes them feel secure or even masculine. Some ordinary people carry guns because it plays into boyish fantasies.

And a few ordinary people carry guns because they have legitimate reasons to think they may need them for lawful self-defense and they have the expert skill and excellent judgment to use them properly in that mode.

Pretti seems not to be in the latter category. Rather, he brought a gun to the protest because it made him feel secure or masculine or fulfilled boyish fantasies. Sadly, those feelings and fantasies cost him his life.

Before leaving this incident, there’s a tribal juxtaposition here that is worth noting. Conservatives typically defend and even celebrate owning and carrying a gun, while liberals typically decry the same. Conversely, liberals typically defend and even celebrate protests of law enforcement, while conservatives typically decry the same.

So, conservative and liberal tribalists are left in a quandary when somebody brings a gun to a protest of the immigration laws. Conservatives wonder, do we defend the gun-toter even if he’s protesting? Liberals wonder, do we defend the protester even if he totes a gun?

I like the fact that this quandary forces the tribes to think past tribal identities. Conservatives are forced to acknowledge that owning and carrying a gun may be lawful but there are circumstances where it isn’t smart or right. Liberals are forced to acknowledge that protesting may be lawful but there are circumstances where that, too, isn’t smart or right.

In short, judging an act often requires thought beyond merely identifying the tribe of the person performing that act.  A bit more thought and a bit less tribalism would be helpful these days.

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.

Two foolish women taunted an overwrought cop, and now one is dead

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David Brooks holds himself out as a moderate Republican. I suspect, however, that the last Republican he voted for was George H.W. Bush – the senior Bush who was elected 38 years ago.

Disgracefully but predictably, PBS pairs Brooks with Jonathan Capehart in a point-counterpoint format. PBS pretends that this little tête-à-tête constitutes balance – an avowed far-left gay Black man versus a faux Republican moderate who, in reality, hasn’t voted for a Republican in decades.

But Brooks made a good point in a recent piece on the shooting in Minneapolis. First, Capehart performed his predictable over-the-top song and dance about murder-murder-MURDER!!!

Then Brooks quietly observed that, in a better day, principled people would believe what they see on videotape. Today, however, it’s the opposite. Rather than believing what they see, people are seeing what they believe.

People watching exactly the same videotape believe they watched a murder, or believe they watched a cop shoot someone in self-defense, based on their pre-existing political persuasion.

Today’s political partisans are like sports fans. When two people are watching the same game but rooting for opposite teams, they typically both believe their team is getting cheated by the refs.

Of course, that can’t be true. On balance, the refs are either fair, or biased one way, or biased the other way. But people’s emotions cloud their judgment. It’s especially pernicious that they’re unaware of this phenomenon. That’s bad enough in sports; it’s tragic and often unjust in law enforcement.

Of course, after making this good point, Brooks went on to bash President Trump. There’s a reason, after all, that Brooks has a forum at PBS and The New York Times.

As of today, a few more facts have come it. I don’t know what Brooks is thinking right now, but I’ll tell you what I’m thinking.  

First, a couple of background facts. Context matters.

The cop (I’ll call him a “cop” for convenience, though I know he’s not a policeman, and I do so without derogation) was the victim of another car incident last year. His arm got tangled up inside the car of a person he was apprehending as the person drove off. The cop was dragged 300 feet down the paved road by the accelerating car. He was lucky to survive.

Does that matter? Maybe not in a legal sense. After all, it was a completely different incident that occurred many months ago. But it suggests that the man was probably sensitive to the danger in such a circumstance. I sure would be.

Here’s another background fact. The left has made a studied show of resistance to enforcement of the immigration laws. They’ve flung names at ICE cops such as Nazis, fascists and worse. They’ve physically obstructed them, and occasionally physically attacked them with rocks and bottles. That’s criminal behavior, even though it does not justify a lethal response.

They’ve also used their cars to obstruct the cops and, as I’ve just reported above, on at least one occasion they dragged a cop 300 feet with their car.

Their objective has been to provoke the cops into victimizing them. Lefty influencers have explicitly urged protesters to put their bodies on the line.

If they can provoke the cops into violence in their enforcement of the immigration laws, goes the thinking on the left, people will come to believe that the laws being enforced are bad.

