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Aspen newspapers bury Aspen Skiing Company’s hateful diatribe against Trump

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Democracy dies when it gets buried

Right after the election, the CEO of Aspen Skiing Company, which runs Aspen and Snowmass resorts (known as “SkiCo” locally), was grieving. And he wanted everyone to know.

He sent a memo to all 1,500-some employees instructing them on “the gravity of what just occurred.” (This is all he knows about gravity, believe me – I’ve seen this guy ski.)

The memo CEO-splained that the election decision made by over half the nation was “openly at odds” with SkiCo’s values of:

“Equality, democracy, civility, compassion, tolerance, sustainability, open-mindedness, gratitude, freedom, integrity, and justice.”

When the biggest company in Aspen and the surrounding area, serving the public on public lands under favorable Forest Service leases, condemns over half of America – including many of its own employees and customers – for their purportedly undemocratic, uncivil, intolerant, unsustainable, close-minded, ungrateful, tyrannical and unjust election decision, that seems like news.

But the local newspapers didn’t report it. So I wrote a piece about it. My piece received significant attention.

I also sent a letter to the editor of one of those local newspapers that allegedly reports the news (in those few pages that are not devoted to real estate ads). It’s called the Aspen Daily News. My letter strictly observed their word limit and other rules.

They’ve been brimming with Trump-is-Hitler letters ever since the election, and before then too. I figured they might strike a bit of balance by publishing my letter calling out SkiCo for condemning as fascists half of America along with many of its own employees and customers.

I was wrong. The Aspen Daily News utterly ignored my letter.

 In their defense, their refusal might have been for reasons of money – it might have been because they’re whores to SkiCo as one if their biggest advertisers (apart from the ubiquitous real estate ads).

But it’s more likely that they’re just whores to the political left. Pitkin County went 71% for the Democrat, which is approximately 28% less than the political composition of the Aspen Daily News.

If it’s any consolation to me, and it is, the circulation of my piece far exceeded the circulation of the Aspen Daily News. But still, it rubs me wrong that a so-called newspaper is so blatantly biased in burying news.

And so, I’ll publish my letter here, where it will get substantially more readers than in the Aspen Daily News. (Now if I can just figure out how to accept real estate ads.) Here it is: 

In the wake of last week’s election, the CEO of the SkiCo companies circulated a “For Internal Distribution Only” memo to all 1,500-some of its employees bemoaning “the gravity of what just occurred.” He went on to complain that the election result was “openly at odds with some of the values [SkiCo] stands for.”

Those SkiCo values with which last week’s free and democratic election is at odds, the CEO said, are “equality, democracy, civility, compassion, tolerance, sustainability, open-mindedness, gratitude, freedom, integrity, and justice.”

SkiCo easily employs the largest number of people in the Roaring Fork Valley, its payroll is the largest in the Valley, and its customers are the Valley’s biggest source of revenue. Moreover, SkiCo enjoys leases of public lands at very favorable rates for the purpose of serving the public – all of them, regardless of race, color, sex, religion, or political beliefs.

Like anyone else, the CEO is entitled to his opinion that a majority of the country does not share his vaunted “values.” But foisting that opinion onto 1,500 employees that he has the power to fire, and onto hundreds of thousands of customers to whom he can deny lift tickets, is a tad heavy-handed. To use his own terminology, it’s not particularly tolerant.

I should mention that an esteemed friend who is prominent in the Aspen area also sent in a letter to the editor – to the other Aspen newspaper, the Aspen Times – objecting to the CEO’s coercive memo to his employees. (No, there’s not enough news in Aspen to support two daily newspapers, but there’s certainly enough real estate to advertise.) Her letter was similarly civil, and similarly unpublished.

Next time you drop $20k for a week in Aspen, consider where that money is going.

Why do American Jews vote against Israel?

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For a hundred years, American Jews have overwhelmingly voted for the Democrat candidate. Franklin Roosevelt received about 80% of the Jewish vote each time. This dramatic tilt toward the Democrats continued up through the turn of the century, when they gave Al Gore about 79%. They gave Obama 78% in his first election, and even gave him 69% in his second – after Obama’s antipathy toward Israel became impossible to overlook.

Some of this Jewish support for Democrats is understandable. Like most immigrants, the Jews suffered discrimination at the hands of silk-stocking Republicans. American intellectuals in the early- to mid-20th century took their cue from Europe, where antisemitism was rampant (and still is). Two generations ago in America, there were still Jewish country clubs because the ordinary Republican-dominated ones denied admittance to Jews.

All of that is shameful, and, I’m glad to say, nearly all of that is now behind us.

