Author: martinsimpsonwriting

Three More Candidates for Moron of the Month (posted 4/14/25)

By now you’ve all seen that CO has temporarily stepped back from the page for a few days, which I feel like puts a little more pressure on me to make you laugh on a Monday morning.  But much like Walter Clayton Jr. (from the national champion Florida Gators – have I mentioned that?), I’m a clutch player. 

So it’s Martacus’ time to shine! 

In my Friday column I introduced three candidates for “Moron of the Month,” and by popular acclaim, Jasmine “Fake Lashes” Crockett beat out the too aptly named Chase Strangio and drama queen Spartacus Booker to move on to represent the Eastern division in the next round.

Today we’ve got three more worthy competitors, this time from the Western division.  (Just like in the NCAA tournament, geographical names for the divisions are meaningless.)

First up we’ve got Elie Mystal, a public “intellectual” (and yes, those scare quotes are mandatory) with degrees from Harvard (because of course he has) who would be best known for his rabid America- and whitey-hatred, except for the fact that every African-American appearing on MSNBC is an unpatriotic, rabid whitey hater.

So he’s best known for his truly ridiculous, giant gray puff-ball of an Afro.  Which makes him look like he’s closing in on 70, when he’s actually only 46.  I have two theories about that:

1. He got so sick of all of the Fat Albert jokes that he dyed his hair gray to stop them.  (Though I’m not sure that, “Hey, hey, hey… it’s Old dumb Albert!” is a whole lot better.)

2. Just like soldiers who live through horrifying combat sometimes go prematurely gray, I think maybe morons who think too many horrifyingly stupid thoughts go through the same thing.   

Though he’s little known to the general public (because he writes for The Nation, and often appears on MSNBC), Mystal has been making a name for himself in moron circles for quite a while. 

He wrote an execrable book in 2022 called, “Allow me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution.”  I planned to write a review of it called, “Allow me to Vomit: A White Guy’s Review of F.A. Mystal’s “A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution.”  But I couldn’t make it through the first several pages. 

Earlier this month, he came out with his second book, “Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That are Ruining America.”  And it has single-handedly made a liar out of me, because I spent many years telling my students that there is no such thing as a stupid question.

Then I read the table of contents of Bad Law.  Consider the following chapter titles, along with the obvious answers to each:

Chapter 2: How Did Immigrants Become “Illegal?”  [By breaking our laws, you moron.]

Chapter 4: Why Do We Incarcerate So Many People? [Because they break our laws, you moron.]

Chapter 7: “Why Do We Give White Guys a License to Kill Black People?” [We don’t, you moron.]     

Chapter 9: “Why Can’t We Say Gay?” [We can, you moron.]

As you can already tell, Mystal has an IQ low enough to scare those nightmarish albino fish in the lightless depths of the Mariana Trench. (Latin name: “pescatorus LizWarrenus”) (#wemustneverstopmockingher)  

But he’s also got the second element of the one-two punch that so many elite leftists have: a narcissism as large as the great outdoors.

In an interview to promote Bad Law, he talked about how he is such a significant critic of the Trump administration that he’s had to hire security during his book tour, because he’s worried that Trump is going to have someone “snatch him up off the street.” 

(Make your own, “Watch out for a forklift with a presidential seal on it, Elie!” joke here.)

My favorite idiotic statement of his came on his appearance on The View.  I know.  And he might have been the dumbest one on the set that day.  Which…yikes!

When explaining why we shouldn’t abide by our immigration laws, he referred to how racist and awful America is (duh!), and said, “Every law passed before the 1965 Voting Rights Act should be presumptively unconstitutional.”

Let that sink in for a minute.  The only way to declare any law unconstitutional is to examine it in the light of our founding legal document: the constitution.  Which Elie apparently thinks was written after 1965? 

To which I can only say: “Hey, hey, hey… it’s innumerate Albert!”    

Our second contestant is named Greisa Martinez Rosas, a leftist activist and executive director of United We Dream.  Her group participated in one of the high-profile “Hands Off” rallies on April 5th, protesting against Trump and Elon.  In fact, her rally was in Washington, DC.

She spoke on stage at the protest, and was brazen enough to give her full name and shout, “I am an immigrant.  I am undocumented, unafraid, queer and unashamed.”

I don’t know what “queer” has to do with it.  Or, for that matter, what “queer” means.  Is it just a synonym for “gay?”  But if so, why list the “Q” and the “G” in your alphabet list of identities?  And if not—

Never mind.  I don’t care.  I like women, and I don’t understand the rest of you, but good luck with all of that.  Or congratulations, or my condolences, or good for you, or get well soon, or whatever.

Where was I?

Oh yeah.  For some reason, Griesa really needs for all of us to know that she’s illegal and unafraid. 

If she had admitted that when the late Joe Biden was still the president, or when Obama was, she would have had good reason for being unafraid.  Because those guys were busy circumventing the law (and making up new laws) to go after conservatives, and had no appetite for following our immigration laws.  

But there’s a new sheriff in town, and his sidekick is Hulk Homan™, and Griesa has made a big target of herself.  (That’s not a joke about her appearance.  Though if you put her in a line-up with the drug dealer/bowling ball illegal from a few weeks ago…)

So Griesa could have tried to fly under the radar, or maybe even gone underground.  But she decided the best thing to do was to go to the nation’s capital, clomp up onto a stage, and lean into a microphone to confess to being a criminal, in front of an audience of wildly cheering morons. 

Making her eligible for Moron of the Month.  And hopefully, a visit from ICE.

Rounding out the Western division nominees is Tania Fernandes Anderson.  Her campaign might be hurt by the fact that she’s unknown outside of the Boston area – she’s on the City Council there.  But don’t count her out, because she’s a five-tool player.  Or, to be more accurate, a five-tool tool.

Because she’s a BLM activist, a Democrat, a Muslim-American, a sanctuary city supporter, and a “former undocumented immigrant.” 

Okay, maybe the Muslim thing isn’t necessarily a problem.  And there are some decent Democrats.  But that still leaves the other three strikes, which are enough to call her out.  She’s the kind of sweetheart who recently slammed her fist on the podium and said, “What the f**k do I have to do in this council in order to get respect as a black woman?”

Not beating up city property and dropping F bombs would be a good start, Sweetie.

Anyway, Tania has just pled guilty in a federal corruption case, and won’t be bringing her special brand of wisdom to the Boston City Council anymore. 

It turns out that Tania couldn’t be expected to get by on her measly, taxpayer-provided salary of only $115K a year.  So she hired her sister and a son to staff positions before she’d even been sworn in – which is illegal – and then gave the sister a good salary and a $13K “bonus” from the taxpayers, and then took $7,000 of that back as a kickback.  When she was initially questioned about that, she denied that her sister was her sister.  She was also cited for failing to report almost $33K in campaign contributions, and exceeding legal state donation limits. 

By the way, two years ago she was demanding stronger protections for illegal immigrants and telling Boston to defy ICE.  Who could have guessed that a woman like that would turn out to be a criminal herself? 

Thus proving the old adage: It’s always the ones you most suspect.

When I read her story – in between fits of bitter laughter – I learned that she came here illegally, but that in 2019 “she became an American citizen.”  I’m not sure how that worked, but the good news is that her conviction may “threaten her immigration status.” 

Well let’s hope so!

In tough times like these, she would normally be able to turn to her husband, Tanzerious Anderson, for comfort.

I’m serious.  I’m not delirious.  Or trying to be mysterious.  His name’s “Tanzerious.”  (Don’t tell me that I couldn’t write poetry, if I put my mind to it.)

But Tanzerious won’t be able to help his criminal wife, because he’s currently in prison for murder.

Unexpectedly! 

So there are your choices, CO nation, and they are all worthy of your consideration.  Griesa and Tania both get points for brazenness, while Elie wisely kept a much lower profile, by only appearing on the little-watched MSNBC and the View.  And he has to get some points for that preposterous Afro.

But Griesa went to the shadow of the White House to confess her criminality. 

Then again, Tania gave me the chance to write “Tanzerious.”   

Happy Monday, and I await your verdict.

Hamas delenda est!   

Moron of the Month – Eastern Division Nominees (posted 4/11/25)

Even though we’re only one-third of the way through April, I’ve noticed that enough morons have already popped up in our politics this month to provide a roster of worthy competitors for a  “Moron of the Month” contest.

