Politics – Page 8 – Martin Simpson

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!

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 20^th, 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 20^th, 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 18^th 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 19^th 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 13^th 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 6^th!

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!

Dems are Super-Racist to the Chinese, & Ben and Jerry’s Have Problems (posted 3/24/25)

The Democrats have been addicted to racism for a long time.

No, I’m not talking about the way they built their entire economy around slavery, clinging to it like grim death until the Republicans formed a new party, elected a new president, and sent an army south – eventually commanded by a bad-arse future GOP president – to whip them and free their slaves.

And I’m not even talking about the way they stewed about that, formed the KKK and passed a raft of Jim Crow laws that they clung to like grim death for around 80 more years, until another GOP president sent the 101^st Airborne to Little Rock to allow 9 black kids to go to a previously segregated high school. (“I like Ike. My bike likes Ike!”)

(“Let’s try A. Fonzarelli quotes for $200, Alex.”)

Nope. I’m talking about the way the Dems have somehow – against all reason, logic and fairness – been able to project their own sins onto the GOP, and cudgel them with charges of racism for the last half-century or so. Racism became the Dems’ first plan of attack, their Plan B, their Hail Mary, and their best defense.

You couldn’t point out that Obama doubled the national debt in 8 years because math is racist. You couldn’t point out that Jamaal Bowman obstructed a congressional vote by yanking a fire alarm, because fire suppression systems are racist.

You couldn’t point out that Que Mala could not excrete a sentence with a recognizable subject verb and object, because many African cultures have a rich traditional heritage of practicing ojibah-ahwoo-gawaymee. Which is Swahili for “word salad.”

And before you can look that up, I have to warn you that fact checking is racist!

Which brings me back to my initial point: the Democrats have become addicted to racism. And I’ll bet you can guess how they’ve been clinging to it.

That’s right: like grim death.

But as with most addictions, what once used to bring pleasure can start to go sideways.

Maybe a guy used to enjoy a little bourbon – the brownest of the brown liquors – every now and again. Like to celebrate special occasions, or to cope with a virulent strain of poison ivy that would kill a lesser man. Or maybe to loosen the adhesions a bit when he’s sitting down to write a bit of deathless, comic political prose.

Well I’m not talking about that. Because that’s some high-functioning, medicinal-quality self-care right there. And I didn’t produce four insightful yet hilarious columns in just the last week, only to be told that I can’t imbibe in a little Kentucky inspiration in my own home!!

Perhaps I’ve said too much. But let’s not get sidetracked.

The Dems’ racism problem is the classical addict’s dilemma: as their dependency grew, they needed more and more racism, just to keep it together, and the supply could not keep up with their demand. And now it’s interfering with their job, their quality of life, and their electoral performance.

They’ve become so delusional that they look at a minimally racist country and see prejudice everywhere. They’re like an anorexic looking into a mirror at her xylophone ribcage and instead seeing a Whoopi Goldberg-esque blob.

They don’t recognize how off-putting it is to claim that voter ID laws are racist, because black people could not possibly get an ID, like a normal person. Or that DEI and quotas are essential, because without them no black person would ever be able to get into college or the job market again.

Even when they try to pose as anti-racist in contexts that involve other ethnicities, they screw that up. Liz Warren has made herself a national punchline by insisting that she’s as Indian as Sitting Bull, when anyone can see that she’s as Indian as Bull Conner. (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

But my favorite recent example has surfaced as the Dems’ covid origins lies have been exposed. When Trump – and many, many others – suggested that the virus escaped from a Chinese lab where viruses were studied and experimented with, DC Democrats got their backs up immediately: “Are you suggesting that Chinese researchers and scientists could have been dropped the ball in the lab? That’s RACIST!!”

So what was their enlightened, diversity-embracing, anti-racist alternative to the Chicom-phobic lab-leak theory? Drum-roll, please…

The Chinese people are basically a cross between Gollum, Ozzy Osbourne, and carnival geeks, furtively stalking through grisly “wet markets” wolfing down every pangolin, muskrat and ocelot they could get their bestial claws on.

That sounds nice, doesn’t it?

Okay, I’m no ocelotologist – it was between that and English, and I chose what turned out to be the less lucrative field – so I don’t know if China is rich in ocelots. But if the enlightened Dems are correct, the voracious untermenschen Chinese probably gobbled them all up long ago.

Come to think of it, that’s probably why the wooly mammoths are extinct. “Siri, please explain the connection between disgusting Chinese dietary habits and the extinction of the mammoth?”

