A woman made history by being the first female to lose a presidential election.

Unconfirmed leaks reveal that her reaction to that honor was to drink alcohol, throw things, sob for hours, drink more alcohol and make herself so generally unpresentable that her aides had to postpone her concession speech until the following morning.

Apparently no one told her that you break the glass ceiling by climbing up there and pushing through, not by getting drunk and angry, sobbing on the floor and throwing lamps at it.

Apart from that particular woman, however, most women have come a long way since the days when they made a living in the kitchen catering to men.

Women are Continue reading →

The establishment got spanked. Here’s the story:

Some old geezers in Scandinavia are very proud of some prizes they give. They call them “Nobel Prizes.”

The prize comes in several flavors. The “Peace Prize,” for example, is awarded by Norwegian politicians. They give it to other politicians they like.

One year they gave it to a guy who said he invented the internet, then lost an election for United States president, then refused to accept the election results, then threw the country into chaos for a month, then lost in the courts and then got rich inventing global warming.

Another year they gave it to an American president who succeeded in getting elected and nothing else (I suppose they had to give him one after giving one to the earlier guy for failing to get elected) and who later succeeded in escalating but not winning a war in Afghanistan, which is now the longest-running war in American history.

One year they gave their Peace Prize to a Palestinian terrorist.

There’s also a Nobel Prize for “literature” for the person they deem the planet’s best writer. This one is given by an obscure club of 18 lousy writers in Sweden. They call themselves the Swedish Academy. Everyone else calls them “Who?”

Their motto sounds like an advertisement for a suburban dinner theater: “Talent and Taste.”

This year, they gave their Nobel Prize for literature to Continue reading →

“Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves.” — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Donald Trump is not my spiritual adviser, but I find myself on an enlightening journey with the man.

From the beginning, Trump hasn’t exactly acted like a statesman. In fact, he makes Ferris Bueller look like John Foster Dulles. But then, he beat my guy fair and square. So unlike the Republican establishment, I got behind him.

My doubts grew as I learned more. The disclosure of his shabby words about women was the last of a whole bale of ugly straws, and it finally broke me.

Initially, it felt good to break with Trump. He’s just not a gentleman, I sniffed. I’m better than him, I boasted to myself.

Moral sanctimony is a buzz, and it’s addictive. I was not just high on my horse; I was just plain high.

But I thought more about it. I talked with friends I’ve made in other journeys, with professional women and with religious people. I even prayed a little, which for me is praying a lot. Continue reading →

“And everybody’s high–ighhh–ighhhhh!!!” — John Denver, “Rocky Mountain High.”

When state legislators decided a few years ago that Colorado needed a state song, they chose “Rocky Mountain High.” When they later decided Colorado needed a state weed, they chose weed.

Yes, pot is now legal in Colorado. Even here in Aspen we’re infested with nearly a dozen seedy pot stores. I’ve wondered, is getting high on pot better than getting high on mountains?

To answer that question, I recently slipped into a Colorado pot shop. I imagined I was cool.

All hell broke loose. I thought maybe I’d walked in on a robbery. But no, it was just reefer madness. Continue reading →

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 →