In case you haven’t kept up, I’m here to tell you that you’re a racist. We all are. Here’s the update.

Bette Midler is racist for suggesting that blacks who support President Trump have been paid to say that.

Justin Beiber.  Yes, he’s Canadian, but he’s a racist anyway.

President Trump, according to Joe Biden.

Joe Biden, according to Joe Biden

Trump supporters. Duh.

People who are tired of being called “racist” and people who don’t like being called a racist. (Query: What about the people who do like being called racist?)

Anyone who calls anyone else a “boy.” Happy parents to healthy newborns are apparently supposed to shriek, “It’s a male!” (Or does that violate a gender rule? Maybe just announce breathlessly, “It’s a human!”)

White yoga women, white evangelicals, white people who are not ashamed of bring white, white critics of the Internal Revenue Service, white gun owners, and all other white people.

An app to help people avoid dangerous neighborhoods.

The Confederate flag, the American flag, the Massachusetts flag and the  Betsy Ross flag.

Anyone who thinks people should be judged on the content of their character, not the color of their skin.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

People who dislike President Obama and people who think he sometimes gets angry.

People who think voters should have to produce identification.

Supporters of black GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain.

CNN, for calling black rap singer Kanye West “the token negro of the Trump administration.”

Chess, skiing and basketball.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson for calling the Scots “a verminous race.” (OK, buster, no more scotch for you.)

Jews who support Israel.

People who believe in national borders, even if they’re just Canadian ones.

Republicans and Democrats.

Corporations that own NBA teams.

Your subconsciousness.

Your wardrobe, your beard, your shoes, your pickup truck and your college.

The SAT test that got you into that college

Merit.

Capitalism,  socialism, communism and fascism.

Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Islam.

Opponents of affirmative action.

Proponents of affirmative action.

The AIDS virus.

Diabetes, asthma, strokes, high blood pressure and cancer.

The commission of violent crime.

Punishment for the commission of violent crime.

Americans, British, Japanese, Norwegians, Mexicans, French and Africans.

Everyone else.

Well, not everyone. Some people are not racist, because it’s impossible for someone of their race to be racist.  For example, blacks cannot be racist. Some  Asians contend otherwise, but that just proves that Asians are racist and blacks aren’t.

Apart from those weird exceptions, it’s racism inflation all over the place. Even if you think you’re not a racist, and people around you think you’re not, you probably are, at least subconsciously. Your denial is proof of your guilt.

All this would be comical except that it carries a real risk.  If everyone is racist, then nobody is. The term loses its opprobrium. It’s like accusing someone of masturbation. So what?

The net effect is that real racists get a pass. When someone calls them out for their racism, they can say, “The race card? Really? Is that all you got?”

But racism really is terrible. Judging people by the color of their skin and not the content of their character is destructive and unfair (notwithstanding that, as pointed out above, some believe today that it is racist to do otherwise).

In addition, overplaying the race card invariably plays it against people who don’t deserve it.  Just because a person thinks America should have a secure border, plays chess, drives a pickup truck, believes in capitalism, socialism or Judaism, defends affirmative action, wears a beard or doesn’t like being called a racist, doesn’t make him a racist.

It’s fun to call people vile names when you disagree with them.  But it’s not productive, persuasive, grown-up or honest. It’s just cheap insults and lazy thinking.

Now go ahead and prove my point in the comments by ignoring the issue and instead calling me names.

Next up: We’re all masturbating Nazi’s now.

(Published Sept 8, 2019 in the Aspen Times at https://www.aspentimes.com/opinion/glenn-k-beaton-were-all-racists-now/)

Denver’s goose is cooked, and now the needy need more.

According to Denver officials, “Geese poop in our parks is one of the biggest complaints we have. It had gotten to the point where the parks were being almost unenjoyable for a lot of people — that is why we moved forward with this plan.”

OK so far, but I’m curious. Why just “almost”? And “a lot of people” suggests a number less than “all.” Are there some people who don’t find goose poop unenjoyable?