Annnnddd… that’s why the Chinese can’t have nice things, like sabre tooth tigers, mammoths, and pet pangolins. Because of their unspeakably barbaric gustatory predilections.

So to summarize, here is the Democrats’ position:

The hypothesis that Chinese scientists followed insufficiently rigorous containment protocols? Horribly, horribly racist.

The idea that Chinese people are essentially troglodytic creatures fighting in a muddy moshpit over the chance to devour baskets full of squealing critters alive as if they were living chum thrown to Hannibal Lecter’s bloodthirsty hogs?

Obviously true, and you’re welcome, inscrutable Asian friends.

Nice job, non-racist-stereotyping leftists!

Speaking of leftists eating their own… did you hear that Ben and Jerry’s CEO just got fired for being too much of an extreme leftist whack job?

(Thank you, Kentucky distillers, for that top-notch transition!)

I know: that sounds like the setup for a joke. Getting fired from Mao and Jerry’s – I would also accept “Ben and Lenin’s” – for being too far left is like getting kicked out of the Sex Pistols for extreme rudeness.

But Ben and Jerry sold their crunchy little business to corporate giant Unilever a few decades ago – way to rebel against the Man, you hippy hypocrites! – and like sane businesses everywhere, Unilever prefers not to lose money.

Enter B&J CEO David Stever, a leftist who chafes at having to consider customer preferences when there is social justice virtue signaling to be done. He and his supporters have had several run-ins with Unilever because of his hostility to Israel and soft spot for “Palestinians.”

(Unilever’s first clue should have been when the wokesters introduced “Jihadi Crunch,” “Cookies and IED,” and Hamas-cicles.)

They’ve also aligned themselves with lefty activist groups, put out a Fourth of July message that declared that the US was “founded on stolen indigenous land,” and supported Kamala for president.

The last straw was apparently a recent social media post celebrating – and I swear I am not making this up – “National Abortion Providers Appreciation Day.”

I would have loved to eavesdrop on the meeting that took place between a few adults from Unilever and the Social Justice Warrior Hippies after that post went viral:

Unilever Adult 1 (UA1): Why the hell would you post about National Abortionist Day?!

SJW Hippie (SJWH) 1: Do you think it’s gotten too commercial?

SJWH 2: It’s about appreciation.

UA2: Yeah, appreciating abortionists!

SJWH 1: Should we have said “health care providers?”

UA1 (palming his forehead): What do you think we sell?

SJWH 2: Raised consciousness.

SJWH 3: Our truth.

SJWH1: Moral superiority.

UA 1: We sell ICE CREAM!

SJWHs (chastened): Of course. Ice cream.

SJWH 4: I was going to say that.

SJWH 2: Shut up, Bruce. (quietly) Brown noser.

UA 1: And who do abortionists kill?

SJWH 1 (hesitantly): I don’t like the word “kill.”

UA 2: I don’t care! Who do they kill?!

SJWH 1: Unwanted tissue masses?

SJWH 2: Part of a woman’s body?

SJWH 3: Zygotes?

UA 1 (rubbing his temples): I don’t want the answer your grievance study professors gave you. I want the real answer.

SJWH 1 (fidgeting): I’m feeling triggered right n-

UA 1 (in a low, ominous tone): If you don’t give me the real answer, I’m going to drop a dime to Hulk Homan™ about the USAID grant you spent on smuggling in those illegals for your Pride Week S&M Festival last y-

SJWHs 1-4: KIDS! Abortionists kill kids!

UA 1: That’s right. And who LOVES eating ice cream?

SJWH 4 (looking at the others): Martin Simpson?

UA 1: That’s right, it’s ki– Wait, what? Who is Martin Simpson?

SJWH 4: Hilarious genius, national treasure, writes for Cautious Optimism?

SJWH 2: Has a real problem with ice cream. Loves the stuff.

SJWH 3: That and bourbon.

UA 2: How do you– Nevermind. Why would I ask you about his eating habits?

SJWH 3 (looking at the others and shrugging): No idea.

SJWH 4: Yeah, I wondered where you were going with that.

UA 1: Shut up, Bruce! I wasn’t going anywhere wi– Look, the point is, KIDS love eating ice cream. And abortionists kill kids. Do you get that?

SJWH 1: Yeah… So?

