Guess what these people have in common: Ansel Adams, Walt Disney, Bob Dylan, Thomas Edison, Bobby Fischer, Henry Ford, Bill Gates, Barry Goldwater, William Randolph Hearst, Steve Jobs, John D. Rockefeller, J.D. Salinger, Taylor Swift, Ted Turner, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman and Mark Zuckerberg.

In the old days here in Aspen, the cowboys had an expression.  When someone questioned their competence, they deadpanned, “It’s not my first rodeo.”

This expression comes to mind after watching President Barrack Obama the last seven years.

Early on, he told a Republican Congressman with whom he was negotiating over the budget, “Don’t call my bluff.”

I’m not a saloon poker player, but I do know that when you bluff it’s important not to tell the other players.

Obama bluffed.  He told the Republicans he was bluffing.  He asked them not to call his bluff.  They called it.  And Obama folded.  Huh.

In the field of negotiating with the opposing political party, it was Obama’s first rodeo.

In his first two years, Obama Continue reading →

“Anybody But Clinton” — or “ABC” — is now the battle cry of the Dems in the presidential campaign.

Here in swing state Colorado, and in other swing states as well, recent polls show Hillary Clinton badly trailing unknown Republican candidates. In particular, her scores on trustworthiness have plunged as people see her record of mendacity.

I’m not talking about the stale scandals of her husband’s presidency 15 years ago — the ones that Hillary attributed to a “vast right-wing conspiracy” until a certain stained blue dress turned up.

No, I’m talking about fresh ones. Just recently, Hillary:

• Set up a homebrew computer system on which she illegally intermingled government business as secretary of state, foundation business and personal business;

• Deleted 34,000 emails from that system after Congress requested them;

• Falsely maintained that there was no Congressional subpoena to produce those emails, and

• Falsely claimed that her email system did not transmit any classified government information. (The New York Times recently reported that in fact, it did. Two inspector generals — both appointed by President Barack Obama — are calling for a Justice Department investigation.)

Even prominent Dems such as Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein has publicly declared that Hillary Continue reading →

“Black Like Me” — that’s the title of a 1961 book by a white man named John Howard Griffin, who used makeup and a very dark tan to look black for six weeks in the segregated South.

The lesson of the book was that it was difficult being black. Blacks were discriminated against. No sensible white person would pretend to be black.

Things have changed.

It was recently reported that Rachel Dolezal, a darkish-skinned woman with frizzy hair, pretended to be black for the past decade. She didn’t suffer racial discrimination. In fact, she enjoyed racial favoritism. Her fake “blackness” got her a job with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, a professorship in African studies and a city job as an ombudsman.

Her parents finally outed her, stating that her ancestry is actually German and Czech. Childhood photos show a freckle-faced, pale girl with blond hair.

Blondes may have more fun, but blackness, she discovered, is a ticket to a prize in the affirmative-action game. Continue reading →

The editor of your fine newspaper, Randy Essex, kindly offered to publish my column once a month. He suggested that in my first column I should introduce myself. So here goes.

Residents of Glenwood Springs will be pleased to know that I have a longtime connection to towns with a spring. I was born near Springfield, Massachusetts, and grew up in Colorado Springs.

Residents of the latter often shorten their town name to “The Springs” as if the Glenwood one and the ‘field one don’t even exist. I never found a spring in The Springs, at least not one of the water kind. But I can understand the residents’ reluctance to use a more descriptive name for their town like “The Potholes.”

I went to college in Continue reading →