In fact, I’ve already got 6 potential nominees.  Maybe we can do this in rounds, like the March Madness basketball tournament.  (Which I may have previously mentioned that my fightin’ Gators won on Monday night.)

So here are my first three nominees, from the Eastern division:

1. My first choice technically didn’t make her nominated performance in April, but on March 31st.  But since she doesn’t recognize boundaries like those between male and female, I’m going to disregard the boundaries between calendar months to move her into the April competition.

The special gal I’m talking about calls herself “Chase Strangio.” And ze oh ze, is that name spot-on!  (See what I did there?)  She’s the “trans man” – “trans” being Greek for “not,” as far as you know – who argued at SCOTUS in December against the Tennessee law banning “trans” surgery for minors.

You’ll recognize her if you see her, on account of her sad little beard and mustache combination, which you normally only see on barely pubescent boys who are trying too hard, or confused girls who take testosterone shots.  (I call it “the David Hogg.”) 

Strangio appeared on CNN on the last day of March, where literally dozens of viewers saw her say the following, in her obviously female voice, “The president is lying when he says that there are men impersonating women and participating in women’s sports. There are no men impersonating women that I’m aware of.”

Said the woman who is impersonating a man.

2. My second choice needs no introduction, since he is the infamous senator Cory Booker, whom we should never stop mocking because of that time he called himself “Spartacus” with a straight face, and non-ironically. 

Regular readers might object that I occasionally call myself Martacus, but that’s ALWAYS with my tongue in cheek. Except for when my wife asks me to put on the Roman outfit and recite some famous Latin lines.  (And if you think that’s weird, how about you explain what strange things you and your spouse are into, Mr. “Plank-in-Your-Own-Eye?”) 

So once I’ve got the breastplate strapped on and the helmet in place – and no, I never forget the gladius – I’ll stride in and say, “Vini, vidi, vici.  But not in that order.”  And then my wife and I will laugh and laugh, because we both appreciate a sneakily off-color Latin joke. 

Perhaps I’ve said too much.

(By the way, one could make the argument that the fact that I know the Latin name for the Roman short sword is one more data point suggesting that one of my secret identities is in fact Martacus.)

Where was I?  Oh yeah.  “Spartacus” Booker.

That guy is a well-known moron already.  But when he started speaking in March and finished on April 1st, he took stupid to a whole new level.  Not just because it’s hard to speak for 25 hours straight, but because it’s really hard to speak for that long and say absolutely nothing of any substance at all!

Dim-bulb Dems praised Booker for his stirring “filibuster.”  But a filibuster is a purposefully long political speech made to forestall or prevent a legislative action.  Ted Cruz and Ron Paul have filibustered in recent years to stop a couple of terrible leftist bills from being brought up and voted on, and Strom Thurmond – in 1957, when he still belonged to the party of slavery, the KKK and Jim Crow – filibustered a Civil Rights Act. 

But Booker had no such purpose.  He just got up and rambled on like the worst drama-queen theatre kid in the worst Junior High production of Streetcar Named Desire you’ve ever seen in your life.  Except that instead of hollering, “Stella!” he yelled, “Donald!” 

It was the perfect encapsulation of the Democrat party in its current, rudderless state: A speech given by an idiot, full of sound and histrionics, signifying nothing.

3. The third candidate has not been on the political scene for long, but she’s already building up a body of work that might one day qualify for first-ballot entry into the Moron Hall of Fame.  This is Jasmine Crockett, the phony congresswoman who went to an expensive private high school and college, but who pretends that their curricula never covered “how to correctly conjugate the verb ‘to be’.”

Previous low-lights of hers include calling wheelchair-bound Greg Abbott “Governor Hot Wheels,” and calling black GOP congressman Byron Donald a race traitor because he married a white woman.  (Of course, she doesn’t mention that her favorite presidential candidate last time around – part black, part Indian, and all inarticulate – also married a white woman, Doug Emhoff.  But never mind that.)

She started the month strong, when – in a talk on the House floor on April Crockett’s Day (i.e. the first) – she expressed outrage that the Trump administration has been saying that we should “ignore the orders” of the far-left district court judges who have been found dozens of “legal” reasons why the President can’t go around carrying out the role of President.

Saith the Eyelashes, “Law and order [means] that you follow the order and go through the appeals process, even if you dislike what the judge did.”

Darrell Issa, (R)ational, then immediately pointed out that less than a year ago, Crockett co-sponsored articles of impeachment against Clarence Thomas and Alito because she disliked what they did, i.e. ruled correctly.

D’oh!   

The very next day, Crockett was dumb enough to admit on camera that she was a DEI hire.  (Sidebar: Sweet pea, everyone knew that the moment you opened your mouth.)  She said, “When I first became a public defender I had no criminal defense experience.  And I walked in and I told my boss Charlie and said, ‘You should hire me.”  And he said, ‘Why?’  And I said, ‘Because I’m black.’” 

And when Charlie (rumors that his last name was either “Brown” or “Manson” have not been confirmed) didn’t immediately say, “Get your no-experience-having black behind out of my office, you racist beeyotch!” he proved that he shouldn’t have his job either.

But as dumb as those examples are, she topped them on April 6th, when she tried to defend illegal immigrants, but staggered into a hilarious self-own.  Because she’s a moron.

In a speech that desecrated the Grace Baptist Church in Waterbury, Connecticut, she said that she “had to go around the country and educate people” (HA!) about how we need illegals, because no Americans will farm anymore.

Or, as the expensively “educated” imbecile put it, “The fact is ain’t none a y’all tryin’ to go and farm right now….We done pickin’ cotton.” 

In addition to making anyone within earshot dumber after hearing that, Crockett said the quiet part – the incredibly evil, quiet part – out loud, arguing that we need illegal immigrants, so that… wait for it… they can be our slaves!

Now THAT’s an old-school Democrat for you!

In your comments, please choose which moron should move on to the next round.

Hamas delenda est!

Here’s a Tariff Column You Might Not Like (posted 4/10/25)

(AUTHOR’S NOTE: I swear that I wrote this yesterday (Wednesday) over my lunch hour, before the partial tariff pause was announced.  Does that make me look like someone who can put on a conical purple wizard’s hat and see the future, like a modern-day Nostra-martacus?  I’m too modest to say that.  But on the other hand, who am I to fly in the face of public opinion?)

This is going to be a rare, four-column week for me, since I posted columns on Monday and yesterday, and will be posting again tomorrow.

Before CO Nation gets too happy about that, I’ve got to warn you about this one.  I’ve been gratified that many readers have lately been posting responses that my most recent column “is your best one yet,” or “my favorite column you’ve ever written.” 

And that always makes my day to hear!  However, trigger warning, I expect that many readers will say of today’s column, “This is your worst column ever,” or “Who are you, and what have you done with our beloved hilarious genius who is always right about everything, and makes our lives worth living?  Because this column sucked!”

Or words to that effect.

But I’m forging ahead anyway: this is my column in which I tell you what’s wrong with Trump’s tariff roll-out.

First off, I’m an English professor with a black belt in mockery, and trophies for “Best Out-Kicking His Coverage in Landing a Great Wife,” and “Owner of the best Wonder Dog ever.”  But I’m not known for my brilliance on all things financial (hence my decision to spend 10 years getting a PhD in English!), and I’m the farthest thing from an expert tariff-ologist.  So you wouldn’t normally want to pay any attention to my thoughts on the subject.

But I’ve been reading and informing myself on the topic, and when I initially read that Victor Davis Hanson was very pro-Trump-tariffs, that carried a lot of weight with me.  Because as a general rule, I’ve found that if you’re on the opposite side of an argument from VDH, you better check your premises, and then slowly back out of the debate.

But then I read the reasons why Ben Shapiro, Thomas Sowell and the great and powerful CO were all tariff skeptics.  And I’ve also learned that if you find yourself disagreeing with those three, there’s a dangerously high probability that you’re on the same side of the argument with AOC, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries.  And as Jasmine “fake lashes” Crockett has probably said, “Ain’t nobody got time fo’ dat!”

So I went back and listened to VDH’s entire take on tariffs, and found that he’s basically where I was, which is that using reciprocal tariffs to negotiate deals that results in fewer tariffs and freer trade is a good thing, but that Trump’s messaging on the topic – including his lumping trade deficits and many other financial issues in with tariffs – is confusing and counter-productive, and should be dropped in favor of a clear, uncomplicated message solely about tariffs, and his goals behind his tariff policy.