UA 1: SO STOP POSTING ABOUT HOW MUCH YOU APPRECIATE THE PEOPLE WHO ARE KILLING OUR CUSTOMERS!! YOU MORONS!

SJWH 4 (bursting into tears): I’m triggered! I’m triggered!

UA 1: Shut up, Bruce! You’re fired! You’re all fired!!

SJWH 2: You can’t do that.

UA 1: I just did!

SJWH 3: We’ll see what the judge has to say about that.

UA 1: What? What are you talking about?

SJWH 1: Maybe you haven’t heard. But Judge Boasberg is now in charge of all firing in the United States.

SJWH 2: Yeah! He’ll make you give us all our jobs back.

UA 1 (diving over the table and grabbing SJWH 1’s throat): Arrgggghhhh!

SJWH 4: You’re invading his personal space! INAPPROPRIATE!

Everyone in the room: Shut up, Bruce!!

And, scene.

Hamas delenda est.

Tesla Vandalizers Are Exactly Who You’d Expect Them to Be (posted 3/21/25)

Yesterday was the two-month anniversary of Trump’s swearing in. Can you believe it? Only two months! I’ve got column ideas piling up like productive citizens caught in a traffic jam fleeing New York, California or Illinois, and I don’t know how I’ll get to most of them.

Columns about crime. Columns about schadenfreude. Columns on evergreen political topics, leavened with a dusting of humorous observations about Liz Warren being whiter than Edgar Winter singing A Whiter Shade of Pale in an igloo during the winter solstice.

#wemustneverstopmockingher

But I can no sooner get a few sentences out before something funnier or more satisfying happens. I’m just trying to keep my head above water over here!

Joy Reid gets fired, but before I can make a joke about her sitting on the street with a cardboard sign saying, “Will hate whitey for food,” some MSNBC host is asking why Trump has been in office for 12 minutes and egg prices are still so high?

I start brainstorming some sort of a “you didn’t mind a president whose brains were scrambled, but…” thing that’s not working, before Bret Baier notes that egg prices just dropped 10%.

HA! How ironic that—What’s that? Margaret Brennan just said that the Nazis only took power in Germany because they loved free speech so much?

Okay wait, I’ve got something for that. Yes, the Nazis were world-renowned for their passion for the free exchange of ideas. “Ein volk, ein reich, ein free-wheeling debate,” that was their–

Annddd…egg prices are down 25%.

And Tampon Tim Walz was just celebrating that Tesla stock is way down…until someone pointed out that Minnesota government workers’ pensions have a bunch of Tesla stock in them. D’oh!

I give up. It’s too much winning. I’ve got to start somewhere, so I’m sticking with Tesla for this one.

You’ve probably heard about all of the leftists who are very angry with Elon now. They don’t like his fetish for free speech at Twitter/X; they don’t like his exposing and cutting leftist waste and corruption in government; they don’t like him rescuing astronauts, for some reason.

So they’re taking to various public fora (“archaic Latin plurals for 500, Alex”) with logically coherent, rhetorically persuasive critiques to change public perception through rigorous, democratic debate.

HA! I kid.

Actually, they’re threatening Tesla drivers, vandalizing dealerships and setting charging stations and cars on fire.

A few of these criminal masterminds have already been caught, and you’ll never guess what they’re like. If by “you’ll never guess” I mean “you absolutely know.”

Which I do.

Consider Contestant #1, Justin Thomas Nelson, who allegedly vandalized and threw Molotov cocktails at a Colorado Tesla dealership several times, before getting arrested on a return trip there several weeks ago.

In keeping with my policy of giving you trigger warnings before you look these people up – remember “the bowling ball with eyes” illegal immigrant from Wednesday’s column? – I’ll paint you a picture, and you can proceed at your own risk.

Justin looks like what would happen if Penn (from Penn and Teller) and Herman Munster somehow had a baby, and that baby grew up and got breast implants.

You heard me. Justin has got a Stage-4 case of gender dysmorphia, and I don’t think he’s been taking his meds. He goes by the name “Lucy Grace Nelson,” and one look at his picture will bring out the Ricky Ricardo in you. (“Luuuccy, you got some ‘splainin’ to do!”) (“Timely comic references from 1952 for 100, Alex.”)

Nelson was listed on “her” driver’s license as “female,” which doesn’t fill one with confidence in the DMV. I’m guessing that if I moved to Colorado and listed my gender as “marmoset,” some beaten-down Loveland cop would listlessly play along the next time I got caught speeding.