In this century, it’s the Democrats who exhibit an antisemitic undercurrent. It was evident in Barack Obama’s support for Iran – a Jew-hating terrorism state that denies there was a Holocaust in the past while openly urging one in the future.

Obama was willing to let Iran get nukes, ostensibly not for the purpose of making good on their Holocaust threat (wink, wink). He even sent them billions that they used to fund their nuke program.

In the Biden administration, the Democrats’ anti-Israel stance grew. They begged the Iranians to rejoin the one-sided deal that Obama gave them (and Trump revoked) and also stopped enforcing international sanctions. That allowed them to resume lucrative oil exports to fund their nukes again – and to fund terrorists attacking Israel.

After the October 7 pogrom, many Democrats equated Israel’s effort to defend itself, on the one hand, with Hamas’ invasion, rapes, beheadings, torture, random rocket attacks, and kidnapping and murder of men, women and children, on the other hand.

I assumed that these last four years of Democrat hostility toward Israel would finally tilt the Jewish vote toward Republicans in 2024.

I was wrong. Jews voted 68% for the Democrat in 2020, and this year they still voted somewhere between 66% and 79% for the Democrat (it’s difficult for exit polls to get a fix on the number). And this was for a Democrat who openly pandered to Muslim radicals.

So, what’s up with American Jews?

I have a theory.

But first, let me admit the ignorant and the speculative nature of my theory. I grew up in the wilds of Colorado, and literally had never met a Jew (at least not knowingly) until I went away to college. My current Jewish friends tend to be strong Israel supporters and, likewise, strong Republicans; my generalizations therefore do not apply to them specifically. I now have tremendous respect for both Judaism and Jewish culture (and have often written about it) but cannot claim any real expertise in the subject.

Subject to all that, here goes.

Somewhere around seven million Jews live in America – nearly as many as in Israel. Together, those two countries comprise 80% of the world’s Jewish population.

Israeli Jews are different than American Jews. Israeli Jews are mostly first- or second-generation immigrants to Israel. Jews who immigrate to the Jewish state of Israel tend to be practicing Jews, unsurprisingly. A disproportionate number are Orthodox Jews. They believe deeply in Judaism and they believe deeply in Israel. 

American Jews, not so much. While many are devout, at least a third are not observant of their religion at all. (This is not intended as a criticism. Most self-identifying Christians are not observant of their religion either.) Deeply religious Orthodox Jews are relatively rare in America.

The result is that American Jews are less invested emotionally in the Land of Abraham.

That’s hard to dispute. But I submit that it goes beyond that.

Many American Jews have not just failed to embrace Judaism, but have casually or consciously rejected it. People who reject long-standing family and religious traditions tend to feel some guilt and need some rationalizations. Rejection of one’s heritage typically morphs into hostility toward that heritage.  

In the case of the many non-observant American Jews, it’s possible that their ambivalence toward Israel – which seems to manifest in outright opposition every four years at election time – is rooted in a rejection of their ancestral faith which naturally morphs into hostility toward it.

In agnosticism, as in religion, there’s no zealot like a convert.

Among the election losers are men pretending to be men-pretending-to-be-women

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Last week’s election had a lot of losers, including Democrats in general; Generals who are Democrats to whom President Trump promises to offer mandatory early retirement; the formerly mainstream media which is now reduced to a dried-up side-stream that collectively cannot match the rapidly roaring ratings of the clickbait tabloid called Fox News; childless cat ladies; and the Pelosi/Obama Axis of Evil.

And men pretending to be women. More precisely, it’s men pretending to be men-pretending-to-be-women. Let me explain.

Men have pretended to be women for as long as there’s been men and women. Heck, I confess that I once dressed up as a woman for Halloween back in my college days before it was even fashionable. It was fun and funny, though it didn’t give me my jollies. 

Other men apparently do get their jollies by pretending to be women, and they do so 365 days a year, or maybe just 300, or maybe just 11 or 12.

There’s a technical/scientific/medical name for such men. They’re properly called “men-pretending-to-be-women.”

I have no problem with men-pretending-to-be-women. It all seems pretty harmless to me, up to a point.

I’m even OK with them discretely using the women’s bathrooms. I’m told that, for practical reasons, women’s bathrooms have no urinals for the women to stand in front of as they do their No. 1 business. Instead, they have only stalls, like the ones in the men’s bathrooms for use when a man does No. 2 business, or when he just wants a little privacy.

That means there are two automatic constraints on men-pretending-to-be-women in the women’s bathrooms. One, they are not able to see the privates of real women. Two, they are not able to display to women the privates of themselves.

