The conventional wisdom is we have two weak presidential candidates, and that’s bad for America.

The conventional wisdom is wrong.

Yes, the candidates are weak. The one who wrote a book called “The Art of the Deal” is anything but artful and doesn’t know how to deal. The other is a money-grubbing, coattail-riding, establishment-kowtowing liar.

But that’s not necessarily bad for America. One of these weak candidates will become a weak president. It sounds odd, but that’s exactly what the country needs.

Bear with me. Continue reading →

Taxpayer-subsidized Colorado Public Radio likes taxpayer subsidies. I know from personal experience that they even like Aspen’s taxpayer-subsidized housing program, where residents making as much as $186,000 receive million-dollar houses for dimes on the dollar.

Here’s the background. One of Colorado Public Radio’s reporters contacted me a few weeks ago, saying he’d seen my columns on the problem-plagued program. He wanted to talk more and asked to have a telephone conversation. I agreed, and we did.

In our short conversation, I mentioned some of the problems. He said he planned to visit Aspen to investigate a story and would like to meet with me to talk more. Again I agreed, and we left it that he would call me when he arrived. He never did.

His story was broadcast on Colorado Public Radio last week, is reproduced on its website and was circulated on social media. The gist of his story is that the taxpayer-subsidized housing program is a success but needs more taxpayer money for more houses for more young people because the existing residents are aging and never move out. (Why would they?) The article concluded that the program will become a taxpayer-subsidized retirement home unless the taxpayers cough up even more money.

That’s all true. But the CPR piece failed to mention many other problems that I touched on in my conversation with the reporter and would have detailed in our follow-up conversation. Continue reading →

I tried a new job here in Aspen.  I was a panhandler.

I made a cardboard sign saying “SURVIVED CANCER BUT LOST MY JOB,” which happens to be true (albeit a little misleading) and put on an old pair of jeans and a work shirt.

Then I moseyed over to the police station.  The police had no money for me, but did have advice.  They advised me Continue reading →

I came across a big runaway lawnmower as I recently walked along a country road in Switzerland. Or so I thought.

On further inspection, I saw a distant worker with a joystick controlling it remotely. Safely away from passing traffic, he used this remote-controlled lawnmower to neatly mow down weeds on the shoulder of the road. As I gazed slack-jawed at this contrivance, he must have thought, “Oh, another backward American.”

Switzerland is famous for its banking and pharmaceutical industries, but it’s also a technology center. It’s especially well-regarded for its machinery. The machine-tool industry of the northeastern United States Continue reading →

What do you call an exclusive eight-person club whose secret debates control the country and whose members are ages 68, 83, 62, 61, 56, 66, 77 and 79?

In America, you call it the Supreme Court.

The justices are old because they have lifetime tenure. Most never retire. Instead they die in office, as one did last winter at age 79, often after extended illness.

I’m not exactly young myself. In fact, I’m older than Continue reading →

A former Republican candidate for president and current political pontiff, Mitt Romney, recently took to the pulpit here in Aspen to pontificate at one of those sacred Aspen shows where stale old people recite stale old ideas, as pontiffs do, while the congregation obediently genuflects.

Romney’s particular idea was that as an upstart unapproved by anyone except the people, Donald Trump might destroy the Grand Old Party that is run by the Romney-approved regulars of the Republican establishment.

Other Republican establishmentarians are also tsk-tsking. George Will says Trump has driven him out of the party. Bill Kristol is recruiting someone to run on a third-party ticket. The Bush dynasty has withheld its endorsement.

To them I say: Spare me your sermonizing.

It is you, Republican establishmentarians, who have destroyed the Republican Party. Continue reading →

“If taxpayers didn’t pay for my housing, I couldn’t afford to live in Aspen.  I’d have to live 20 minutes away and commute to my Aspen office.”

The person who spoke those words gets a two million dollar house here in Aspen.  Under the city’s “affordable housing” lottery, taxpayers pay 80-90% of the cost for people making up to $186,000 a year.  Some of that subsidy is paid for by people making, oh, about $34,000 a year.

The words quoted above were her defense of that scheme.  In short, she says the scheme is good because it’s good for her.

It is one of the great ironies of our time that socialists no longer promote socialism as beneficial to society.  Instead, they promote it as beneficial to themselves personally.

As in, Continue reading →

Katie Couric was the anchor for a while on “CBS Evening News” and was a correspondent on the investigation program “60 Minutes.” She was a star.

She’s fallen far. But she fell gradually, and there were signs along the way. Her $15 million-per-year gig at CBS was a box office bust but she was a hit in guest-hosting “The Tonight Show,” where she replaced Jay Leno’s solid-front desk with an open-fronted one that showed her legs.

Now she’s fallen all the way down to “global anchor,” whatever that is, at Yahoo, whose name is comically appropriate for the kind of “news” she’s doing there.

Which is politics porn. Continue reading →

A few months ago, the trendy insult hurled at Donald Trump was that he is just like Hitler.

I dislike Trump’s style and some of his policies, too. (Unlike the other two candidates still in the race, however, he’s not the subject of an FBI investigation that could transfer him from the White House to the big house, and he doesn’t subscribe to the economics school of Joseph Stalin.)

But not everyone I dislike is necessarily Hitlerian. So I wrote a column titled “Is Trump just like Hitler?” in which I patiently explained that he’s not. To contend that he is trivializes the enormity of Hitler and the plight of his victims.

Maybe I succeeded. Trump is no longer called Hitler.

But now a whole new set of names are on the name-calling menu. Just here in Aspen, Trump has recently been name-called an egomaniac, a racist twice, an ignoramus, a xenophobe, a misogynist twice (are they incapable of originality?) and a boob (well, I guess that’s original, but it’s meaningless).

And that’s just here. Go national, and you’ll see that this person who is drawing about half the nationwide votes is name-called such things as bigot, stupid, a–hole, fat, demagogue, jerk, idiot, race-baiter, narcissist, sexist and man-slut.

One pundit called him the “Lord of the Rings” nonhuman character Gollum. Continue reading →

North Carolina recently passed a law prohibiting transsexuals from using the public bathrooms of their chosen gender. No Y chromosomes are allowed in the women’s bathrooms. Lola, that means you.

I have three confessions relevant to today’s discussion. First, I’m a political conservative. (“No way!” you’re saying.)

Second, I consider myself a Christian. (Whew, I feel relieved to come out of the Christian closet, but now I fully expect the local Christianophobes to shun and ridicule me — in the name of diversity and tolerance, of course. Oh well.)

Third, I’m the father of two daughters. They’re now more able and adult than their dad, but I can remember when they were vulnerable young girls in need of my protection.

So I must support the North Carolina bathroom law, right? Wrong. Continue reading →