“I see here that you’re a 6-foot-tall marmoset with green eyes and brown hair. You still live on 5^th Avenue?”

Anyway, Nelson’s booking sheet also lists him as female. Because of course it does. Aggravatingly, even the nominally conservative NY Post uses female pronouns to refer to Nelson in its story, and many media stories never mention that this “woman” ain’t one.

At least Nelson’s dad – Claiborne “Jerry” Nelson – seems to understand that he’s got a son.

By the way, I’m not sure that Claiborne understands how nicknames work. I get calling a Joseph “Joe,” or a Thomas “Tommy,” or even a Martin “Martacus.” But how do you get “Jerry” out of “Claiborne?”

Though in his defense, it’s a lot shorter jump from “Claiborne” to “Jerry” than from “Justin” to freaking “Lucy!”

Where was I? Oh yeah.

Claiborne/Jerry describes Justin/Lucy in what I think may be the first-ever instance of a “5-implied- unexpectedly” paragraph. To wit:

“He changed his name to Lucy a few years ago. [unexpectedly] He’s in his early 40s, but has been living with this mother who has been taking care of him. [unexpectedly] He has emotional problems [unexpectedly] He hasn’t been able to keep a job. [unexpectedly!] Our entire family support[s] the Democrat party. [UNEXPECTEDLY!]”

There are pics in Justin’s social media labeled “baby gets her first bra” and “baby gets her first dress,” and you don’t want to see them. But spoiler alert: they will NOT remind you of Jennifer Grey in Dirty Dancing.

Because sometimes somebody DOES need to put baby in the corner.

…of a room with bars on the door and windows.

Meanwhile, in South Carolina, Contestant #2 – Daniel Clarke-Pounder, 24 – also had the brilliant idea to attack a Tesla dealership with Molotov cocktails. Ironically, he apparently throws more like a girl than Justin/Lucy does, or else he is easily fatigued. Because he managed to set himself on fire with his fifth Molotov cocktail.

Sadly, all he lost was a burned shirt, and what little dignity he had.

While his mug shot doesn’t have the “She’s a MAN, baby!” shock value of the Justin/Lucy pic, he does give off a bit of a Buddy Repperton vibe. (“I’ll take 1980s Stephen King movie references for $200, Alex.”)

Unfortunately for him, he looks a little softer in his social media photos. He’s facing charges that could result in 20 years in prison, and if those old “Scared Straight” shows are accurate, Daniel might find that “Clarke-Pounder” is not only his last name, but his new cell-mate’s eventual nickname.

Can you imagine how it must feel to be a Democrat today? Their political leaders are Ken-Doll Newsom, Jasmine “Fake-Lashes” Crockett, and Juicy Booty. Their men are women, and their women are crazy. They were just swept in the swing states, DOGE is derailing their gravy train, their bag of dirty tricks is as old and ineffective as Imhotep Pelosi, and their approval ratings are in the toilet.

And it’s only been TWO MONTHS!

Hamas delenda est!

The Dems Can’t Help Themselves, Especially Gavin Newsom (posted 3/18/25)

Well, the Dems continue to compete in a hilarious triathlon of political ineptitude. They start by jumping on bikes and ramming into one pothole after another, then dismount and vigorously run for 100 meters through a lane full of rakes, then shoulder an Olympics-approved rifle and begin firing into their own feet.

But before I get to that, how fun was it to watch Elon’s son X bouncing excitedly alongside Trump as they walked to the Marine One helicopter together the other day?

It was so cute that even the most hard-hearted MSM hack had to almost say, “Awww,” before furiously catching herself. “NO! That’s Hitler and Lil’ Hitler! Must…not…feel…authentic…emotion.”

Of course the beauty of that moment came partly from the question of contrast that instinctively struck anyone watching: “Can you imagine letting your kid into Biden’s custody to walk him over to a helicopter?”

The question answers itself. [Cue Doctor Evil, humming up in his gliding chair and then pausing dramatically. “How about NO?!”]

Biden managed to make walking across a butter-soft lawn – in his specially-designed, codger-friendly, waffle-stomper shoes – look like hold-your-breath-while-Wallenda-tightropes-over-an-active-volcano high drama.

And the idea of Biden lifting a kid to put him onto a set of aircraft stairs?! Just trying to navigate the stairs by himself turned into something that looked like a montage of out-takes from the Eiger Sanction and a frontal assault on El Capitan.