1. Trump’s messaging on tariffs has been all over the map, and wildly inconsistent.  Trump (and administration officials) has said many times that tariffs are great in general, and that they should be regular, long-term features of our economic strategy, because they produce huge piles of cash to the US.  He’s also said many times that tariffs are a temporary means of achieving a negotiated dropping of tariffs, and the resulting explosion of free trade.

Those can’t both be true, because they contradict each other.  If tariffs are great and produce a financial windfall for the US, we should keep them in place forever.  If they are a temporarily necessary, rough-elbowed negotiation tactic which we want to get rid of ASAP (i.e. as soon as they produce a new deal), then they can’t be a great long-term windfall producer. 

I’m guessing that he means that they are useful in some circumstances (e.g. as a means to punish our enemies and reward our allies, or to protect specific industries that have national defense implications, etc.) and counter-productive in others. 

But I’m GUESSING that.  And so are the markets, many of his own supporters, and even VDH, who wants him to drop the chaotic vagueness.  Trump is the clearest communicator since Reagan, so there’s no reason for him to be hampering his own policy through this mish-mash of self-contradictory messaging.  

2. Trade deficits are very different from tariffs, but Trump sometimes seems to not admit – or even recognize – that difference.  When his chart says “tariffs” (and then below that, includes smaller print that says “including currency manipulations and trade barriers”) he’s lumping together apples and oranges, especially since his numbers only make sense if he’s primarily counting trade deficits rather than tariffs.

For example, South Korea’s overall tariff rate on American imports is 0.8% (not 8%, eight-tenths  of 1%), and Viet Nam’s is around 10%.  But his chart labeled “Tariffs” says that Viet Nam’s tariffs are 90%, and South Korea’s are 50%.  Which is ridiculously wrong, and unnecessarily gives his critics a weapon to bash him with.

I’m not saying that trade deficits aren’t sometimes created in part by protectionist policies like tariffs, currency manipulation, bogus “safety concerns,” etc.  And in those cases, I’m all for tariffs to address that.  But that’s certainly not the case for all trade deficits; in fact, many of them largely or even totally exist only because of the lopsided relative population and wealth of two trading countries.

There are over 300 million people in the US, and according to Federal Reserve stats, the per capita income of Americans was $73,529 in 2024.  In that same year, Somalia’s population was 19 million, and their per capita income was around $900.  Viet Nam’s population was 101 million, and their per capita income was 114 million Vietnamese dong.  Which sounds pretty good, until you realize that that is roughly $4700 US dollars.

(Sidebar, because I am basically a grade school child: The great Clint Eastwood western “A Fistful of Dollars,” if it were translated and closed-captioned to be shown in Viet Nam, would have an absolutely hilarious title.  And the Vietnamese Stormy Daniels would somehow star in it.)

Given those facts, how many American products do you think the average Somalian earning $900 per year or the average Vietnamese earning $4700 could buy, versus how many Somalian or Vietnamese products the average American earning $73,000 could buy? 

The answer is somewhere between “jack” and “squat.”  In other words, if Vietnam and Somalia trade with the United States at all, there is no planet on which there would EVER be a non-lopsided trade deficit with both of those countries.  Because it is impossible.

And if I haven’t already pissed you off, consider this, which is a variation of something I read from Thomas Sowell (peace be upon him) many years ago: in many cases, a trade deficit is not a bad thing at all, but the beneficial result of voluntary exchanges made in a free market. 

For example, every year I run a 100% trade deficit with Publix and my local bookstore: I buy groceries and books from them, but they buy nothing from me.  By the same token, I have a 100% trade surplus with all of my tenants, because they give me many thousands of dollars while I give them zero money, providing only a great place to live in a great neighborhood.  And everyone is happy.      

The good news is that the current tariff impacts on the stock market are both (IMHO) less catastrophic and less long-lasting than our most panicked commentators (and all congressional Dems) are screaming.

That’s not to say that they’re not bad.  American investors can’t lose $6-7 trillion of value without that hurting, and I’m just barely smart enough to know that such losses don’t only hurt fat cats and rich investors. (Because I’m not a commie class-warrior!) Small investors and entrepreneurs, people with 401Ks and pension plans, and everybody working for large or small employers who have debt or require foreign parts, materials or customers (i.e. a large proportion of large and small employers) will be hurt by this, if it lasts for very long.

By the same token, as I write this, the DOW is right around 40,000.  Which indicates a disastrous plunge down to the last time it closed below 40K, during the height of the calamity of that long-ago trauma happening…wait for it…three years ago!  And the NASDAQ – even after the bloodbath of the last several weeks – is still up 3% over a year ago, according to the market stats scrolling across my computer screen right now.

Look, I don’t want to mock anybody who’s worried about the slide.  I’m retired and my wife is about to retire, and our retirement nest egg is down by around six figures, which isn’t fun.  On the other hand, the market goes up and down all the time, and if a 10-15% drop is unbearable for you, you probably shouldn’t be in the stock market. You can (and maybe should) get a not-great but safe return of around 5% (I think) in a fixed annuity or a long-term CD.

And my gut tells me (but again, don’t trust financial advice from an English professor!) that the current turmoil is likely to be pretty short-lived.  My evidence is the history of the market over the last 50 years, and also recent history.  For example, earlier this week, when a false rumor that Trump was pausing the tariffs for 90 days, the market gained something like $2 trillion (which then disappeared again when the rumor was debunked).  And on Monday, spurred by the news that the Trump administration and the Japanese were negotiating a lowered-tariffs deal, the Nikkei jumped by around by 6.5%.

I don’t see any reason why – once Trump actually does start signing new tariff agreements with Japan and many other countries – the market won’t shoot up, the same way it did on these rumors in the last 15 minutes.

In conclusion, I’m a pani-can’t, not a panican, and I think that this current trade sturm und drang too will pass.  But I wish that Trump would take advice from VDH, Thomas Sowell, CO (and even me), and clean up his needlessly confusing and contradictory messaging.

By the way, did you notice how smart I just sounded when I reported the Nikkei’s reaction to the newest tariff news? 

Well, until an hour ago, I thought the “Nikkei” were those old-timey Japanese warriors with the cool armor, or possibly the loons who dove their Zeros into our ships in 1945.  (Hey, idiots, let us introduce you to our little friends, Fat Man and Little Boy!) But I did a minute’s worth of research online, and you foolishly trusted me (even though this time I was right). 

Let that be a lesson to you the next time some “expert” assures you that Trump’s tariffs are the end of the world as we know it. 

Because that “expert” might just be a clueless liberal arts professor posing as a smart guy, even though he might not know Adam Schiff from a hole in the ground!

Hamas delenda est!

Thoughts on Immigration, Part 3 (posted 4/9/25)

I’ll start today by thanking everybody for your feedback on my Monday column. I normally respond to all comments, but I’ve had a lot going on the last several days, including watching the fightin’ Gators winning the NCAA basketball national championship! 

And that game went just the way we drew it up.  Have your best scorer play his worst game? Check.  Score the fewest points you’ve scored in a very long time? Check.  Trail by 12 points pretty late?  Check.  Lead the game for right around one minute out of 40?  Check.

But space that minute out wisely.  Take 17 seconds of lead time in the first half…and then the last 45 seconds of the game!

Also, it didn’t hurt that we played defense like Hulk Homan™ holding Gandalf’s staff at the southern border.  (“You shall not pass!  Or score very often…”) 

UF opened our basketball stadium and showed the game live on the big screen.  The place was packed, and it’s only half a mile from our house, so you could practically feel the ground shaking when the game ended! 

Anyway, I did read your comments, and I appreciate them.

This is the third and final part of my series of columns about immigration.  In the first part, I went through the evolution of our immigration laws, and pointed out groups who were specifically excluded from immigrating, including the stupid, insane, sick, welfare recipients and criminals.

In the second part, I discussed the reasons why many Americans were once either browbeaten or shamed into not deporting illegals, and how the lefties’ tactics to achieve that goal are no longer working.  Today I’m closing with a simple analogy, and a little analysis of how immigration rules should apply to visa holders and would-be naturalized citizens. 

The analogy is that a nation is like a house. 

Okay, I know that’s not especially deep or brilliant.  It’s no “faith is like a mustard seed.”  Or even, “Life is like a box of chocolates.”  But I think it can still be useful.