It’s a very old strategy. It often works, especially when the news media is sympathetic to the cause.

A final background fact. The Administration has taken a confrontational approach to immigration enforcement. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, and it may be warranted in view of the lackadaisical approach taken for many years. But confrontational approaches do have a tendency to produce, well, confrontations.

Whatever approach is utilized, it might be useful to combine it with an employee card-check system where employers are required to check the immigration status of their employees. Substantial fines could be imposed on companies who hire illegals. Such a system has been talked about for years and partially utilized, but politicians too often bow to business lobbies who want to hire illegals for cheap labor.  

On to the incident itself. At least two videotapes are available. One was taken by a bystander, and the other is the body cam that was being worn by the cop who fired the shots.

The bystander’s video is taken from a stationary position. It shows a cop approaching the car, putting his hand on the driver’s door handle, and ordering her:

“Get the fuck out of the car.”

The car moves backward a few inches. The front wheels turn hard right and it juts forward. Only then, you can see another cop at the left front of the car. He shoots three times. We later learn that his shots leave one bullet hole through the windshield. At least one shot went in through the driver’s open side window as the car moved past him.

The shot through the driver’s side window suggests that, whatever danger the cop was in at the time he shot through the windshield, the cop by then had gotten out of the way, for he was then alongside the car.

The video taken by the cop’s body cam provides more context as the cop circles the car. The woman’s wife was at the scene and had gotten out of the car. Smirking, the wife taunted the cop repeatedly:

“Come at us! You want to come at us?”

A refection of the cop is visible in the shiny finish of the car, and he appears to be a sizable man. The wife taunts him again:

“Go get yourself some lunch, big boy!”

As the cop circles to the front of the car, the shots come quite suddenly. The situation was tense but exploded unexpectedly, to me as the viewer anyway, with (1) the wife starting to open the passenger side door and shouting “drive, baby, drive,” (2) the car lurching forward, and (3) three shots ringing out quickly.

I cannot tell whether the cop legitimately feared for his life when he fired the first shot. I can say, however, that he was very ready to pull his gun and shoot, because he did so very fast. As for the second and third shots, see my discussion above.

It’s still early, and not all the facts are in. Maybe they never will be.

But here’s my tentative assessment. Two lefty troublemakers went looking for trouble. They used their car to block armed cops on an icy street from doing their jobs, and they taunted the cops with personal insults. One cop reacted with a profanity. Another cop – who’d been dragged 300 feet by a car in such a situation – reacted with his gun when the car lurched toward him as he was circling it and he heard “Drive, baby, drive!”

Is this tragic? Yes. Was it preventable? Yes. Is it murder? No.

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.

President Trump – a historical perspective

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Democrat historians outnumber Republican historians by somewhere between 8 to 1 and 19 to 1. The disparity is even worse than those ratios suggest, since many of the Democrat historians are not just Democrats, but hard-left ones, while virtually none of the few Republican historians are hard-right.

There’s a name for hard-left historians. They’re called “tenured professors” and we pay their salaries and give them summers off. There’s also a name for hard-right historians. They’re called “Uber drivers” and we pay their salaries, too, but they don’t get their summers off.

It’s no surprise that historians have not looked at Donald Trump in a historical context. They’re too busy simply bashing him as a “threat to democracy” along with whatever epithet du jour is dished out by the pseudo-academic establishment in concert with the Democratic National Committee.  

Admittedly, there are still one or two Republican historians in existence. Not all are Uber drivers. But they, too, have not done much to contextualize Donald Trump. They’re instead simply doing the polar opposite of what the army of leftist historians are doing. They’re cheerleading the Trump Presidency. You know who you are.

When a person is a history professor on the left, or less often on the right, maybe the lure of public grants and private clicks is just too strong to actually profess some history.

In any event, since the historians on both sides are busy practicing politics, your undersigned political junky will practice a little history. Someone has to.

Let’s start small. We could compare Trump to FDR, who bullied the Supreme Court into approving his welfare state even though it plainly ran afoul of the Constitution. He succeeded by threatening to expand the number of Supreme Court Justices to whatever number was necessary and packing it with his toadies.

Or we could compare Trump to the other Roosevelt – the one known as Teddy – because Teddy was a Rough Rider and, well, Trump is a rough rider.

