theAspenbeat.com,
by
Glenn Beaton
Original Article
Posted by
Big Bopper
—
3/12/2025 7:23:23 PM
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The Republican-appointed Justices on the Supreme Court are now six of the nine. Unsurprisingly, the ideological tilt of the Court is more conservative than it’s been in two or three generations.
It shows. Last year, the Court took the conservative side in reducing deference to administrative agencies; deciding expansively in favor of presidential immunity (which of course benefits both liberal presidents and conservative ones, but the particular case that was decided benefited a conservative one, namely Donald Trump);
theAspenbeat.com,
by
Glenn Beaton
Original Article
Posted by
Big Bopper
—
3/6/2025 3:27:32 PM
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One summer day in 1924, a train stopped at a station on Long Island. A man carrying a harmless-looking package ran to catch it. He struggled to board the train as it departed. One of the train employees on board reached for his hand as another on the platform gave him a boost from behind.
The package fell onto the tracks. It turned out to be a package of fireworks. The fireworks exploded.
So, the exploding fireworks injured someone, right?
Not exactly.
theAspenbeat.com,
by
Glenn Beaton
Original Article
Posted by
Big Bopper
—
3/4/2025 5:41:01 PM
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Have you seen the Denver restaurant scene? Me neither. It’s dead and gone.
In a one-year period, the number of restaurants in Denver declined by 183. Of all the restaurant closures in Colorado last year, 82% were in Denver – a place that has only about 12% of the population of Colorado.
Average profits at the few surviving Denver restaurants are only 3-5%. Anyone who dines out knows that this isn’t because prices are down. It’s because costs are up. Restaurant wages in Denver are up 89% since 2019.
The main reason is Denver’s minimum wage of $18.81/hour for ordinary workers and $15.79 for tipped workers. For comparison, in New York City
theAspenbeat.com,
by
Glenn Beaton
Original Article
Posted by
Big Bopper
—
3/1/2025 2:54:09 PM
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The White House event “Trump and Zelensky Meeting Staged for Media” somehow turned into “Trump v. Zelensky Cage Match.”
How did that happen? My theory is that it wasn’t exactly an accident, but it didn’t play out the way either side intended.
Bear in mind that both leaders are experienced actors – Trump as a reality TV host and Zelensky as a stand-up comedian. (Yes, Trump really was a reality TV host!) Both saw the meeting as a stage. They intended to communicate not with one another – that could have been done better in private – but with millions of viewers.
theAspenbeat.com,
by
Glenn Beaton
Original Article
Posted by
Big Bopper
—
2/28/2025 12:27:51 PM
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It’s amusing to see them pose the question to themselves. It’s not really a question; rather, it’s rhetorical. Posing the question, “Why aren’t we marching in the streets?” is their way of saying that they really should be.
But even after considerable angst, self-incrimination, and rhetorical excesses about not marching, they’re still not marching.
As for why, there’s a simple answer and a complicated one. The simple answer is, because it’s cold outside.
Remember the “protest era” of the 60s and early 70s? College kids would organize protests and sometimes riots with two goals in mind:
Ending the Vietnam War (or, really, just ending the draft); and
Ending Spring finals.
theAspenbeat.com,
by
Glenn Beaton
Original Article
Posted by
Big Bopper
—
2/24/2025 8:16:27 PM
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When fossilized Neanderthals (or “Neandertals” if you prefer) were discovered in caves in Europe back in the mid-1800s, it was assumed that they were stupid, ape-like brutes. Indeed, they did possess compact, muscular bodies with short legs.
We’ve learned in the past few decades that our stereotype of Neanderthals was wrong. These were fully human creatures who hunted with spears, created art, made boats, fished, ceremonially buried their dead, and almost certainly spoke to one another. They were as advanced as any other hominid of the time period.
theAspenbeat.com,
by
Glenn Beaton
Original Article
Posted by
Big Bopper
—
2/22/2025 11:00:38 AM
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Inside the box, and the Beltway, the thinking all along has been that we must draw a line at Ukraine, else Putin and the barbarians will soon be on the steps of Warsaw and then Berlin and Paris.