Hey, here’s a question for you: How do we know that Gavin Newsom is smarter than a Hezbollah terrorist who STILL answers calls from unknown numbers on his Samsung De-Crotch-ulator 3000 pager? (Yell-o? Allahu akb-OUCH!)

It’s a trick question, of course, because we don’t. In fact, the only credible evidence that can be asserted in defense of that hypothesis is that he was at least smart enough to apparently agree in an interview with Charlie Kirk that allowing males to stomp women in sports obviously unfair.

But how do we know that Gavin Newsom is smarter than LA Mayor Karen “rhymes with” Bass?

First, because just about every sentient being is smarter than Karen Bass. (Although I wouldn’t bet a single lonely dollar on an IQ-off among Bass, Que Mala, AOC and any patient chosen by random lottery from a head trauma ward at a major metropolitan hospital of your choice. So, yeah.)

Second, because Bass managed to be in Ghana – which my crack team of mapologists tells me is pretty far away from Los Angeles – when the fires very predictably broke out, but then parlayed that idiotic move into a series of ever worsening idiocies.

Despite a boatload of public records laws requiring that she preserve all governmentally significant communications for at least 2 years, she…wait for it… “set her phone NOT to save text messages” during the crisis.

“Martin, who does that?” you might ask.

Until you think for a nano-second, and the question answers itself:

1. Bill Clinton on a “Welcome to the White House, New Interns” group chat. 2. Hunter Biden conducting a shady, “How much am I offered for this crude finger-painting?” group auction on a “Go-Corrupt-Me” fundraiser with a dozen dirty foreign officials and oligarchs.

And 3. The mayor of a horribly run blue city on a private plane in international airspace as she flop-sweats through an inauthentic dashiki while her city is burning to the ground.

Duh.

Then, back on the ground but air-headed as ever, she gave a press conference amidst wisps of acrid, blowing smoke on what looked like the Gone With the Wind movie set showing the aftermath of Sherman burning Atlanta:

Bass: “I’m demanding a complete investigation into the mayor’s actions during this crisis.”

Reporter: “Isn’t that you?”

Bass: “What now?”
Reporter: “You’re the mayor.”

Bass: “Um, yes. And I’m going to leave no stone unturned to get to the bottom of my actions.”

Reporter: “Couldn’t you just tell us that, now?

Bass: “Well, there are a lot of records to go through, and I want to be super-thorough.”

Reporter: “So you’ll be releasing all your texts, emails and phone calls?”

Bass: “Um, yeah. About that…”

Ugh. Remember that Hezbollah dullard I mentioned earlier? He’s sitting in a hospital in Lebanon, wrapped in gauze from neck to ankles, his face blackened by smoke and his eyebrows singed off, trying to explain what happened to his family members gathered around the bed.

“These telemarketers are driving me crazy! I’ve gotten three calls today, and now I’ve got one eye, one testicle and three fingers left!” (There’s a ring-tone of “Hava Nagila” from his bedside table.) “Oh wait a second, I’ve got to take this.”

And his uncle grabs the pager, and rolls his eyes at the other family members, who are all face-palming themselves. “Hey, at least he’s still smarter than Karen Bass.”

But now Ken Doll Newsom has been asked for his emails covering the same period, and Mr. Featureless Plastic Crotch is not dumb enough to try the ol’ “the dog ate my text messages” defense. Instead, he’s going with a claim that “they’re exempt from disclosure under the California Public Records Act.”

Apparently, his lawyers are suggesting that if you read the fine print closely, you’ll find that under the California Public Records Act, public records in California may be hidden from the public, at the whim of any Dem corrupticrat who might be revealed as a nice haircut on top of an empty head in an empty suit, if his public records were to be revealed. In public.

Newsom isn’t even trying to meet the bare requirements of the law by designating which records he’d like to hide and for what reason. This despite the fact that the CA constitution was amended in 2004 by Proposition 59, which asserted that “the people have the right of access to information concerning the conduct of the people’s business” as a foundational principle. This proposition was known as the “Sunshine” amendment.

But Veneer Boy’s lawyers have an answer for this too, as you’ll see in this quote that I am totally making up, yet which still communicates their meaning perfectly: “We are fully abiding by the Sunshine amendment, which we interpret as enshrining any Democrat Governor’s inalienable right to cloak his public records in an impenetrable, Stygian darkness. Hail Satan.”

That guy is the current front-runner for your party’s nomination for President in 2028, Democrats. And may God have mercy on your souls.