Your house has clear boundaries around it, i.e. its walls.  If we consider the slightly more expansive concept of “your property,” your house even has a series of exterior borders, such as your yard.  Often that is marked by a fence, or a hedge, or the edge of a lawn.  Sometimes there is another liminal space — a porch, a stoop or a patio – where you are not within the house yet, but you’re farther from the purely public space outside the yard.

If you’re a well-raised person, you feel a bit of natural reluctance to enter someone’s property without a prior arrangement to do so.  You might walk up to a door and onto the porch and knock on the door…if you’re delivering a package or you’ve told the resident that you’d be dropping by. 

But if it’s a stranger’s house and they’re not expecting you, it’s uncomfortable to let yourself in through a gated fence, and more so to walk up onto the porch.  Most of us, after knocking, will instinctively step back to the edge of the porch and try to put a pleasant look on our faces, so that the inhabitants can take a reassuring look at us from a safe distance before they open the door.  Most of us will be more polite than usual in such a situation.

Since you have the right to decide who comes into your house, and under what circumstances, you don’t even have to open the door. 

And only a sociopathic squatter, if nobody comes to the door, will just let himself in and make himself at home!

And if he does – and if the house in question is in a red state or smaller town where people have their heads on straight – he might be greeted with a warning gunshot to the chest or head.  Or at least the mind-focusing sound of a shell being racked into a shotgun.

If said squatter was lucky enough to find no one at home, and especially if it’s a big house, he would be wise to find a good hiding place, if he wanted to stay in the house.  Maybe an attic, or a basement, or the garage. 

You see where I’m going with this.  Illegal immigrants are the squatters here, and traditional, old-fashioned illegals at least had the good sense to hide, and make themselves as unobtrusive as possible.  Hence the saying from the good old days of 20 years ago which described illegals as “living in the shadows.”  They would hide from the authorities, work under-the-table jobs, and try super-hard to not be noticed.  When that didn’t work, they had the good sense to try to run.

But, like beleaguered citizens in a sanctuary city run by morons, we’ve created a new type of illegals: the entitled type.  In our lawn we’ve put up one of those idiotic signs saying, “In this house, we believe no one is illegal.”  And on our porch we’ve put up an even more idiotic welcome mat saying, “Welcome, MS-13!”

And beside our door we put a thrice-idiotic big plastic pumpkin filled with cell phones, hundred-dollar-bills, EBT cards and voter registration forms, and above that pumpkin a sign saying, “FREE!  But we’re on the honor system, so just take one of each.” (Spoiler alert: each day the first sociopath to arrive takes them all.) 

And for four years our demented grandpa who was in charge of the house – let’s call him Brandon – left the front door wide open.  And he’s the one who put the pumpkin there, because in his diminished state, he thinks every day is Halloween.

So now the squatters don’t even bother to hide in the attic or garage.  They raid our fridge, eat on our sectional couch, order pay-per-view imam sermons, and take over the master bedroom for themselves.

Sure, there are still some “nice” squatters, with the good sense to hide out in the garage with a hot plate and try to fly under the radar.  If they’re caught, they might offer to take care of the yard, clean and do our laundry if we just let them stay.

It’s no coincidence that in our blue cities and states we’ve had an unprecedented epidemic of literal squatters.  In a healthy country, no one would have the cojones to try to forcibly take over someone’s house, because they’d expect to be forcibly removed and jailed quick, fast and in a hurry.

But in recent years, squatters figured out that if we won’t enforce our borders and our laws, why would we draw that line at our houses?   And they weren’t wrong.

Obviously, we shouldn’t allow illegals to stay here, any more than we’d allow squatters to stay in our house.  Yes, we should prioritize removing the brazen sociopaths in the master bedroom first, but the “nicer” ones in the garage will need to go too, as soon as we can get to them.

People legally here on visas are more like house guests or roommates.  Some of them are here temporarily – on a student or working visa that is the equivalent of a one- or two-year lease.  Others are in a potential rent-to-own situation, with a green card that allows them to live here while they’re going through a process that they hope will eventually allow them to become citizens. 

But in those cases – and I cannot stress this enough – the roommates must be on their very best behavior.  Pay your rent on time.  Abide by all house rules.  Don’t make us sorry that we allowed you to move in!

That’s what’s been so infuriating about the entitled little Ivy League Marxists and junior jihadis, and the elite leftists who support and defend them.  We give them the amazing gift of allowing them to come to the greatest country in the world, to study at what used to be top-flight universities, and they immediately start acting like horrible roommates and entitled brats.

Khalid Mahmoud and many like him seem to double-major in anti-Semitism and campus disruption.  Helyeh (more like “Hell no!” am I right?) Doutaghi gets a professor gig, and then spends most of her time slandering America and the West as fascist colonizers, and promoting the jihadist ideology of our nation’s enemies. 

And when we cancel their visas and move to deport them, the usual suspects wail about it.  “They haven’t committed any crimes!  They haven’t gotten due process!  This is a free speech issue!”

No, it isn’t.  It’s a spoiled, horrible piece-of-crap squatting roommate issue!

They’ve done the equivalent of moving into my house, drinking all of my bourbon, then falling asleep on my best recliner and urinating on it in their sleep.  Then they wake me up in the morning by blasting some horrific Palestinian rap music (Lil Scimitar and the Infidel Beheaders’ “Throw the Jew Down the Well”).  When I go to the kitchen to make breakfast, I discover that they’ve eaten all the eggs and thrown out all the bacon, because it’s “haram.”  

Then, just when I’m watching the Gators celebrating the national championship, and our 7’9” redshirt freshman cutting down the net without the use of a ladder (that’s a real thing that happened on Monday night), they switch the channel to a Syrian soccer game.   

When I look at them with murder in my eyes, they inform me that Cassie the Wonder Dog is going to have to go, because Muhammad says that dogs are unclean. 

And then their first rent check bounces.

They’re in our house, and they’ve got no right to be here.  They’ve abused our hospitality, and they need to be thrown out, both because they richly deserve it, and “pour encourager les autres.”      So we’re calling our neighborhood cop to come over and give them a taser-and-billy-club-assisted eviction. 

And our neighborhood cop is Hulk Homan.™

Hamas delenda est!

Why Has America Volunteered to be Weak? (posted 4/7/25)

Well, this is going to be at least a three- or four-column week, because addled lefties are still creating entertaining and educational stories faster than I can mock them.  I’ve got the third in a three-part series of columns on immigration etiquette coming in the next day or two.

But first, on a related note, something else is stuck in my craw.  Because the anomaly that has most aggravated me about our country’s struggles in recent years is that it’s been so VOLUNTARY on our part. 

For most of human history, when nations struggled or faced the kind of systemic problems that our society has had, the problems have been forced on those nations.   For example, late-stage Rome was beset on all sides by strong barbarian tribes; Poland tried to stave off Nazi mechanized and air forces with cavalry; a weakened czarist system was caught off guard by the demonic frenzy of a communist revolution.

By contrast, consider our recent struggles, in foreign policy and at home: 

Foreign policy example 1: Iran’s despotic mullahs are developing nuclear weapons, which we could easily stop.  We wouldn’t even have to do anything ourselves. 

Our president could just get on a Zoom call with Netanyahu and some serious-looking IDF or Mossad guys. (Think: the modern equivalent of Ariel Sharon and eye-patch-wearing bad arse Moshe Dayan.  And you know that Israel has some of those guys on staff at all times, Jehovah bless ‘em.)    

Trump: The weird beards in Tehran are getting froggy with their nukes.  What do you know about that?

Netanyahu: Little bit.

Trump:  Is that DeNiro?  Are you doing DeNiro?

Netanyahu: Are you looking at me? Because I don’t see anyone else here.

Trump: Ah!  I love this guy!  Anyway, if you happened to know where those nukes were being built, and the United States suggested that we have an interest in them prematurely detonating, how long would that take?

Netanyahu: From right now?

Trump: For example.

Netanyahu glances at a guy in a dark suit and sunglasses standing behind him, looking like a non-goy Jason Statham.  The guy steps forward and whispers something to Netanyahu, then steps back. 

Netanyahu: 47 minutes.

Trump: Sweet! I’ll call Jeffrey Goldberg and tell him I’ve got an exclusive story for him.  (Netanyahu’s eyes widen, and he blinks rapidly.)  AH!  Got ya, Bibi! 