It’s true that men-pretending-to-be-women in the women’s bathrooms can see real women using the bathroom mirror to tidy their makeup. But that’s a regular scene outside the women’s bathrooms, too. You can hardly pass a mirror in public without seeing that sight.

I assume, without any specialized knowledge, that men-pretending-to-be-women have been using women’s bathrooms for millennia. Nobody objected, because nobody knew. Even now, nobody would object, because nobody would know.

But here’s what’s different now. They want you to know. Not just abstractly, but concretely and in each and every instance.

Their jollies apparently hinge on not just being men in the women’s bathroom, and not even just on being men-pretending-to-be-women in the women’s bathroom. It goes beyond that. It’s all about being men-pretending-to-be-women in the women’s bathroom, and the women in the bathroom knowing it.

The way for men-pretending-to-be-women to ensure that women in the women’s bathroom are aware that they are really men, is to make sure their costume is unconvincing. They don’t truly make themselves look like women – if they did, they’d fail to convey that they’re not. Instead, they make themselves look like men pretending to be women, so that the women know they’re not.

They’re motivated by the same motivations as a public exhibitionist.

Another way to express the point is that they’re men pretending – deliberately badly – to be men-pretending-to-be-women. That’s the formula that apparently produces their women’s bathroom jollies – and the discomfiture of the women in the bathroom, which is evidently part of their jollies.

Jollies are fine. There’s a reason they’re called jollies, after all. But invading the privacy or comfort of other people to get your jollies is not fine, even when – especially when – that invasion is part of the jollies.

And when the women’s bathroom in question is a girl’s bathroom in a schoolhouse, it’s especially not fine.

Similar emotions are at work in the men-pretending-to-be-women in women’s sports. The discomfort and invasion of privacy they inflict on real women – and the stealing of their medals – is part of their jolly gig. Reports are rampant that these men-pretending-to-be-women are not shy in the women’s locker rooms, for example.

To them, all of that – the stealing of medals, the invasion of privacy, and the discomfort they inflict on their female victims – is not an unfortunate side effect of their routine; it’s their prime objective.

Americans are fed up with this new phenomenon of men pretending to be men-pretending-to-be-women in women’s bathrooms and women’s sports. Last week’s election was consistent with that.

It remains to be seen whether Democrats will get the message. It’s quite possible that many of the far-left ones share the emotions of the men pretending to be men-pretending-to-be-women. Namely, they get a certain satisfaction in inflicting discomfort and embarrassment on ordinary American women.

My message to them is: OK, have your jollies. But don’t expect us to vote for you.

Aspen Skiing Company joins “The Resistance”

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Your correspondent has reviewed a memo labelled “For Internal Distribution Only” from the CEO of the company that owns and operates the skiing operations at Aspen and Snowmass (referred to locally as “SkiCo”).  

It’s a doozy.

Everyone knows that Aspen is rich and liberal. The billionaires crowded out the millionaires decades ago. What passes for “thinking” by think-tanks like the Aspen Institute is the notion that “balance” means hard-leftists like Madeline Albright and Jonathan Capehart on one side and soft-leftists like David Brooks and Liz Cheney on the other.

Years ago, SkiCo decried Donald Trump’s enforcement of America’s immigration laws. Enforcement of those duly enacted American laws, they declared, was un-American. (Coincidentally, enforcement of the immigration laws also impacted SkiCo’s supply of low-paid workers.)

So maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise to see SkiCo’s reaction to the election. Still, it’s worth noting, especially if you happen to be one of their customers.

The memo from the CEO to employees begins by bemoaning “the gravity of what just occurred.” A majority of voters, he said, chose “a vision that can be viewed as openly at odds with some of the values [SkiCo] stands for.”

In case you don’t get the drift, the CEO helpfully spells it out. SkiCo’s self-declared “values” with which he contends over half of America is “openly at odds” are:

“Equality, democracy, civility, compassion, tolerance, sustainability, open-mindedness, gratitude, freedom, integrity, and justice.”

In short, in the public opinion of the CEO of SkiCo, the election represents a triumph of the opposite of all that. It represents a triumph of inequality, anti-democracy, incivility, unsustainability, close-mindedness, ingratitude, tyranny, and injustice.

He fails to explain how an open election, in which a candidate won a majority of both the people and the Electoral College, is anti-democratic. Perhaps he meant anti-Democrat.

Oh, and intolerance. With no sense of irony or self-awareness, the CEO of SkiCo – the leader of a prominent company offering services to the public with the power to fire employees – declares to those employees that half the country with whose votes he disagrees are intolerant.