Oh, did I mention that it’s been revealed that Newsom secretly funded a $97,000 bust of himself that was recently placed in the San Francisco City Hall?

Because of course he did.

David Hogg/Gavin Newsom ’28!

Also, Hamas delenda est!

Leftist Moral Inversions are Finally Being Corrected (posted 3/12/25)

One of the worst things about the Biden years – in addition to the whispering Crypt-Keeper-looking serial fabulist who was our Cadaver in Chief, and in addition to his sidekick the Cackling Banality, and in addition to the dudes dressed like women and the skyrocketing inflation and the porous border being over-run daily by illegals, and in addition –

Okay, now that I think about it, there were way too many terrible things about the Biden administration to even narrow down a Top 10 Worst Things list. So let me start again.

One terrible aspect of the four-year plague of Biden-ness that descended on our land was the reversal of conventional morality that came to characterize much of our public life.

When terrorist-supporting radicals harassed and intimidated other students, our universities coddled the radicals and refused to help the students.

When thugs and rioters attacked police and businesses, the politicians forced the police to allow the lawlessness.

When disordered males invaded women’s sports and locker rooms, authorities chastised the women who complained, and gave their trophies and control over their privacy to the disordered males.

All of these cases and many more demonstrate that the old stereotype that conservatives are unfeeling while liberals are the cliched “bleeding hearts” is wrong. Both groups sympathize with others, and we conservatives aren’t bothered by lefty bleeding hearts. We just object to who they’re always bleeding for.

When progressives see a criminal fighting a cop, they side with the criminal. They don’t champion the cause of legal immigrants, but they’ll take to the streets to fight for illegal ones. They prefer shoplifters over shop owners, and squatters over landlords, and subway attackers over a Marine who defends the passengers.

That’s why the last couple of months have been so invigorating for us. After four years of escalating moral inversions, things have suddenly turned right-side-up again. Consider several good-news stories from just the last week:

With Biden in office, sweethearts like “Palestinian” “activist” Mahmoud Khalil seemed to be running woke Ivy League campuses. He has been a high-profile leader of campus protests, a participant in the “tent-ifada” encampment at Columbia, and an advocate for all sorts of Jew hatred and intimidation.

In addition to being a “political affairs officer with UNRWA” – the corrupt, UN-funded entity that has helped Hamas at every turn – he has still been living in campus housing, even though he graduated in December. As recently as last week, he participated in a takeover of a Barnard building.

But it’s a new day, and order is being restored. ICE agents arrested Khalil last Wednesday, and revoked his visa and his green card. When the news came out that the Trump administration is going to deport him, a lefty judge tried to stop that, but reports are that the administration had already moved him to a jail in Louisiana, where extremist NY judges are rightly ignored. Beautiful!

Columbia put out a whiny statement saying that it will not cooperate with ICE agents except where required by law.

And before I could yell, “Take away their funding!” the Trump administration took away their funding. Or at least $400 million of it, in the form of grants and contracts.

New SecEd Linda McMahon came off the top rope, citing the requirement that schools comply with federal antidiscrimination laws, and pointing out that universities have flouted that requirement for too long. “Today, we demonstrate to Columbia and other universities that we will not tolerate their appalling inaction any longer.”

And before I could yell, “More funding cancellations, please!” the Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism announced that, “More funding cancellations are likely to follow.” YES!

The NY Post reports that the Feds “have more than $5 billion in grant commitments with the Ivy League university that are currently under review.” As of Monday, an audit has begun, and I would love to be a fly on the wall in the faculty lounge right now!

The same FAFO process is happening all over the country. At DHS, where some treacherous employees have been aiding illegals by leaking information about upcoming ICE raids, Kristi Noem has started polygraphing employees to catch the insurrectionists. As of last Friday, two leakers have been found, and they’ll be facing felony prosecutions, and up to 10 years in federal prison if convicted.

I’m sure that the talking heads in legacy media are howling about that, but I’m unable to hear them over my laughter.

Amidst the steady stream of illegal immigrants being sent back home, a bad hombre named Diego de la Vega beat Hulk Homan™ to the punch by deporting himself back to Colombia in December. (The country, not the feckless university.)

If you haven’t heard of Vega, he might have done as much damage to our country as any of the criminal deportees you’ve heard about, including Mahmoud Khalil and the various face-tattooed gang bangers of Tren de Aragua.

Because Diego de la Vega was… wait for it… the former Communications Director for AOC!