Netanyahu relaxes, then crinkles the corner of his eyes and bobs a finger at Trump.  “You!  You got a gift!” 

Trump (pointing a finger back at Netanyahu):  DeNiro again, from “Analyze This!” I love that one.  Anyway, make some Persian rubble bounce, and no tariffs for you.”

And, scene.

Example 2: The Houthis.  

They’re a Third-World militia with souped-up bass boats and a handful of Iranian missiles, and drones you could get from Dick’s Sporting Goods.  And they’ve been holding up world-wide shipping for a couple of years!  All while Anthony Blinken racked up frequent flier miles in rounds of pointless meetings with a bunch of useless UN types and some Islamic “diplomats” who could barely keep a straight face. 

Then Trump gets in, and comes into a WH briefing room after a round of golf, and watches a Houthi “stronghold” get lit up like Michael Moore’s eyes when he spots an unattended ham sandwich.  Then, a couple of days ago, he releases another video, this time of a bunch of Houthis standing around in a rectangular grouping, planning a new attack.

Annndddd…missile strike!  And suddenly the sand is littered with diced Houthis encrusted in sea salt and seasoned with RPG accelerant.   [Begin Homer Simpson filter: “Mmmm, diced Houthis.”]

Trump posted the video with the Trumpiest of all possible descriptions: “These Houthis gathered for instructions on an attack.  Oops, there will be no attack by these Houthis!  They will never sink our ships again!”

And predictably, our legacy media – whom we don’t hate nearly enough – immediately tried to claim that the Houthi terrorists were just a bunch of peaceful Yemenis in a tribal gathering. Their evidence?  Undated photos of other Yemenis in other rectangular groupings during other tribal gatherings.

Got that?  Yemenis often get together in rectangles, and this group was arranged in a rectangle.  Therefore, we put the warheads on the wrong foreheads.  Yada yada yada, genocidal war crime!

Ugh!  If these media hacks were around during WWII, you know they’d be showing Nuremburg rallies with Nazis all lined up in rows, with self-righteous voice-over narration saying, “You know who else liked to line up in rows? [Cut to pictures of a Lutheran worship service.]  See?  Germans, all in rows!  The allies are bombing pacificist Lutherans!  Won’t somebody please think of the Lutherans?!”

One fact that the MSM hacks don’t point out?  If the Houthi gathering we just blew up had been a peaceful assembly of Yemeni civilians, the Houthi militia spokes-jihadis would have immediately released a full-run down of the names and ages of the sainted dead.  Which they have not done.

Unexpectedly!

The same trend of voluntarily choosing weakness has been happening on the domestic front too.  Was there any reason for bunches of cops to stand around watching as hordes of antifa and BLM rioters toppled statues, burned police stations, looted stores and did literally billions of dollars of damage to cities all over the country for months on end?

Was there any reason to watch mediocre male athletes pretending to be females, beating the hell out of actual female athletes, when the nation is full of dads of daughters who would have happily tagged in and beaten the third-rate male athletes like rented mules, if only the relevant authorities would have given them a wink and a nod? 

Was there any reason for the nation to stand by and watch as millions of illegals streamed across our border, picking up free cell phones and voter registration forms before fanning out across the country, after which crime rates and welfare spending skyrocketed? (UNEXPECTEDLY!)

There was not.  We volunteered to act weak and be victimized.   And now, post January 20th, we’ve volunteered to be strong, and commence with the legal and tactical arse-whippings. 

And suddenly TDA members are living like rats (with forcibly-shaved rat heads) in El Salvadoran cages, and Tesla-vandalizing incels are trembling in their mom’s basements as they await the cops’ arrival.  (Maybe you’re not as smart as Elon, kids, because he built cars with a dozen cameras in them, and you keyed and set fire to cars with a dozen cameras in them.)   

And illegals who proudly paraded six months ago with signs proclaiming, “Pay me to hate America!” and, “Cuyo calles?  Nuestras calles!” are now huddled in public-housing apartments from which they’ve displaced American veterans, ingesting the last of their fentanyl stash to try to chase away the nightmares of Hulk Homan™ busting through the wall like the Kool-Aid Man with a New York accent and a phalanx of ICE agents right behind him.           

And Hamas-sympathizers at Ivy League colleges who were recently stomping around in their terrorist tablecloth headgear attacking Jewish Americans are cowering in their dorm rooms trying to avoid authorities, like smelly Yahya Sinwar when he fled to that half-demolished building in Rafah, trying to hide from the IDF drone that moments later gave him the ol’ kosher KABOOM!

Speaking of America-hating terrorist sympathizers on campus, you may not have heard about the case of Iranian “legal scholar” Helyeh Doutaghi, who was fired by Yale a week ago, after being linked to the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network (PPSN), which both the Biden administration and Canada had designated as a terrorist-linked group.

Doutaghi has a long history of spewing the usual Islamist anti-Semitic poison, describing as “Zionist barbarity” Israel’s non-genocidal and non-barbarous response to Hamas’ genocidal and barbarous attacks. 

In addition to the religious bigotry angle, she also has the hateful Marxist lingo down pat, blathering on about how Western democracy is “a system built to serve capitalist property…born in genocide and enslavement…and [intended to deny] freedom and sovereignty to the colonized.” She has also promised to “use everything at my disposal to fight the fascist dictatorship of the United States.”

She seems nice, doesn’t she?

This innocent little dove – she’s got a kind of an Islamic AOC vibe going on – was given a visa to allow her into first Canada and then the US, before she eventually got her teaching gig at Yale. In a March interview after Yale first tried to question her about her connection to the PPSN, she said, “I had been very loud and proud about my [organizing] work…in the anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist and the anti-colonialist movements,” and “[Yale] never raised any concerns” about her “activities.”

Because of course they didn’t.

Anyway, when Yale notified Doutaghi that she was suspended until they could investigate her possible terrorist ties, she refused to cooperate with the investigation, and then was fired. 

When her supporters heard about her suspension and then firing, many of them were especially outraged that this horrific injustice happened during the “holy month of Ramadan.”

To which most normal Americans replied, “Oh NO!  Not the holy month of Ramadan!  Anyway…”   

Because we’re done volunteering to be weak, and to appease the enemies of our country and our culture abroad, and to harbor them here at home. 

Hopefully Helyeh Doutaghi is going through our deportation process as we speak, if she isn’t gone already.

Because I think I speak for most Americans when I say, “Deport Helyeh?” 

Hell yeah!

And also…

Hamas delenda est!

Thoughts on Immigration, Part 2 (posted 4/4/25)

In my column on Wednesday I covered a little bit of the history of our immigration laws, and discussed the long-standing legal and common-sense concept that we have every right to decide who to allow to come into our country, and under what circumstances.  And however much our rules about immigration have developed and evolved, they’ve always included one central idea: we should allow people in who can improve and benefit America.

Hence the five categories that I quoted from the 1891 Immigration Act.  If you’re a foreigner who wants to come here, and you’re stupid, or mentally or physically ill, why would we want you here?  If you’re a criminal, why would we want to be your victims?  If you can’t or won’t support yourself financially, why would we want to work harder and tax ourselves more, just to take care of you? 

On the one hand, it’s weird to even have to say all that, because rational self-interest seems so self-evident and obvious.  If Americans don’t have the right to decide who comes into America, who does?  And if you will predictably make us dumber, sicker, poorer and more preyed-upon, why would we allow you in?

On the other hand, over the last half-century or more, we’ve developed almost a sense of shame – at the very least, embarrassment – about our strength, successes, and wealth.  It hits our ears wrong to say, to the millions who would want to immigrate to America, “What’s in it for us?”  Many schools of thought have added to this unease, some of them good, and some very bad.

I’d include the Judeo-Christian world view that is entwined in our national DNA – and which formed the ethical and political architecture of our Founders’ minds, and the scaffolding of the constitution and democratic republic they built – as the most important factor on the good side.  We were raised on stories of the Good Shepherd and the Good Samaritan, and our duty to care for the widow and the orphan, and for the poor.  We’re a generous and a compassionate people, in no small part because of a wide-ranging body of teaching from Uncle Jesus and his predecessors that, “As you’ve done to the least of these, you’ve done it unto Me.”

On the bad side, we shouldn’t underestimate how much damage has been done by leftist schools of thought, and the multitude of ways they have taught our children to hate our country and themselves. 

