Tag Archives: Trump

Who needs to moderate when you have Jew-hate?

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Over the last year and a half, the Democrats have gnashed their teeth about why they lost in 2024 – against Donald Trump, the candidate they hate so much they imagine that everyone else does, too.  

Was it because the Democrats advocated transsexual boys in the girls’ bathrooms? Was it because they favored abandoning the southern border while simultaneously lying to us that it was secure?  Was it because they nominated a nitwit candidate without a nomination convention? Was it because the sitting Democrat President was demonstrably incompetent, and they lied to us about that, too?

The consensus was that they lost for all of those reasons. If they want to turn around their electoral misfortunes, it was said, some moderation was in order on all of those things.

Yet, here we are. Nearly two years later, the Democrats are not busy getting the transsexual boys out of the girls’ bathrooms. They have no time to secure the southern border. They threaten to nominate the same nitwit candidate (presumably via a bona fide nomination convention this time).

The incontinent sitting Democratic President has graduated from sitting to lying. Though he is persona non grata, he’s not entirely out of the limelight and onto the beach; his wife has some books to sell. Perhaps those books will be in the husband’s “library” which will be an added wing to Mordor, the library that Obama built. (Who would have thought that the south side of Chicago could be worse?)

All of this has nothing to do with the Democrats’ 2024 loss. Nope. Instead of moderating their crazy stances, the Democrats are hard at work in perfecting their pitch to be the world’s greatest at something alright – at being socialist antisemites.

They’ve elected an admitted socialist for Mayor of America’s greatest city. They nominated his apostles for the U.S. House of Representatives. Other self-proclaimed socialists have come out of the worm-infested woodwork nationwide and are running for office on the Democrat side. They don’t even hide their socialism anymore; they boast of it.

And they boast of their hatred for the Jews.

One of the nominated socialists brags that the Jews had it coming on Oct 7. She refuses even to condemn the 9/11 attacks on New York City. This is a candidate who will represent, in a manner of speaking, that very same New York City in the halls of Congress.

The Jewish angle is interesting. Antisemitism, socialism and Zionism have a complicated history. Let’s not forget that the architects of the Holocaust went by the name of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Nor that the term “fascism” was from the party of Benito Mussolini, a former labor leader before he brought Italy low. Nor that the Soviet Union blatantly and patently discriminated against the Jews.

And so, the Democrats have re-discovered a winning formula. Don’t side on the 80 side of 80/20 issues like transsexual boys in the girls’ bathrooms and illegal immigration of people who want to make a living by cleaning American’s toilets or putting their drywall up. Too many of those issues involve too few people. And to the extent they involve a lot of people, well, who are you going to get to put up your drywall?

The way to get elected is instead to own two timeless issues that almost everyone likes. One, is that really successful people have too much money compared to . . . um, me for example.

There are lots of reasons for that disparate rate of money-getting, including the fact that people who get money tend to be more adept at getting it. But let’s settle on one fact: luck. The good luck of those successful people and the bad luck of . . .  um, me for example.

Luck is by definition not fair. So, let’s take some of that unfairly-gotten money from the people who unfairly got it, and give it to the people who unfairly didn’t . . . like, um . . . me!

The other timeless issue for getting elected is to rely on people’s prejudices and bigotry. This is tricky, because it’s quite fashionable these days to be a racial minority. A politician cannot rely on people’s inherent bigotry if that bigotry is against what is fashionable.

It would be better to find a bigotry that is not racial per se, and offends only a small minority of the minorities – say about 2% or less. It would be nice if that minority has always been one step from being ostracized, anyway. It would also be helpful if that minority were to have a history, at least recently, of being financially successful. Such a history would dovetail nicely with the socialism.

What better than antisemitism? It might just work. After all, it has before.

Forget about moderation. As the person known for christening New York City “Hymietown,” let’s imagine that the late, great civil rights activist, Jesse Jackson, were still alive. He might say, rhymingly and rhythmically, who needs to moder-ATE if you have Jew-HATE?

Trump got an inartistic deal

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Donald Trump did the right thing in Iran, for a while. He buried their enriched uranium under hundreds of feet of dirt and rock. He destroyed for years their ability to enrich more of the stuff. He made a lot of headway in crimping their ballistic weapons. He showed others in and around the Persian Gulf that the Iranians are bad guys.

But then he stopped. We’d already lost, um, just about no soldiers, but there was a possibility that we might lose some. He stopped because he believed, correctly, that Americans were tired of the war. Or, more precisely, Americans were tired of paying fully half what they pay in Europe for gasoline to power their monster pickups.

In the meantime, Trump showed the Iranians that they can hold the world hostage at any time by simply threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz.

And so, this artist has sketched us a deal. Details are finally emerging after being hid for days, apparently because they thought we’d forget about it. (Iran who?)