I have a friend who thinks goose poop is unenjoyable even on the golf course. Because when he accidentally drops his cigar and goes to pick it up, he sometimes mistakes a goose poop for it, and the goose poop — though no worse for his health and no worse smelling and tasting than a cigar — is really hard to keep lit. Sort of like smoked salmon, but more so.

On to Denver’s plan. It’s to feed the geese to needy families. This is all couched in sanitized bureaucrat-speak, of course. They say they will “cull” the geese by capturing them alive. (Why?) Then they’ll send them off to be “processed” and eventually the needy will eat them. I assume that somewhere in that process of being “processed” and before getting eaten, the geese get killed and cooked, but the bureaucrats are vague about that step.

Forget about the Rooskies, plastic straws and gender-based pronouns. The latest boogieman/boogie-womyn/boogie-etc for the Democrats is the Electoral College.

That’s of course the system where each state gets electoral votes in rough proportion to its population. The electoral votes are then cast in accordance with state law for presidential candidates. A candidate needs 270 to win the presidency.

In almost all states, it’s winner-take-all. Whichever candidate wins the most votes in a state gets all that state’s electoral votes.

This winner-take-all system chosen by the states can produce a president who did not win the most votes nationwide. This happens if one candidate wins by large margins in some states while the other candidate wins by small margins in other states. This happened in 2016 when Hillary Clinton won landslides in some states, but Donald Trump won narrowly in others.

The Electoral College is the system enshrined in the Constitution (remember that?) by the founders. They rejected a system of electing presidents through a nationwide vote. They wanted sovereign states united by a federal government. It’s called Federalism, and it has served us well.

But the Electoral College is under attack by Democrats ever since Trump won with 304 votes to Clinton’s 227. State sovereignty is out of fashion with the Dems except on certain favored issues like illegal immigration.

Aware that they could never get a Constitutional amendment passed to abolish the Electoral College, the Dems are instead scheming to nullify it with a pact among the states. Their scheme is probably a violation of the Constitutional prohibition (ah, that pesky Constitution again!) on interstate compacts, but we won’t know that for sure until the Supreme Court says so.

Federalism in general is a good thing to debate, as the Founders did. But some of the partisan attacks on the Electoral College are simply wrong on the facts. To wit:

It is not true that the Electoral College favors small states, as some journalists contend. Electoral College votes are in proportion to state population, aside from a small error introduced by allowing each state a vote corresponding to its two senators (another aspect of Federalism). Montana, Delaware and Wyoming each has only three votes and Rhode Island has four, while California has 55, New York has 29 and Texas has 36.

It also is not true that the Electoral College necessarily favors Republicans, as some journalists have wrongly claimed. What it may favor are the voters in states where the vote is close. Hillary won Maryland and its 10 votes by a landslide, while Trump won Wisconsin and its matching 10 votes by a sliver. An argument can be made, therefore, that each Wisconsin vote was more important than each Maryland vote in the sense that more of the Maryland votes were unneeded “excess” ones.

But a similar result obtains if we were to elect the president with a nationwide popular vote. All the votes for the winner in excess of the votes received by the losing candidate plus one vote, are unneeded “excess” votes.

In any event, the party affiliation of the voters has no bearing on this phenomenon. It can go either way, and in any given election it does. For example, Trump won Texas by a landslide, but still earned only 36 Electoral College votes — the same as if he’d won it by a single vote. A large number of Texas votes for Trump therefore wound up unneeded “excess” ones.

And finally, it is not true that the Electoral College somehow favors conservative rural voters at the expense of progressive urban ones as some liberal media outlets claim. To the contrary, an urban vote counts for exactly the same as a rural one. In California, the vote of a San Franciscan counts the same as the vote of a farmer in the Central Valley. The vote of a Floridian counts the same whether he’s in a Miami condo or a panhandle orange grove.

It’s true that in 2016 each of those California votes wound up less important than each Florida vote. But that’s not because the Florida votes were rural and the California votes were urban. It’s because the vote in Florida was close while the vote in California was not.

The lesson for voters who want their votes to be important is this. Make your state purple, not red or blue. Candidates don’t waste time campaigning in California or Texas, because those states are already in the bag. But they do campaign in Ohio and Florida, because those states can go either way.