In closing, he muses, “Clearly, the approach of trying to model, speak aggressively, and ‘teach’ others is not sufficient.” (The scare quotes around “teach” are his.)

That sounds slightly threatening. After failing in his effort to “teach” the deplorable, unteachable garbage that constitute half of America, is he perhaps considering limiting access to the gondolas to card-carrying Democrats?

I can see the gondola operators to the line of skiers:

“Papers? Papers? No, I don’t care about your lift ticket, I want your voter registration papers!”

The First Amendment probably does not protect the employees of SkiCo who happen to be Republicans (yes, there are some) and have received the CEO’s coercive political memo, since SkiCo is not an arm of the government. On the other hand, SkiCo does enjoy numerous leases of Forest Service lands owned by the government. Also, its gondola and chair-lift operations could make it a “common carrier.”

And some states offer state law protections that could be implicated. If SkiCo has any employees in California, for example, the memo could be in violation of California state law. (Talk about irony.)

But the legalisms are a column for another day. Today’s point is that the operator of Aspen and Snowmass considers you persona non grata if you’re in the half+ of the country that voted for Donald Trump. Maybe you should consider them resorta non grata.

In the land of Anne Frank, they’re chasing and beating the Jews

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Anne Frank famously kept a diary describing her life as a Jewish girl during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. She and her family lived in a concealed room behind a bookcase for two years.

The Nazis eventually discovered the family and sent them to concentration camps including Auschwitz. She died in Bergen-Belsen at age 15.

Anne’s father, Otto, was the only one of the family to survive the Holocaust. He was instrumental in publishing his daughter’s diary after the war.

The rest is history. 

Key to Anne’s survival for those two years were the efforts of Otto’s secretary, a Catholic woman named Miep Gies. She risked imprisonment and even death in buying food for the family and secretly bringing it to their hiding place.

Gies devised elaborate ruses, such as obtaining illicit food ration cards, avoiding large purchases from any single grocer, and bringing the food to the hiding place at hours that would not attract suspicion.

After the war, Gies was dismissive of the personal risk to herself: “Over two million Holland people helped hide Jewish people in the Second World War, I am just doing what I can to help.”

Now, 80 years later, history reverberates in the Netherlands. Nazis of the 21st century are openly chasing and beating the Jews on the streets of Amsterdam.

Lacking the courage of Miep Gies, the police response is unenergetic, and the governmental response is lackadaisical.

“Shame on them” does not even begin to reflect my sentiments.

Democrats’ final humiliation: The stock market loves Trump

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Democrats like to pretend that financial markets are politically agnostic, or perhaps are even fellow Democrats. “After all,” they caress themselves lovingly, “Financial people are smart, and smart people vote for us.”

This election put the lie to that. The market rocketed this morning on news of Donald Trump’s re-election to the Presidency and the Republican re-take of the Senate.

Ordinary Americans are extraordinary people. Today’s market shows that finance gurus on Wall Street and Harvard MBAs running investment funds have joined Pennsylvania hard-hats, Cuban immigrants, Montana ranchers and a genius African-American entrepreneur/inventor billionaire – talk about diversity! – in one wild . . .

. . . HALLELUJAH!

They’re celebrating America’s rejection of wokeism, DEI, identity politics, creeping and galloping socialism, onerous governmental regulation, transexuals in the girls’ bathrooms, and semi-somnolent ineptitude.

For Democrats, it’s back to the drawing board with their crayons, to re-divide us by race, gender, and class. For the rest of America, it’s morning in the sun.

Here’s why Trump will win – it’s pretty simple

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Political pundits have too much data, and they overanalyze it. There’s a lot of data available, a lot of pundits to analyze it, and a lot of clicks to corral.

But the disengaged American middle doesn’t pay attention to nuances like last month’s job figures or the latest inflation report. They couldn’t find South America on a map even if you showed them where North America is.

To the American middle, abortions are something other people get – and they’re usually a different kind of people. Less than a quarter of Americans are biologically eligible for an abortion, and I’m guessing that more of them are trying to start a pregnancy than end one.

In any event, the votes of those people who are fixated on terminating pregnancies are not up for grabs. They’ll always vote for Democrats.

More important to the undecided American middle is the personality of the candidates. Many candidly admit this. They choose candidates based on whether they like them personally. That category of voters is the worst.

“Trump is not as nice as me,” they sniff self-satisfyingly to themselves. It’s like they’re voting for Homecoming Queen and the ballot reads something like:

  • __Donald J. Trump
  • __You

So, put aside the Nate Silvers of the world (though Nate is very good), their hard drives of mostly accurate data, their algorithms, and their punditry. Here are the basic reasons why Trump will win.