Which raises a few questions about the Juicy Bootied One (her words, not mine), since it is not legal to hire illegals (duh!). It might be too much to ask for, but how great would it be if Homan’s Heroes burst into Sandy’s congressional office right in the middle of her next “Choose Your Fighter” video and slapped the cuffs on her?

Amidst all of these tales of the scales of justice being properly re-balanced, I have one last one for you. It’s the story of Brad Sigmon, 67, who died last Friday in South Carolina’s electric chair.

Sigmon had been on death row for 23 years, since he beat his ex-girlfriend’s parents to death with a baseball bat. He’d planned to kidnap his ex and “take her away for a romantic weekend that was to culminate in a murder-suicide.” I know: Brad had an unusual take on “romantic.”

Anyway, there’s one thing about his story that makes Sigmon a little different than your garden-variety evil man who needed killing. And that’s his method of execution.

Because while South Carolina’s death chamber is fitted out with an electric chair and a lethal injection set-up, Brad chose Door Number 3: a firing squad. Because Brad Sigmon is old school!

I mean, “was.”

He was placed in the electric chair and hooded, and a white target with a red bull’s eye was pinned to his chest. Then three DOC employees with rifles gave him a 21-gun salute. (Minus 18.)

I hope that his long delayed but well-deserved death gave some peace to his victims’ families, and I like to think that in his last moments, Brad Sigmon did his part to bridge our raucous political divide.

Because he gave us one bleeding heart story that most conservatives can get behind.

Hamas delenda est!

Get Ready for Whiplash: It’s Hamas and Jake Tapper (posted 3/7/25)

Today I’ve got two topics: an update on Hamas, and Jake Tapper’s latest indignity.

Let’s save Jake for last, since we’ll need a light, buffoonish closer after discussing the child-murderers and mass rapists of Hamas.

Regular readers know that I often end my columns with “Hamas delenda est!” as a homage to the great Roman Cato the Elder’s ending to every speech he gave, “Carthago delenda est!” Cato was reminding his fellow citizens that their enemy in Carthage must be destroyed, and I am reminding CO Nation that Hamas is sorely in need of warheads on their foreheads, as the saying goes.

I haven’t written about Hamas as much lately, mostly because of the constant deluge of political stories stateside since Trump’s delenda-ing of both the Cadaver and the Cackler in November.

But Hamas is still around, and they still shouldn’t be, and I’m encouraged by Trump’s recent statements that they better release their hostages quick, fast and in a hurry, or else he’s going to cry havoc and let slip the dogs of Big Dreidel. (You may remember them from “Disemboweling Pager Party, 2024!”)

I know that Israel’s leader is up for it – he puts the “Yahoo!” in Netanyahu – and I’m hoping that with Trump’s support, he hammers Hamas very soon. Because they are among the worst people to ever walk the earth.

I thought they couldn’t be more bestial than they were on October 7^th, but their recent “release” of the bodies of young mother Shiri Bibas and her two toddlers, Ariel and Kfir was possibly worse.

They paraded the corpses through town in locked coffins with paperwork listing the date of their “arrest” as October 7^th. They set up a stage with huge photos of the dead and Netanyahu, circled by gouts of simulated blood. After a ghoulish photo-op, they turned the coffins over to the Red Cross.

When the Israelis finally received and tried to unlock the coffins, they discovered that the keys Hamas had given them didn’t fit the locks. When they broke the locks open, they found the coffins stuffed with Hamas propaganda surrounding the bodies. When they examined the children, they found that they had been beaten or strangled to death, rather than killed in an Israeli airstrike, as the lying jihadi scumbags had claimed. And when they examined the mom, they found that it wasn’t her body. It took another day or two for the evil pr*cks to return her remains.

Two other details: According to video and reports, it wasn’t Hamas “fighters” who captured the Bibas family on October 7^th, but “Palestinian” “civilians” who accompanied their cowardly co-religionists to torment the Jews and loot their property.

And many hundreds – possibly thousands – of those “civilians” danced and sang and celebrated while the black-hearted parade of their victims’ broken bodies was going on. In that context, what does it mean to call any of them either “innocent” or “civilians?” I know that their children are innocent, since they haven’t yet grown up into the psychopathic, anti-Semitic thugs their parents are raising them to be.

But in all wars, there is collateral damage. And after Israel has sacrificed so much and lost so many in their heroic efforts to limit collateral damage in Gaza, I think the day is coming when they’ll have to take a page from the empire that once oppressed them, and “Go Roman” on Hamas.