Or we could compare Trump to Lincoln, who suspended habeas corpus (the Constitutional right of a prisoner to contest illegal imprisonment) and left it suspended even after the Supreme Court said the suspension was unconstitutional. (The matter was mooted only when Congress later passed legislation to ratify Lincoln’s suspension retroactively.)

Or we could compare Trump and his Greenlandic hegemony with Jefferson who doubled the size of the young nation by purchasing the Louisiana Territory without Congressional authorization.

Let’s go back a bit further.

Alexander the Great was the son of a Macedonian king who was publicly assassinated when Alexander was only 20. There’s disagreement about whether Alexander was behind the plot but, in view of his subsequent brutality and ambition, there’s no disagreement that such a plot was certainly within his character.

Alexander took the throne and immediately conquered much of the known world at a tender age when much of today’s youth is still on their parents’ health care insurance. He subjugated Athens. He put Persia out of business for about 2,400 years (until Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump had to perform another smack-down last summer).

He founded a city on the coast of Egypt that became one of the great cities of the age. He had the unmitigated self-centeredness to name it after himself, Alexandria. The towering lighthouse he commissioned for the Alexandria coast was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and stood for a thousand years.

Alexander himself stood for fewer than 33 years and was in power for only 12. But which do people remember, Alexander or the lighthouse?  

(Since we’re on the topic of namesake cities, I can imagine TrumpopolisTM as a city. Send royalty checks for that name, Mr. President, to TheAspenBeat.)

Historians who are still practicing history say Alexander was a thug. He burned down Persepolis, the great Persian city in present-day Iran. He enslaved hundreds of thousands. He was gay (as were many ancient Greeks on occasion) but evidently not happy.

Alexander’s empire didn’t last, but the Greek civilization did. He was a despot, not a democrat, but his worldwide influence permanently chiseled Greek culture into the Roman and Judaic worlds, and ultimately into our own. Alexander wasn’t good, but he was certainly great.

On to another despot, Julius Caesar. Forget about Greenland, this guy invaded France. Then he went home and declared himself dictator. Desperate times call for desperate measures which call for desperate men.

It didn’t end well for Caesar, but it did end well for Rome. The ensuing empire ruled the known world for the next 500 years, establishing the “Pax Romana” that was the most peaceful time in ancient history.

We’ve named things after Julius Caesar – a casino, a surgical procedure, a month in the calendar, and a salad. No battleships, yet.

Then there was Napoleon Bonaparte. The Corsican seized power in France in the aftermath of the French Revolution where a succession of bloodthirsty mobs had made ritual machine-beheading into a spectator sport. It was something like being canceled, but more so.

Napoleon’s reach exceeded his grasp, especially in the Russian winter where half his army was frozen, starved or shot.  

For that, Letitia James or some such person got Napoleon exiled. He came back for one last, brief round of glory, but met his Waterloo in 1815. He was then exiled again, and died on a remote island in the South Atlantic.

Like Alexander and Caesar before him, Napoleon wasn’t good but he was great.

America shows some parallels to the waning days of ancient Greece, the deteriorating Republic of Rome preceding the grandeur of the Empire, and post-Revolution France.

By some objective measures, our best days are behind us. National debt is far higher than ever before. Student achievement has plummeted.

A large portion of the population embraces socialism. Experiments over the years have proven socialism to be destructive and divisive, but the adherents are blissfully ignorant of those experiments, as are their teachers.

The basic competence of America’s governing elite is abysmal. Immigrants are allowed to defraud the people out of billions on the grounds that it would be racist to stop them. Trillions were spent on virtue-signaling in the guise of climate-change abatement.

For decades, the border was wide open – the government was even sending airplanes to pick up migrants for the express purpose of illegally plopping them into the country. They get commercial drivers’ licenses, welfare, college scholarships and voting rights, no questions asked.

Public discourse has deteriorated to yard signs, cable TV shouting matches, and internet drive-by commentary.

The democratic republic established by our Founders is nor equipped for this mob rule any better than post-monarchy France was.

Enter Donald Trump. He is not a good man and never will be, but he may prove to be a great man. As in the case of other historical figures, consider his timing, circumstances and luck – and sheer audacity.

What that greatness might mean for America will be revealed by history. But probably not by historians.