theAspenbeat.com,
by
Glenn Beaton
Original Article
Posted by
Big Bopper
—
3/23/2025 3:56:31 PM
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Executive orders and administrative agency rules going back to the 1960s required businesses contracting with the U.S. Government to engage in “affirmative action.”
That was the euphemism of the day for racial discrimination. They couldn’t just call it “racial discrimination” because that term had, naturally and appropriately, developed a negative connotation. It suggested a world where people were judged not by the content of their character, but the color of their skin.
Over the ensuing decades, that euphemism “affirmative action” developed a similar negative connotation.
theAspenbeat.com,
by
Glenn Beaton
Original Article
Posted by
Big Bopper
—
3/18/2025 8:29:06 PM
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I won’t leave you in suspense. I’m a lawyer, so the answer is sometimes yes, sometimes no.
If you’re in the tribe that thinks whatever Trump does is wrong, or the opposite tribe that thinks whatever Trump does is right, then read no further. Just skip the analysis and instead warm up your cheers or your jeers for the Comments below, as your tribe dictates.
But if you’re in neither tribe, but are just a political partisan (which is different than being in a tribe) or a political neutral (are there any these days?) then read on.
theAspenbeat.com,
by
Glenn Beaton
Original Article
Posted by
Big Bopper
—
3/15/2025 12:46:16 PM
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Tesla electric cars were cool a few years ago. They signaled all the virtue of a Toyota Prius, but without the ugly body shape and C-O-E-X-I-S-T bumper sticker. And they were a lot faster.
Electric vehicle devotees – you probably know some – hailed the immigrant behind Tesla as an engineering genius and good green guy. His immigration to the United States was not illegal, but even that wasn’t held against him. He was the liberals’ favorite African-American since the Hawaiian dude.
That’s all so 2023.
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,