Multiculturalism tells us that all cultures are equally valid, except that ours is somehow worse than the primitive and the non-capitalist ones.  Socialism tells us that the wealthy are evil exploiters, rather than the creators of rising tides that can lift all boats.  Critical race theory and post-colonial studies tell us that successful first-world countries and the lighter skinned are eternal victimizers, and the rest of the world their rightly aggrieved victims.    

Put that all together and disseminate it through an insular and propagandizing educational system, and you get the modern West – wildly successful, and while flawed, the best available model for the world to follow – yet without the civilizational self-confidence to vigorously defend itself, let alone its borders.  

Which brings us to today, with tens of millions of people here illegally.  They’ve come here for good reasons and bad – some to work hard and make better lives for themselves, some to prey on a wealthy and vulnerable populace, some to take advantage of our idiotically generous and unpoliced welfare benefits.

This has been incredibly frustrating for most Americans.  Clear majorities in all polls say they want less LEGAL immigration, and giant majorities want illegal immigration stopped, and illegals deported.  And yet there have been a network of groups who have been able to engineer the recent waves of illegals coming in.

Self-interested businesses want cheaper labor.  Foreign governments and cartels and their American partners want to enrich themselves through remittances, as well as smuggling and organized crime.  Gullible and naïve church and “charitable” groups have allowed their misplaced compassion (and IMHO, often an intoxicating sense of their own virtue) to blind themselves to the damage they are doing to their own country.    

But most of those people and groups have always been here, and together have always accounted for some illegal immigration into this country.  But the driving force behind the recent flood of illegals has been the Democrat party.  Dem politicians see illegals as an army of future voters who will secure their national political majority for many decades, thus allowing them to achieve their political goals of a more leftist/socialist, and less traditionally American, country.

And the fact that an entrenched network of NGOs and other Dem organizations (which DOGE is just beginning to uncover) can enrich themselves in the process is just icing on the cake for them.

To me, the best thing about the new Trump administration so far has been the way they’ve closed the border and started deportations.  All of my usual hyperbolic mockery aside, I’ve been giddy watching the American people regain their self-confidence, to the point where they will openly support deporting illegals, unswayed by the usual accusations of racism and xenophobia. 

I love watching the elite Left – lulled into an arrogant complacency by years of hectoring us, unopposed – get completely wrong-footed when their usual attacks no longer work.  When AOC lectured Hulk Homan™ that “being in the country illegally isn’t a crime,” he rhetorically pantsed her (it’s not my fault that she has placed her juicy booty – her words, not mine – front and center in the public’s mind) by reciting from memory the relevant portions of US law that proved her wrong. 

All she could do was pull up her pants, stammer, and change the subject.  (Rumors that her panties were red, with a hammer and sickle on the seat have not been confirmed.)

The top Dems don’t know if they’re afoot or horseback on immigration, and it’s glorious to see!   After they insisted for a full year that Biden couldn’t close the border without new legislation, Trump closed it 15 minutes after being inaugurated, and everyone started glaring at those Dems, while they looked at their feet or checked their watches.

When some immigration raids began catching run-of-the-mill illegals along with the violent TDA gangbangers who were being targeted, lefty talking heads got excited.  They actually  thought that it would turn the public against deportations!  But every time they did some kind of “man on the street” interviews, the citizens said something like, “But the untargeted ones are here illegally too?” 

And before the “journalist” could say, “Well yeah, but-“ the citizen would say, “Vamanos!” or “Adios!”      

Hysterical Jamie Raskin actually gave a speech calling for the plane full of gang-bangers to be flown back here so they can have taxpayer-funded lawyers and years-long hearings to see if they get to stay! 

Keep it up, Dems, and let us know how that works for you.

I’ve got a few more thoughts on how likely it is that we’ll be able to deport the vast majority of illegal immigrants, and also on the related controversies over deporting students who were here legally on student visas or green cards.  But this column is long enough, so I’ll save those for next week.

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a joke I saw last week…

How badly has Snow Woke bombed? (Unexpectedly.)

Someone posted a pic from the opening night’s 8 o’clock showing… and labeled it “Snow White and the Seven Audience Members.”

Have a great weekend, and don’t forget…

Hamas delenda est!

Thoughts on Immigration, Pt. 1 (posted 4/2/25)

Since the Trumpkrieg™ started on January 20th, the Democrats have taken the short end of one 80/20 issue after another, but none more important than the issue of illegal immigration. They’ve made so many illogical, specious arguments on the topic that I’ve found myself muttering to myself about this issue more than any others. 

And regular readers know that it’s never a very big jump from “muttering to myself” to “sharing with CO nation.”  So here goes.

The two most annoying leftist immigration fallacies are: acting as if there is no difference between legal and illegal immigration, and acting as if immigrating to America in the 18th century was just like immigrating here recently, or today.

The first point is too obvious to require much debunking.  To equate immigrating legally to doing so illegally is as stupid as equating having a loving relationship with your spouse to rape.  And yet if you were to watch 8 hours of MSNBC or CNN each day – God help you – you would see dozens of boneheads saying, “Except for Native Americans, all Americans are descendants of immigrants!”

Yes, Rachel Maddow.  But you can also say, “Thousands of people go into banks every week, and they leave with money.” 

But most of them go in with a photo ID, and leave with money from their own accounts.  And some of them go in with pistols and ski masks, and leave with other people’s money. 

That’s different!

The second point relies on the listener being ignorant of history.  Which – conveniently for the leftists – most people who went to leftist-run public schools are.

But just like illegal immigration is very different from the legal kind, immigrating to the US before around 1850 was very different than coming in the last hundred years or so.    

That earlier period was marked by a largely empty continent offering immigrants more danger and challenges than tempting opportunities. 

Yes, I said “a largely empty continent.”  And before you can bring up the native Lizzie Warrens living here then – #wemustneverstopmockingher – estimates are that around 4-7 million Indians lived in all of today’s US and Canada around 1492.  That comes out to between 2 and 4 humans per square mile.  And that’s before epidemics thinned that number considerably by the time Europeans got a toehold on the eastern seaboard. 

Back then, there was very little government and absolutely no social safety net.  Nor even any literal safety nets, for that matter.  (Nor seat belts, nor “no smoking” signs, nor labels on the top of a ladder warning that you shouldn’t use it as a step.)  The fledgling nation needed all of the hearty pioneers with grit, ambition and work ethic that it could get.  So it largely welcomed all comers.

And when many of them suffered gruesome deaths – from scalping-involved Warren-cide (#neverstop), being thrown from seatbelt-less saddles in multi-horse collisions, or neck-breaking falls from the top steps of ladders – the rest of the citizenry just went about their business.

Because immigrating wasn’t for whiny wusses.

By the 20th century, and especially with the growth of governmental and other financial support, the situation was very different.  The country could still benefit from hard-working immigrants, but with many areas getting more crowded and the number of would-be immigrants exploding – not to mention the powerful draw of ever-more-generous welfare programs, and newcomers who no longer wanted to assimilate – the risk-reward ratio of large-scale immigration shifted toward more caution, limits and careful vetting. 

You can discern the nation’s developing thinking about immigration by tracking the amount of legislation on the topic during the 19th century.  The Steerage Act of 1819 required that arriving boats have a manifest of immigrants on board, and that those aliens be inspected and given a medical exam before even preliminarily being allowed entry.  Multiple acts in the 1870s and 1880s banned entry to forced laborers, prostitutes and Chinese people.

The two major laws regulating immigration in that century – the Immigration Acts of 1882 and 1891, respectively – enacted increasingly more stringent restrictions on would-be immigrants.

Consider the first paragraph of the Immigration Act of 1891: 

“The following classes of aliens shall be excluded from admission into the United States, in according with the existing acts regulating immigration other than those concerning Chinese laborers: All idiots, insane persons, paupers or persons likely to become a public charge, persons suffering from a loathsome or a dangerous contagious disease, persons who have been convicted of a felony or other infamous crime or misdemeanor involving moral turpitude, polygamists, and also any person whose ticket or passages if paid for with money of another or who is assisted by others to come.”

Let’s break that down.  The list starts and ends with what I think are less relevant points.  I can only guess that the concern about Chinese laborers arose from fear that they would make the rest of us look lazy in comparison, and possibly that they would screw up the grading curve in all of our classes?