Turns out, this inartful deal was available many months ago, many “we’ve already won” proclamations ago, and many billions of dollars ago.

What has changed now is the U.S. midterm elections. They are fast-approaching, and Trump’s party is in danger of losing.

The gist of Trump’s deal is that the Iranians and the U.S. agree to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Iran gets buco bucks by exporting oil. Iran can also charge a toll on non-Iranian vessels after 60 days (in time for the midterms), thereby getting more buco bucks.

There’s even more buco bucks. Trump will unfreeze Iranian assets around the world. Iran will also get about 300 billion to rebuild its military arsenal, er, I mean its civilian infrastructure.

For all those buco bucks, the Iranians will talk about discontinuing their nuclear program.

Trump has now announced for anyone who still reads his social media posts that he’s the “greatest President” in American history. Greater than Washington who earned us freedom, greater than Jefferson who negotiated the Louisiana Purchase for less than $0.03 an acre, and greater than Lincoln who saved the Union at the cost of his life.

Uh huh.

Here’s what’s going to happen. The Iranians will embarrass Trump by refusing to give him squat in the continued negotiations. The WH will put the best face it can on such refusal, but the Iranians will not cooperate. Instead, they will close the Strait again, will attack Israel again, will assault shipping again, will demand ransom from ships again, and will demand more buco bucks.

What Trump fails to understand is that the Iranians are principled thieves. Sure, those principles are bad ones – they are right out of the 12th century. They don’t give a whit about commerce or prosperity. They don’t care about their people. They care only about their 47-year-old theocratic revolution.

Trump never encountered such principled people. Many of these people will die. The remainder will have Trump for lunch.

The Art of the Deal? Trump is about to learn that not everyone was born in Queens seeking a piece of the American pie. Midterms or not, you’re a fool to do a deal with madmen.

 Democrats refuse to get on the winning side of 80/20 issues because that side is occupied by America

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Groucho Marx

Some issues are no-brainers for politicians: Transexuals in women’s sports and girl’s bathrooms. Showing an ID to vote. Securing the border. Enforcing the criminal laws. Judging people by merit. These are 80/20 issues where 80% of the citizens are on one side and only 20% are on the other.

Being on the 20% side of 80/20 issues is not a winning election strategy. We saw that in 2024. Therefore, the big thinkers in the Democratic Party are preaching that Democrats need to shift over to the 80% side on these 80/20 issues.

However, many small thinkers in the Democratic Party are stuck hard in the 20% camp. And the small thinkers in the Democrat Party outnumber the big thinkers by about a zillion to one,

Why do Democrats stubbornly cling to the losing side? Why do Democrats risk losing more elections by siding against 80% of the voters?

I have a theory. I think those hard-left Democrats reflexively side against mainstream Americans – against the 80%.

It’s well-documented that Democrats are less patriotic and hold less love for their country than either Republicans or Independents. In fact, a surprising number of Democrats answer “no” to the question “Do you love America?”

That’s because many of them truly hate America. There are lots of reasons that they hate America – from having been taught to hate America by pea-brained teachers who think America underpays them for their part-time jobs, to simply being of a personality type that would hate anywhere they find themselves including heaven itself.

I’ll look at the reasons in detail some day in another column. For now, accept the fact, and it is a fact, that Democrats love America much less than Republicans do, and that a number of Democrats actively, passionately hate America.

And so, I think they don’t really care where the trannies go to the bathroom; they just want them to go wherever most Americans want them not to. They don’t really care if non-citizens vote in the elections; they just want them to vote because most Americans want them not to. They don’t care whether illegals come across the border; they just want them to because most Americans want them not to. They don’t care whether criminals go free; they just want them to because most American want them not to.

If trannies in the girls’ bathroom, noncitizens voting in elections, illegal aliens, and criminals are America’s enemies, the 20% reason, then those same people are the 20%ers’ friends. It’s the same reasoning that makes them root for Iran.

For this perverse display, these America-haters view themselves as heroic, edgy “resisters.” The fact that they’re resisting not just President Trump but also 2,500 years of Western Civilization makes them, in their vain eyes, all the more heroic, edgy and resistive.  

Here’s a survey I’d like to see. Get two random groups of Democrats. Choose an issue they’re not familiar with. Tell the first group that polls show that Americans are split 50/50 on the issue. Tell the second group that Americans are split 80/20 on the issue, and tell them which side of the issue the 80% are on.

I’m betting that the outcome would be markedly different between the two groups. The second group would side against what they were told was the 80% view.  

Groucho Marx once said “I don’t want to belong to any club that would have me.” Democrats in the 20% cohort know as much about Groucho as Karl, but the saying applies. They don’t want to belong to any country that would have them. Sadly for them and us, they’re here anyway.

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.