He’s not Joe Biden, and Kamala is

As the sitting Vice President, Kamala is tied to Joe Biden. (Don’t try to picture that.) She’s done nothing to untie herself, for fear of alienating her hard-left base who thought Biden was just swell – in his policies if not his persona.

The only time in modern history that a sitting Vice President ascended to the Presidency was when George H. W. Bush did it after the Presidency of Ronald Reagan.

Joe Biden is no Ronald Reagan, and Kamala Harris is no George H. W. Bush.

Reagan left office with an approval rating at 63%. Biden’s has been in the 30s. (In a final humiliation, it’s now crept up to 40% as people have decided to approve of him going away.)

Bush had been a naval aviator, war hero, Yale graduate, Ambassador to the United Nations, and Director of the then-respected Central Intelligence Agency. Kamala has been . . . not.

Trump is almost a Cool Kid

Trump is much more “popular” in comparison to his opponent than he was in both 2020 and 2016. He still won’t win that Homecoming Queen crown, and people who decided long ago that they hate him for his vulgarity, his hair, and his tendency to say things in public that Bill Clinton did in private, are not likely to change their minds. But the disengaged American middle is seeing a more likeable guy than before.

Surviving endless “lawfare” and two assassination attempts doesn’t hurt him either.  

The Border

The left almost succeeded in branding Americans who wanted American borders as “racist.”

But they didn’t quite succeed. The indefensible chaos at our undefended border spreading to our police-defunded cities defies common sense.

Indeed, it goes beyond nonsense. Americans – including and perhaps especially the disengaged middle – see this as pure insanity.

Blacks don’t see Kamala as Black

Let me preface the following discussion with stating that I discuss “Blackness” only because the leftists have demanded that we not be colorblind. So here goes.

Black America is uninspired by Kamala, and it shows in both the polls and in early voting. This is despite her promises to send them free money.

As for why she’s unable to buy the Black vote, a comparison is instructive.

Barack Obama was our first Black president (unless you count aforementioned Bill Clinton). Obama was actually born of a white woman, and his private school upbringing in Hawaii was not exactly life in the ghetto.

But he was married to a woman who was clearly Black and he himself looked pretty Black. He had hair that was both black and Black.

Kamala, too, was born of a mother who is not Black (she is Asian Indian) and grew up in a relatively privileged setting (both Kamala’s parents were professionals).

But unlike Obama, she doesn’t really look Black. Her skin tone is lighter than Obama’s. Her hair is black but not Black. She has not perfected the Black accent that flowed from Obama when he condescended to audiences that were Black.

And here’s Kamala’s biggest liability in being Black. She’s married to a lily-white corporate lawyer who had a fling with his nanny in his previous marriage.

From Detroit to Baltimore to Chicago to East St. Louis, they shrieked:

“Wait a minute! Who has a nanny ?!?!?”  

Sorry, Democrats. Blacks think black Kamala ain’t Black.

Prices are much higher

Prices are nearly a third higher than when Biden took office. People don’t need to wade through the dense detritus of Politico or RealClearPolitics to know that. They’re reminded of it several times a week when they go to the grocery store.

The fact that inflation has almost returned to normal levels around 2-3% a year does not resonate with many people. In fact, many disbelieve those figures because they erroneously believe that declining inflation must mean declining prices.

There you have it. I’m guessing the election will be called for Trump by Wednesday morning.

Bonus prediction: Republicans will pick up two to four seats to re-take the Senate. The eminent Justice Clarence Thomas will retire from the Supreme Court next year to enable Trump and the Republican Senate to replace him.

That won’t change the political composition of the Court much, since Justice Thomas is a conservative. But the follow-up departure of Justice Sonia Sotomayor will.

This has been corrected to make clear that the fling with the nanny was when Kamala’s husband was married to his first wife, not to Kamala.

Staffers quit and 200,000 subscribers cancel after WaPo says its role is to report the news

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Official slogan of The Washington Post

The venerable Washington Post may or may not have been a force for good, but it certainly was great.

They brought down Richard Nixon for crimes that were only modest by today’s inflated standards but serious at the time. They helped lose the Vietnam War – a war that was criminal, or just, depending on your view of history, but the losing of which was certainly a tragedy for the conquered South Vietnamese and most of the rest of the world.

They won the Pulitzer Prize 76 times, and many of those times were back when the Prize rewarded true excellence.

They were everywhere. Few newspapers today bear the expense of foreign bureaus; the Post still has a couple dozen.

For most of their century-and-a-half of existence, they tried to report the news, and they succeeded. It’s certainly true that toward the end of the 20th century they focused on news that made Democrats look good and Republicans look bad (such as the Watergate story) but, still, it was news. It was factual. It was true. It was important.