The part at the end about immigrants whose passage is paid for by others seems to depend on the context.  If they had family members or solid citizens paying their way in, we should probably consider them.  But if they were funded by some shadowy character – likely named “Soros” – send them packing.

But consider the middle of that passage, which is so relevant that it could have been ripped from today’s headlines.  It lists 5 groups of people – with old-fashioned descriptions that can be easily translated to their modern equivalents – who should not be allowed into the US:

1. Stupid people – “Idiot” later had a specific, IQ-defined meaning, but the modern “stupid” is a suitable umbrella term. 

Fun fact: Psychologists once classified those with an IQ between 0-25 as “idiots,” those between 26-50 as “imbeciles,” and those between 51-70 as “morons.” 

Those groupings are still relevant today, especially if you are trying to analyze members of congress, or answer questions such as, “Is Hank Johnson a low-range or mid-range idiot?” or  “Is AOC capable of achieving imbecility?” or “Have Jasmine Crockett’s remarks about the Texas governor dropped her from moron status all the way to idiocy, or just to imbecility with a dusting of sociopathy?”

2. The mentally ill.  (See: sufferers of gender dysmorphia or auto-gynophilia; watchers of CNN, or The View; Robert DeNiro) 

3. Welfare recipients and those willing to go on the dole.  “Pauper” can just mean “broke” – a temporary state that many (even certain hilarious geniuses) of us have experienced.  And a broke person may even take welfare for a very short time.  But “a public charge” is someone who can’t or won’t support himself, and “likely to become a public charge” is a common fixture in modern America: a habitual and/or multi-generational welfare recipient.  

4. Health risks.   Remember when covid was so threatening that American citizens couldn’t leave their houses…but millions of unvetted third-worlders with hacking coughs were waved through the border like leftist celebrities being welcomed to Pedo Island by Jeffrey Epstein?  And who can read “loathsome, contagious disease” and not think of the plague, TB or the woke mind virus?  

5. Criminals.  These are commonplace, today as in the past.  If you aren’t familiar with “moral turpitude,” think “Hunter Biden.”  And we don’t have many polygamists (i.e. married to more than one person at a time) anymore, having replaced them with never-married baby mommas and dead-beat dads.

Look at that list one more time, and apply it to a sane immigration policy going forward.

Denying entry to group 4 (the health risks) should be uncontroversial to even the far-leftists among us.  If you’re still wearing a covid mask in 2025 and looking forward to your 13th covid booster… zip it, Karen!

Groups 1 and 2 – the stupid and the insane – make up at least a large plurality if not an outright majority of our current Congress.  Annnnddd… we definitely don’t need any more of those. 

And groups 3 and 5 – welfare recipients and criminals – make up the lion’s share of the Democratic base.  So that’s a hard pass. 

Coming Friday: Part 2, in which I apply the lessons above to our current deportation debates.

Hamas delenda est!

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

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

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

On to the usual political malarky. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

D’oh!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hamas delenda est!

Thinking about Ayn Rand, and Ungrateful Beggars (posted 3/28/25)

I’m working on a column about immigration for Monday, which has involved doing a little research on various immigration acts that the US passed starting in the 1870s, in a period of transition between our early nationhood and the 20th century world power that we became. 

But as I was looking into that topic, an idea kept niggling at me: the explosion of resentful, entitled people who are reacting so hysterically to every aspect of the Trumpkrieg™ that is now two months old.

As soon as I noticed this idea cropping up in many different contexts, I thought of Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged, which is a terrible great book.  Or possibly a great terrible book, depending on how you look at it. 

It’s terribleness comes from three primary flaws.  Rand was a curmudgeon, and her grimly doctrinaire atheism makes large swaths of the book an irritating slog.  Her moral worldview is cartoonishly black-and-white, which often makes her characters cardboard stand-ins for intellectual tropes.  And the book is wildly overwritten; my copy comes in at 1168 pages, and it could easily be a tight, fast-moving 250-pager.

But its greatness lies in two strengths. Rand despised totalitarian leftism the way we all should: utterly and passionately.  And the central conceit of the book was an answer to the fascinating question, “What would happen to a corrupt leftist society if its most productive citizens began purposefully disappearing?”    

Written in the mid-1950s, it presciently (if exaggeratedly) predicts the flight of productive citizens from blue to red states that’s been going on over the last 30 years or more.  As CA, NY, and IL get more greedy and socialist, talented people shrug, and vote with their feet, and take their skills and net worth to TN, TX and FL.

The most direct echoes from the book involve the kind of virtue-signaling social justice warriors who simultaneously look down on and criticize the successful people and inventors they depend on.  The book is full of Bernie Sanders-es railing about how the rich don’t pay their fair share, and Musk-hating Tesla-vandalizer types – and the villains totally agree with so many in the “resistance” now.  They’re all convinced that beggars have the absolute moral right to be choosers.    

I’m seeing this phenomenon on many foreign policy fronts, now that we’re learning how much foreign aid we’ve been indiscriminatingly showering on the rest of the world.  Apparently we’ve had a non-stop convoy of C-130 flights going 24-7, shoving giant pallets of cash out the rear cargo hold at 15-minute intervals, all over the world.

And yet the Europeans want to lecture us that we’re not paying enough for the UN, and NATO, and the “March of AK-47s” program to provide Russian small arms to jihadi toddlers in Gaza.  (It’s like the March of Dimes, except that instead of collecting dimes, we’re disbursing rifles.) 

Then, when Trump suggested that we might be shutting down the money flow to Ukraine, many Europeans lost it.  In an earlier column, I referred to the six- or seven-nation poll showing that around 70% of Europeans want Zelensky to get a lot more support… but only around 20% of them want to give him any of that themselves.

Strange.  Putin is an ocean away from us, but right on their doorstep, and they are very adamant that WE do whatever it takes to keep him within his own borders.   

Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe, Australian universities are freaking out after the Trump administration sent them a questionnaire asking whether they’ve got ties to commie or socialist parties, receive funding from China, or recognize genders other than the two real ones.  The wrong answers could potentially jeopardize $386 million US dollars (over a third of what Australia spends on research each year) in research grants.

The Aussie profs have their lab coats over their heads, demanding an “emergency meeting” with their Prime Minister about this.  One of them was “astounded” at the questions, saying that, “if this was any other country, it verges on foreign interference.”

Good lord!  Am I going to have to break out my Sam Kinison filter to explain to that dolt how she could avoid such pesky “foreign interference?”  (“Hey sweetie, you know what you might think about doing?  PAYING FOR YOUR OWN FREAKING RESEARCH! OH!! OHHHHH!!!!!”)

Seriously, why are we paying for Aussie scientists to do research?  Australia is a first-world, Anglophone nation.  They’re not some struggling sub-Saharan country desperately battling a snake-borne diptheria strain (which Fauci probably paid to create in a crumbling lab in Mombasa) that is the leading cause of death among their citizens!

Also, are American scientists broken?  If not, and if expensive research is worth doing, why don’t we do that here at home? 

And it’s not just foreigners who are stamping their feet in their clunky foreign shoes, and cussing us out in their comically non-English languages.  Lots of Americans are also threatening to hold their breath and give us the silent treatment if we don’t pony up the dough they’re used to getting.

Some of them are government workers in the crucial fields of grievance mongering, racial and gender bean-counting, and maintaining a minimal pulse rate while “working” from home.  And some of them are actually doing legitimate work that we can’t afford anymore, now that we’re the brokest nation in the history of nations.  

Woke universities are similarly out of sorts.  They’ve been happily demonizing and excluding conservatives from their programs and campuses, and rhetorically (and for all I know, literally) fellating terrorist supporters and their cosplaying allies, while gorging themselves on grant money provided by the (despised) conservative majority in the country. 

But when Trump said that the federal money flow will stop if they don’t change their ways, they became outraged, and then terrified.  Just like the sanctuary state and city governors and mayors, when they found out that they’re going to have to face the natural consequences of their arrogant defiance of our immigration laws.   

The purest distillation of this attitude appeared in the story of Trump’s proposed changes to the SNAP (i.e. food stamps) program.  The GOP is proposing a bill to ban the use of SNAP benefits to buy junk food and sodas, and the people who rely on you and me to buy their food are not happy about it. 