Your state can be purple by being receptive to candidates from the other tribe. A purple state is a close state, and the votes in a close state are important.

To be fair, I think most journalists don’t intend to deceive in their reporting on the effects of the Electoral College (though I think the Dem politicians do, because it gins up their base).

Rather, I think many journalists simply lack the care and acumen to translate the Electoral College system into the Electoral College consequences. That’s unfortunate.

(Published Aug 11, 2019 in the Aspen Times at https://www.aspentimes.com/opinion/glenn-k-beaton-many-journalists-dont-understand-the-electoral-college/ )

My column two weeks ago was entitled “Democrats are no longer hypocrites.” For posting that column, Facebook suspended me from posting privileges for 24 hours.

You might ask, as I did, why?

In my column, I noted that in the old days Democrats hypocritically held themselves out as the party of love and compassion while they opposed the Civil Rights Act, while their KKK members lynched blacks and Jews, while they rioted at their own national convention in 1968, while they promoted unlimited abortion that has killed half of black fetuses in the last generation — about 20 million of them — and while they pursued a war in Vietnam that killed over a million people

All of that is factual.

But the Dems no longer hold themselves out as the party of love and compassion. They instead hold themselves out as takers. They candidly admit — nay, they boast — that they will take money from those who earn it and give it to those who vote for them. Continue reading →

For a long time, Dems held themselves out as the party of love and compassion.  That was always a stretch. 

After all, it was the Dems who defended slavery against the Republican party of Abraham Lincoln; it was the Dems who were behind racial segregation in the South; it was the Dems who opposed civil rights laws; and it was the Dems who bombed government buildings and attacked policemen during civil unrest in the 60’s.

It was the Dems of the Ku Klux Klan who lynched blacks and occasionally Jews, and persecuted Catholics; it was the Dems who rioted at their own national convention in 1968; and it was the Dems who advocated, and still advocate, unlimited abortion on demand, thereby killing half the black fetuses in the country – about 20 million of them.
It was the Dems who got us into the Vietnam War, resulting in over 58,000 American deaths and over a million other deaths.   

Yet until recently the Dems hypocritically professed to be that party of love and compassion.  Their proof was this: They wanted to give more free stuff to more people.

That has changed.  Yes, the Dems still want to give more free stuff to more people in the hope of buying their votes. But now it’s not out of a sanctimonious show of love and compassion.  It’s instead out of anger. It’s class warfare. Continue reading →

Dogs can’t understand a simple shell game. Try it.

Let the dog watch as you put two cups on the floor. Under one, put a clean toy (not a treat or a dirty toy because the dog can smell them out). As the dog watches, slowly switch the positions of the two cups.

Then ask, “Where’s your toy?”

The dog will choose the wrong cup. That’s simply because the wrong cup is now in the location where he last saw the toy. He’s unable to grasp the fact that when you switched the positions of the cups, you also switched the positions of their contents. Dog brains are limited.

Human brains also are limited. Humans are unable to grasp some concepts, no matter how hard we think, experiment and data-gather. The following examples may fall into that category. Continue reading →

I’m talking about an ice cream parlor. Yes, people who wouldn’t know John Milton from Milton Berle are in hellish agony over the decision by a landlord not to renew the lease on a local ice cream and cookie shop called Paradise Bakery.

The landlord was apparently offered a better deal by a clothing boutique.

This, say the lefties, proves again that capitalism is bad. First, capitalists come for the ice cream parlors and replace them with more profitable clothing boutiques. Next, they’ll come for the clothing boutiques and replace them with more profitable ice cream parlors.

Responding to people’s ever-changing tastes by selling them what they want to buy is just so immoral, huh?

So the social justice warriors are bombarding the newspapers with letters, vilifying the landlord and generally signalling simultaneously their love of self and food.

Enter our old tennis instructor cum new mayor who’s never met a problem too trivial for a ham-handed government solution. He demanded a meeting with the evil landlord. This is how things work in the socialist utopia of Aspen these days. Continue reading →