Given their mission to report facts, the Post generally refused to endorse particular political candidates. Individual opinion columnists of course expressed their support for candidates of their choosing, but the Board of Editors did not endorse those candidates, at least not explicitly.

Only relatively recently, in 1976, did they begin routine endorsements. At that time, they were at the height of their power and could afford whatever ill will their endorsements generated among some readers and staff.

Their endorsements were almost always of Democrats: Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry, and so on. It was predictable.

There are several problems with predictable endorsements. The first is that they have no persuasive power. If the Post always endorses the Democrat, then who is going to be persuaded by their endorsement of the Democrat this time?

The second problem is that endorsements predictably favoring one political party risk the reputation of the newspaper as an objective source of news. Readers surmise that the people working at the newspaper are members of that political party. If everyone at the newspaper is of one political party, are they really able to see and report the news objectively?

The third problem – related to the second – is that being predictably in favor of one political party tends to forfeit readers who favor the other political party. This problem has become more acute lately, as the internet has fragmented consumers of news into political parties and interest groups. Consumers today tend to get their news from sites that spin it the way they like, and avoid getting their news from sites that don’t.

That’s a flaw in consumerism, but it’s the reality of human nature.

That means a newspaper like the Post forfeits much of its Republican readers by getting a reputation for being a Democrat newspaper.

Finally, in view of all those reasons, one-sided endorsements are at cross purposes with professional journalism. Real journalists (as opposed to opinion hacks like me) simply report; they don’t opine.

This year, the Post announced that it is “going back to its roots” (their phrase) by not making an endorsement in the presidential election. It’s not clear whether their news page, too, will become more balanced, but owner Jeff Bezos made noises in that direction.

Maybe Bezos is making his decision on the basis of money, not ethics. But I’ll still take it. The two are usually not at odds.

Meanwhile, many Post staffers have quit in protest (good luck to them in finding a newspaper job) and over 200,000 subscribers have canceled. That fact tells a lot about what those quitters and cancelers think a newspaper’s role should be.

They think a newspaper’s role should be to tell subscribers which political opinion is “right.” More specifically, the newspaper should tell people that the “right” opinion is the Democrat one.

What’s curious, however, is that subscribers who pay for the Post are nearly always Democrats already, because they like the Democrat spin that they see at the Post. Therefore, the Post endorsements have no effective purpose.

Moreover, the quitters and cancelers at the Post know that. They know that they’re preaching to the choir (though they certainly would not use that particular analogy).

So why do they do it? Why do the Post quitters and cancelers insist on converting hard-core Democrats into . . .  hard-core Democrats?  

The answer is that they aren’t truly trying to convert anyone. Rather, they’re just flying their Democrat flag. It’s their little virtue-signaling routine.

That’s nice. But it’s not journalism.

Whatever Bezos’ motives, let’s hope he, and the owner of the LA Times who similarly refused to make an endorsement this year, start a trend away from political activism and back to professional journalism.

In that effort, it wouldn’t hurt to hire a few Republicans for a change.

Democrat headlines suggest panic

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As Kamala continues her fall free-fall, the Democrats fear the worst. They fear that Kamala, like her predecessor and boss, has been found out. And the American people don’t like what they found out.

The people have found out that Kamala has always advocated an open border, is apparently ambivalent (at best) about Israel defending itself, wants taxpayer-funded “gender correction” surgery for male convicts so that women in female prisons can “enjoy” their company, and wants to double the capital gains tax.

In a nutshell, the Democrats fear that Kamala has been found out to be a hard-left socialist. Indeed, she has a voting record to the left of Bernie Sanders.

The last point bears repeating because it encapsulates everything else: Kamala has a voting record to the left of self-described, long-time socialist Bernie Sanders.

In view of these belated revelations, the Democrats have become increasingly shrill in their shrieks. Today’s example is, “We Have Every Right To Demand Our Men Vote For Kamala Harris,” by Michelle Obama.

Hmm, now we know who makes the demands in the Obama household. But I won’t go there.

Of more interest than the Obamas’ personal life is how mail-in voting has dramatically increased the coercive power of demanding people. That’s because mail-in ballots are not necessarily confidential.

In traditional voting, the voting booth is generally a one-person affair. Nobody else – nobody – knows how you voted, unless you tell them (and you could always fib, to preserve the peace). But with mail-in voting, the “demander” of a household can fill out the ballot, demand that the demandee sign it (or simply forge the demandee’s signature), and mail it in.