In a sane world, this wouldn’t require any debate.  We know that the leading health problems among poor Americans – and many non-poor Americans! – are caused by unhealthy diet and obesity, and that taxpayers are already paying exorbitant costs for welfare recipients’ health care.   So who could possibly argue that we need to buy junk food for the poor?

Big junk food companies, beggars who are surprisingly picky eaters, and the Democrats who need the sick-and-fat vote, that’s who! 

A couple of their arguments are transparent dodges.  They say it will be very hard to alter how the SNAP program works in this way.  They also say that nobody can really define “junk food,” because hey man, one person’s junk food is another person’s healthy snack, isn’t it?

Nope. This argument is even easier to debunk than its older counterpart, “How do you define pornography?”  Because you know both when you see them. 

Show any reasonably intelligent adult Stormy Daniels in a g-string, washing down a plate of chocolate chip cookies with a Mountain Dew, and he’ll point and say, “Why is that porn star gorging herself on that junk food?”

But their other arguments are even worse.  They say that the proposed bill limits personal choice, and infringes on the freedom to eat whatever you want.  Which would be true, if you were paying for the food yourself.   

But since you’re not paying for the food yourself, you should get the same offer my dad gave me when I was a kid and looking at a plate of meatloaf (again!) that he bought with his Northern Illinois Gas Company salary:  “You’ve got two choices: take it, or leave it.”

They’re also worried that, and I quote, “The bill could stigmatize SNAP recipients, making them feel judged or shamed for their food choices.” 

Hey kids, you know what else will make you feel shamed and stigmatized?  Walking around looking like J.B. Pritzker, (D)irigible – IL, unable to feel your feet (which you also can’t see), and wondering if that means that the diabetes is almost to the point where the amputations will need to start.

So get yourself off the Mountain Dew, AND the government teat.

You’ll feel better.  And we will too.  

Hamas delenda est!

My Review of Snow White, and Peter Dinklage (posted 3/26/25)

I’m not a professional film critic.

But lest you are tempted to disregard the following thoughts, I do know a thing or two about movies.  For example, I know that Christopher Walken and Denzel Washington are worth watching in pretty much every movie they are in, and that Clint Eastwood hasn’t made a bad movie since that goofy orangutang one a million years ago.  (And even that one had a few moments.)

I know that Quentin Tarantino is super weird but talented, and he’s got the best batting average after Eastwood. 

I know that the first two Godfathers, No Country for Old Men, Unforgiven, and Open Range are five of the best 20 movies ever made.  And that True Romance, Groundhog Day and Field of Dreams are the most overlooked sleepers that should also be on that list.

In fact, if you haven’t seen True Romance, correct that this weekend.   Tarantino wrote it, and Tony Scott directed.  Brad Pitt’s bit part as a stoner is pitch perfect, and an unknown James Gandolfini as a low-level hitman trying to explain what it’s like to kill people is mesmerizing.  And the scene in which Walken interrogates Dennis Hopper is a classic. 

Walken explains the Sicilians’ status as world-class liars, and then – over a delicate underlayment of an opera piece called “The Flower Duet” – Hopper counters with a disquisition on the racial lineage of Sicilians intended to enrage his interrogator.  And it works.  Walken’s bemused, slow-burn reaction is beautiful.

Anyway, I say all that as a preface to a movie review.  Even though I’m not a film critic. 

Sidebar: If you’ve been reading my columns lately – and if not, what the hell, man?  Unless you’re reading ONLY the Bible, Victor Davis Hansen, CO himself and Christopher Silber, what’s your excuse? – you may remember that in addition to not being a film critic, I am also not a map-ologist, an ocelot-ologist, or a sex-change-ologist. 

And yet, I’ve offered you what I humbly think are some worthwhile musings on maps, ocelots and sex changes.  (I’ve got range, people.)  So I hope you’ll also bear with me when I tell you that I’m reviewing Snow White.  Even though, technically, I haven’t seen it.

But I don’t need to.  Because I’m just that good at this, and because I’ve watched the coverage of this movie as it’s made his tortuous way to the screen.   I know the original fairy tale, and the 1937 classic version.   And I know that what makes fairy tales find new audiences over centuries is that they contain some eternal truths.  

And I know that Disney made a bad mistake when they hired a hateful little bundle of box office poison named Rachel Ziegler as their leading lady.  She’s a familiar modern type – a social justice warrior who wildly over-estimates her own intelligence and insight – and she has arrogantly assured us that THIS Snow White is not going to be like that beloved old one, with the Prince and true love and all that patriarchal crap.

Nope, her Snow White is going to be a feminist girl boss who needs a prince like a fish needs a bicycle, in a story that’s all about her discovering her own power and awesomeness! 

In other words, it won’t be like the original story with the staying power to last centuries.  It’s going to be a faddish, modernized version, without the staying power to last through an opening weekend.  (Belated spoiler alert!) (Also: Unexpectedly!)

In addition to the audience-alienating leftist drivel that’s been coming out of Ziegler’s pie hole, her casting presents two other significant obstacles:

1. The Evil Queen, who famously asks the magic mirror who is the fairest one of all, is played by the actress affectionately known as Triple-G:  Gal “giggity” Gadot.  And I can buy a lot of conceits in a fairy tale movie, including musical dwarves and magic spells and talking woodland creatures.

But you cannot ask the audience to suspend their disbelief when Gadot asks a magic mirror who’s hotter, and that apparently crystal-meth-snorting mirror says snotty little Rachel Ziegler!

2.  And call me racist if you must, but I’m going to say it: Ziegler is not white!  Normally, who cares?  But when she’s playing a character whose very name – and the title of the story! – requires that she be as white as snow? 

Remember how surprised you were when Disney announced that the titular role in the first Black Panther film was going to be played by Benedict Cumberbatch?  Or when George C. Scott got to play Patton only after Dikembe Mutombo had to back out of the role when the Houston Rockets made the NBA playoffs?  Or when the lead in the Andre the Giant biopic went to Peter Dinklage?

Of course you don’t.  Because those are all ridiculous ideas.  And yet Disney expects their audience to accept that the chick they’re pretty sure was the runner-up in a “Miss Colombia Trump-Hater of 2023” pageant is Snow freakin’ White?  Not smart.

Speaking of Peter Dinklage, I hope everybody in the dwarf community will punch him in the face the next time they see him.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m no DODVE.  (Dwarf-on-dwarf violence excuser. Duh.)  But that Dinklage really rubs me the wrong way.  And about halfway up my calf.

HA!

I like to live by the Golden (thimble) Rule.  “Treat others like you would want to be treated, if they and you were both dwarves.”

And if I were a dwarf actor, I’d be furious with Dinklage.  Because he spouted off, as Snow White was in pre-production, about how offensive he found it that Disney was going to cast little people as the seven dwarves.

Saith the triggered little derringer, “They were very proud to cast a Latino actress as Snow White, but you’re still telling the story of ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.’ … You’re progressive in one way, but you’re still making that [f-ing] backward story about seven dwarfs living in a cave together. Have I done nothing to advance the cause from my soapbox? I guess I’m not loud enough.”

First off, Pete, it’s more of a soap dish than a soap box you’ve got there.

Second, you’re the super-rare little person who’s had a successful acting career, and you’re standing tall (snicker) on that pile of Game of Thrones money.  But there are little-people actors who are struggling to find work, and you might have noticed that there aren’t a ton of acting jobs for them.

There are a few recurring elf roles – Keebler and Christmas – and a leprechaun or two around St. Patty’s Day, but beyond that?  Do you think Hollywood studios are fighting over the rights to a forthcoming Robert Reich biopic?  And if somebody shows an interest and the money is right, Tom Cruise will probably snag that role. 

So along comes Snow White – the first movie since the Wizard of Oz to have a bunch of roles for little people – and Sir Dinklage has to put on his tiny little cape of wokeness and shame Disney for trying to cast dwarves as dwarves.  (The nerve!) 

And spineless, hapless Disney caves, and has their sweat shop full of animators create an uncanny-valley’s worth of CGI dwarves.  And boom! Back to the unemployment line for little people actors. And what are they going to do, protest, or go on strike?

Good luck getting those picket signs noticed, as you wave them around at waist height!

And in case you thought I’d forgotten…

…let me give a rare shout-out to Liz Warren.  Because that delusional pretend-ian could definitely play a convincing Snow White. 

#wemustneverstopmockingher

So skip Snow White, and watch True Romance, and you can thank me later.

Hamas delenda est!