The “death to” slogan began in Iran in the days of the Shah. It wasn’t enough to depose the Shah. They wanted “death to” him.

After the Shah died, gleeful Iranians evidently concluded that it was their sloganeering that killed him. They weaponized this discovery with other slogans similar in hateful meaning but not in lethal effect. Think “death to America” and then “death to Israel.”

Other countries such as Yemen joined in the chorus and expanded it. Soon it was “death to America, death to Israel and damnation to the Jews.” That was off-putting to Israelis, and also to Americans who were little comforted by the slogan’s absence of damnation to them specifically.

Israel and America weren’t the only nations targeted by these voodoo death wishes. “Death to the Soviet Union” was popular until Continue reading →

Yogi Berra observed that predictions are tough, especially about the future. But tough as they are, readers inform me that predictions about the future would be more useful to them than my usual predictions about the past. So here goes.

President Trump will win reelection easily on the strength of the best economy in the lifetime of most voters despite the dreams of compassionate Democrats for a bone-crushing, job-losing, starvation-inducing depression.

Also helping Trump will be the weakness of a slew and stew of old, uninspiring, grouchy,  white male Dem and dim candidates (plus one womyn who used to be Native American).

Donations to the charitable (cough … cough) Clinton Foundation will, um, continue to decline. Frustrated by such little bribe for their buck, past donors may ask for their money back.

Instead of Hillary, the Dems will nominate Biden. Continue reading →

Two thousand years ago, a Jewish carpenter lived a conventional life for 30 years in a tiny village in the Middle East. Then he became as they might say today, “radicalized.”

Historians agree that Jesus did exist – there are reliable ancient records of him. But most of what we know about him is limited to opaque and contradictory accounts written decades after his death in what we now call the Gospel of the New Testament.

In one sense, those Gospel accounts are profoundly simple. They say Jesus was the Messiah prophesized in the Hebrew Bible. As such, he performed miracles to save those needing saving. He came back from the dead. That’s the word.

But in a personal sense, the Gospels present a more complicated and contradictory man than the one presented in Sunday School or even adult church services. Continue reading →

A Gallup poll shows that while 74% of Republicans are “extremely proud” to be Americans, only 32% of Democrats and 23% of self-described liberals feel the same.

Why does the left hate America?

Let’s stipulate that America is not perfect. I don’t need to list the imperfections, because the left and their news puppets remind us of them daily.

But notwithstanding her many flaws, America stands tall against other countries. Here are some metrics: Continue reading →

The Democrat field for president may see its second billionaire, Michael Bloomberg. The former New York City mayor laments that the current field of Dems are “not the way to run a railroad.”

Indeed. The guy in charge of baggage on this railroad is named Joe, and he has a lot of it. He’s been toting his baggage in and around the political tracks for most of his long life.

He’s never become the train engineer because he still hasn’t learned to stay awake at the switch. He’s a serial plagiarizer and thinks FDR went on TV in 1929 to talk about the stock market crash even though TV hadn’t been invented yet and Roosevelt didn’t become president until 1933.

He told a false war story extolling his courage and permits his smarmy son to sell political influence around the world for millions.

Up near the front of this Dem choo-choo is Continue reading →

Imagine no possessions.”

— John Lennon, 1971

Five years after those words were sung, a couple of college dropouts named Steve hooked up and started making computers. They called their little company Apple Computer.

Computers don’t build themselves. Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs had to buy the parts and pay designers and manufacturers. After exhausting their paltry money, they persuaded an investor to kick in a few hundred thousand dollars for part of their new company.

The company grew and they needed more money. Several other individuals and then venture capital firms invested millions in return for sizable chunks of the company.

The company continued to grow. In 1980, Continue reading →

The Democrats’ punch-drunk base has demanded that President Donald Trump be impeached ever since the 2016 election when they suffered a knock-out in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and then went down again in the recounts.

Then they couldn’t turn the Electoral College rogue, and failed with something called the Emoluments Clause, and botched their smears of Trump’s judges and couldn’t convince anyone that the new first lady is last and the last first lady is first.

Of course, they attempted all that not for the purpose of succeeding, but for the purpose of making them feel virtuous. That’s what they do.

Former President Barack Obama brilliantly capitalized on this mindset. Instead of arguing that proposals with which he disagreed would not work, he simply condemned them as unvirtuous. He declared at least 46 times, “That’s not who we are.”

Saying, “That’s not who we are” is who Obama is. It worked with his Dems, because their discourse isn’t about problem solving; it’s a revival meeting.

Not all the Dems have been drinking the virtue Kool-Aid, however. Continue reading →

Their first migration was great not for its goodness but for its enormity. It was of course the capture, enslavement and diaspora of black Africans. They were stacked like cargo aboard slave ships bound for America and elsewhere and then auctioned and owned like cattle.

Slavery was common throughout the world and had been for thousands of years, but American slavery was notable for its sheer scale. By the mid-1800s, between 30% and nearly 60% of the population of southern states were slaves.

In abolishing slavery, colonials should have led the world, not lagged it. They were destined to found a nation, said Abraham Lincoln years later, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Slavery was beneath them.

And many of them knew it. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson — a slave owner but a brilliant visionary — foreshadowed the years of reckoning ahead.

The product of that reckoning was the next great black migration, when they left the southern plantations after the Civil War. It took 80-some years, but Lincoln started to make good on Jefferson’s promise.

It was costly. Continue reading →

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. Continue reading →

Remember those predictions that polar bears and snow would soon be extinct?

Well, here in Aspen and throughout the Colorado mountains, snowpack this spring is nearly 500% of normal. That’s not a typo. It’s almost five times normal.

The ski mountain at Aspen has reopened for skiing every weekend in June, including this weekend. Even the locals — a pretty discerning bunch — say we had a season beyond epic.

None of the growing polar bear population has been sighted in Aspen, yet, but the black bears often seen in town must be getting nervous.

Does this mean that global warming, or whatever is the nom du jour, is a hoax? Continue reading →