Besides, Russian aggression and aggressors are morally bad. We owe it to posterity and civilization not to crumble before them.
Those are valid points. On the other hand:
We are where we are. Where we are, is Vladimir Putin make some understandable miscalculations.
One, he miscalculated America’s willingness to support foreign countries. After all, he had witnessed Joe Biden’s Afghanistan surrender debacle.
theAspenbeat.com,
by
Glenn Beaton
Original Article
Posted by
Big Bopper
—
2/20/2025 9:51:09 AM
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Wolves roamed Colorado for millions of years. At the end of the last ice age, they managed to survive the mass extinctions of megafauna such as mammoths, mastodons, sabertooth tigers, giant cave bears, and huge sloths, an extinction event that was probably caused in part by the arrival of humans from Asia at about the same time.
Until the much later arrival of Europeans, those early Americans were living in the stone age. Their weapons were stone-tipped spears and arrows. They didn’t even have horses. But they hunted in a way that was deadly to large herding animals and the predators of the herds: They used fire.
theAspenbeat.com,
by
Glenn Beaton
Original Article
Posted by
Big Bopper
—
2/17/2025 12:58:35 PM
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In determining citizenship, the United States has a very unusual approach. You’re a citizen if you were born here. (You’re also a citizen if you were born abroad under certain circumstances, but that’s a different issue.)
That’s a bit crazy, because it means that if a woman (aren’t you glad we don’t have to refer to them as “child-birthing persons” anymore?) makes it into the United States, legally or illegally, in time to give birth – right on the north bank of the Rio Grande, for example – her baby is an American citizen.
The mother doesn’t magically become an American citizen by giving birth in America,
theAspenbeat.com,
by
Glenn Beaton
Original Article
Posted by
Big Bopper
—
2/16/2025 1:03:22 PM
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The Trump-is-Hitler crowd dismisses the 77 million Americans who elected Donald Trump to the Presidency, for the second time, as a cult.
They aren’t suggesting that these 77 million people are a cult because they were opposed to another four years of Joe Biden’s drooling corruption. Rather, they’re suggesting that these people are card-carrying, Kool Aid-drinking Trump worshippers.
Let’s put this in context. One of the defining characteristics of cults is that they idolize a charismatic, authoritarian leader. Such leaders get away with a lot.
theAspenbeat.com,
by
Glenn Beaton
Original Article
Posted by
Big Bopper
—
2/14/2025 8:14:54 PM
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“Hitler” was their favorite. Trump was “just like Hitler,” they warned us. Forget about the fact that Trump has close relatives who are Jewish and was a staunch supporter of Israel in his first term – and also before and after.
And forget the fact that it’s the Democrats who proudly exhibit sympathy for barbarians who mass-murder, mass-behead and mass-rape the Jews.
Democrats’ proof that Trump was Hitler despite the facts we are supposed to forget was that Trump wanted to disallow the illegal immigration of Latinos into America, just like Hitler wanted to disallow the illegal immigration of Jews into Germany.
Er, no, that’s not it.
Anywaaaaay, you get the point.
theAspenbeat.com,
by
Glenn Beaton
Original Article
Posted by
Big Bopper
—
2/11/2025 6:24:29 PM
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I have nothing against Michelle. The media tells us that she’s pretty, she’s smart, she’s accomplished, and I’m sure she’s charming. As her husband said about Hillary Clinton, she’s “likable enough.”
OK, I’ll admit that I didn’t particularly like her comment that the first time she was proud of America was the night Barack was elected. Surely there was a time in her first 45 years before then that she felt some pride in America. How about when the 1980 Olympic Hockey Team beat the Russians? How about when we put a man on the Moon? How about when we passed the Civil Rights Acts?