I won’t accuse Michelle of advocating that sort of fraud. But even short of telling Democrats to engage in fraud, she is certainly telling Democrats to “demand” that people sharing the same household, over whom a demanding Democrat has influence or even raw power, such as a battered spouse or an elderly parent, vote for the Democratic candidate.

If such actions involved a different political party, they could be characterized as a threat to democracy.

Speaking of demands, next up in the shrieks from the left is a left-wing British newspaper called The Guardian which announced in an editorial that “Americans who believe in democracy have no choice but to vote for Harris.” When your foreign guardians say you have “no choice” then I suppose you’d better do what they say.

Another recent headline from this same foreign newspaper informs us that “There’s Nothing Wrong With Foreign Volunteers Working for Harris.” (This one seems to have been buried by The Guardian, but the link can still be found at Real Clear Politics.)

It’s true that there’s nothing illegal about foreign “volunteers” working for the Kamala campaign, and there’s nothing illegal about a leftist foreign newspaper defending that practice. But whether it’s right or wrong is a matter of ethics and American politics. A foreign left-wing newspaper has no standing or moral authority on the subject.  

Back to the Democrats’ parade of horribles. Take a look at “Trump Is A Fascist And A ‘Clear And Present Danger’ To This Country,” by Hillary Clinton.

Ah yes, the allegation that Trump is a fascist, a Hitler, a Mussolini, a Stalin, a Pol Pot, a Mao, and a poo-poo breath. Let’s take those in order.

First, “fascism.” That word has lost its meaning, if it ever had one. Today, it’s simply the left engaging in name-calling against the right. One component of “fascism” that people generally agree on, however, is that it entails government control over the economy and censoring speech that is critical of the regime.

Compare the extent to which Joe Biden and Donald Trump, respectively, sought government control over the economy and over people’s free speech in their presidential administrations, and you will realize the extent to which Democrat allegations of Trump’s supposed “fascism” are pure projection.

On to Hitler. Lost or buried by history is that “Nazi” stood for National Socialist German Workers’ Party. It’s doubly ironic that socialist Democrats who want to eradicate the Jewish state of Israel (or let others do the dirty work of eradication) accuse Trump – a stout defender of Israel and a man with close Jewish relatives – of being something like the monster who sought to exterminate the Jews under the flag of . . . socialism.

Mussolini? A two-bit Hitler tag-along who died at the end of a rope wielded by his own people. To the extent he had any political principles, they were as a labor union leader – another leftist.

Stalin? Pol Pot? Mao? Weren’t they leftists?

We can’t leave Hillary’s rant without noting her warning that Trump is a “clear and present danger.” Hillary might not recall that this person she warns is a “clear and present danger” has already been the target of at least two assassination attempts by people who viewed him as . . . a clear and present danger. Or maybe she does recall that.

Poo-poo breath? That one, I made up. I’m tempted to admit that Trump is a poo-poo breath, but I’ve actually changed my opinion of him over the years. He seems happy. Moreover, his breath may or may not be good but he’s a breath of fresh air in the fetid fever swamps of Washington DC.

Trump these days seems truly interested in people. Working the frier for hours at McDonalds seemed to make him happy, fun and – dare I say it? – full of Joy.

Maybe the experience of surviving two assassination attempts gives a person that.

I can’t quite imagine Hitler or Pol Pot working the frier at McDonalds and joking around with the customers and staff. For that matter, I can’t imagine that from Kamala – whose similar portrayals are all staged with actors and whose only connection to McDonalds is that she apparently lied about working there.

Then we have Kamala’s putative, putrid boss mumbling “lock him up.” Perhaps on Joe’s mind is the probable prison term to which his son will be sentenced for criminal felonies. The only offense for which he wants to lock up Trump is apparently the “offense” of ousting the Democrats.

Trump has beaten every single one of the Democrat’s lawfare schemes. But the “offense” of ousting the Democrats is one to which he will gladly plead guilty.

The national nightmare of wokeism, DEI, censorship, incompetence, disguised and undisguised socialism, open borders, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris is nearly over. As Ronald Reagan proclaimed, it’s almost morning in America.

Is it too late in the game for the Democrats to replace their substitution?

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Poster on Philly streetcorner falsely suggesting that the Eagles have endorsed Kamala Harris

Ordinary people who don’t closely follow the game of politics never knew that Kamala Harris runs only to the left. As a Senator, she ran further to the left than Bernie Sanders, according to non-partisan statistics.

She wanted an unprotected border. She proposed taxpayer-funded “gender affirmation” surgery for male convicts so that they could play in women’s prisons. She favored abortions performed anytime, anywhere, and by anyone, up to at least birth. She rooted for the Philadelphia Eagles to win the World Series (OK, I make up that last one.)