Am I saying that if this kind of devil’s parade makes its way through streets filled with celebrating homicidal freaks carrying murdered Israeli children again, an Israeli pilot flying a borrowed A-10 Warthog should make a low pass down that street with that awesome Gatling gun and cannon blazing?

If I can quote a recently defeated candidate who is at this very moment guzzling box wine and wondering what went wrong – and I think that I can – I’m saying that we should have that conversation.

Whoo. Glad I could get that off my chest.

And now, for the silly little man the great Dennis Miller used to call Tap-Tap the Chiseler…

Jake Tapper is coming out with a tell-all book in May about the shameful media cover-up of Joe Biden’s obvious physical and mental frailty.

Did I say “tell-all?” I meant, “tell-some.” Because in his diligent spelunking for the truth – the book’s publicity touts interviews with over 200 insiders – he failed to land one key character at the heart of his tale. The Deep Throat for this Watergate. The White Whale for this epic quest.

Okay, I’m getting carried away. We all know that Tapper is not some significant figure like Moby Dick. (Though Tapper could pull off one part of that name.) (And in case AOC is reading this, I don’t mean the “moby” part, Your Juiciness.)

#yourwordsnotmine

So the one Moriarity (I can’t help myself) at the center of the coverup that Tapper couldn’t interrogate was… wait for it… Jake Tapper!

Because of course Jake was an unindicted conspirator in the whole mess. For years he faithfully delivered the ridiculous leftist talking points – Biden is sharp as a tack! Videos of him looking feeble are deep fakes! Who hasn’t fallen, and fallen, and fallen up a mobile airplane staircase? – like a yapping lapdog with no moral compass.

My favorite of his idiotic self-own videos is when he condescendingly interviewed Lara Trump, accusing her of defaming Biden’s cognitive brilliance and barely letting her get a word in edgewise. And he raised the lamest defense of all – Biden’s phantom stutter – to attack her.

When I first heard the Dems bring that up, I thought that they must be joking. Because who’s ever heard of a childhood stutter that disappears for 60+ years, then comes back only when an old buzzard creakily shuffles toward death’s door?

But I said to myself, “Martin, you’re a witty and a ruggedly handsome elderly gentleman. But that’s not important right now. Because you’re also a fair man, and a working dog and not a show dog. So you should do some research on stuttering before you dismiss the leftists’ laughable excuse-making as the utter hogwash that it obviously is.”

So I did my homework, and I searched medical literature for everything I could find about NDSRO (Near-Death Stutter Re-Occurence).

I looked for all of the common symptoms that Biden had displayed: Compulsive Hair Sniffing; TOSS (Tripping over Sandbags Syndrome), SHWGS (Shaking Hands With Ghosts Syndrome), and even Emotional Dysregulation with Associated Intermittent CWS and SAHOS (Creepy Whisper Syndrome and Sudden Alarming Hollering Outburst Syndrome).

And it turns out that none of those exist. UNEXPECTEDLY!

But that didn’t deter Jake the Snake, who followed video of Lara discussing Biden’s inability to speak a coherent sentence with the challenge, “How do you think it makes little kids with stutters feel when they hear you make a comment like that?”

Ugh. Is that not the perfect distillation of dishonest leftism? A lie, a bad-faith accusation, and then “Won’t someone please think of the children?!”

When she stated the obvious – Biden doesn’t have a stutter, he’s in obvious cognitive decline – Jake wouldn’t have it, and started lambasting her because she has “no standing to diagnose his mental condition.”

No she doesn’t, Moby. But she does have something that she shares with the 300ish million in the American PWFE (People with Functioning Eyes) community: she can recognize a doddering old fool when she sees one!

Just like you could, Jake. But you took a huge paycheck to look the other way, stick your fingers in your ears and say, “Biden is perfect in every way,” for four long years.

And now, when everybody is free to admit the truth, you’re looking for another big paycheck for writing a book that ignores the complicit Donkey in the room, i.e. you!

Not since OJ Simpson (no relation, people! I can’t emphasize that enough) wrote “(If) I Did It” has a guilty man put out such a blatantly sleazy and hypocritical book. Tapper’s title is “Original Sin: Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and his Disastrous Choice to Run Again.”

I would have respected him more if he had at least demonstrated as much integrity as OJ (!), and titled it, “(My) Original Sin…”

Hamas delenda est!