There’s more, much more, but you get the drift. Until recently, most Americans knew none of Kamala’s playbook.

What they did know was her laugh, and they didn’t like it. Back in 2020, that annoying laugh sacked her from the Democratic primaries before making a single First Down or winning a single delegate.

That’s important. It was not Kamala’s left-of-Bernie policy positions that blitzed her out of 2020 campaign. Those left-of-Bernie policies were, and are, within the accepted playbook of today’s Democratic Party, and well within the accepted playbook of the rabid fans who comprise Democratic primary voters.

Indeed, it was Bernie himself who was favored to win those 2020 primaries until the owners of the Democratic Party decided he was un-coachable and unelectable. But that’s a column for another day.

If only the rabid Democratic primary fans in 2020 had gotten past Kamala’s annoying laugh, and witnessed her whacky left-of-Bernie circus catches (but mostly drops) they’d have loved her!

Fast forward to this year’s season. Kamala missed the preseason, and missed the regular season too, but here she is in the playoffs. The Finals even. It’s all courtesy of a second Democratic trick play that dumped the Democrat’s hard-left, but unplayable, starting quarterback out of the lineup, out of the stadium, and onto the street corner like an empty 81-year-old beer bottle.  

Note that in a classic case of psychological projection, or maybe just dishonest hypocrisy, it’s the Democrats who chant that Republicans are a “threat to democracy” even as the Democrats themselves disregard the preferences of their own Democratic fans in both 2020 and 2024.

Anyway, here we are with Kamala as the Democratic starter. She . . . could . . . go . . . all . . . the . . . wayyyy!

Not.

I have to admit that she’s a more attractive player after finally securing that fumbling laugh, mostly.

As for her policies that always ran to the left, she says she’s changed them – now that she has to appeal to a broader group of fans in the general election than the hard-left fans in Democratic primaries. She suggests that she runs up the middle now, sort of. She assures us, however, that she hasn’t changed her “values.”

She avoids specifying either the changed policies or the unchanged values. They’re well-kept secrets.

Like all secrets, however, they have a way of leaking out, or, in Kamala’s case, blurting out. Here’s an interview in a friendly forum:

Question: “Would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?”

Kamala: “There is not a thing that comes to mind.”

The rightwing media – all three of us – had a field day with that answer.

A few hours later, another friendly interviewer gave her a chance to improve on the words and substance of that botched play. The interviewer posed the same question about how her policies differed from Biden’s policies. She refused to backtrack from her answer earlier in the day, and this time refused to even take the ball. She instead said, “I’m not Joe Biden,” followed by a word salad of platitudes.

Even the liberal media saw it as a dodge.  

Granted, there was some shiftiness in saying, “I’m not Joe Biden.” Kamala’s game has amounted to shouting “I’M NOT TRUMP” but also whispering “I’m not Biden either.” It goes something like this:

I’M NOT TRUMP!

I’m not Biden, either.

I’M NOT TRUMP!

I’m not Biden either.

You get the idea.

OK, the people knew she was not Trump. Who is? And they knew she was not Biden. (I’ve seen the two of them together. It’s not a pretty sight.)

What the people didn’t know, for sure, was whether her policies – her plays – are any different from Biden’s. In her second interview on the subject, she never answered that question when it was put directly to her a second time; she simply ran out the clock.

Of course, it’s a bit difficult for her to say credibly that her plays are different than Biden’s, given that they played together for three and a half years and she boasts that she was the last person on the field with him on each major play. (Maybe not that away game in Afghanistan, or the one in Gaza. Or the one in Ukraine. Or the one at the Mexican border.)

Moreover, she’s reluctant to alienate her hard-left fans by stating that her policies differ from those of her hard-left teammate and boss.

To summarize: Kamala’s plays as a Senator ran left-of-Bernie. In an interview last week, she said no differences come to mind between her plays and Biden’s hard-left plays. And in a subsequent interview, she refused to give a single example of any such differences. Her favorite play is Student Body Left, every single time.

The American people have seen those hard-left Biden/Kamala/Bernie plays. They’ve seen them fail. They want new a new playbook, new play-calling, and a new play-maker.

Kamala knows this, and that’s why she has refused to open her playbook – it’s the same as Biden’s failed playbook. Now, at last, the American people know it too. And so, Kamala is falling faster than a third-string quarterback in the sights of Ray Lewis.

To the extent he comprehends what is happening, that dethroned, deposed, disposed of, soon-to-be-departed Joe Biden must be smiling in his box seat. Or his beach lounger.