Account information for this Lucianne member

Despite whatever click-bait headlines you’re seeing on Fox News, the Wall Street Journal reports that Republicans and Democrats have basically reached a debt deal. Credit the skillful negotiations of Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy and the fumbling negotiations of President Joe Biden. Biden’s opening card in this game was something he specializes in: nothing. He gambled this spring that he could portray the Republicans as intransigent extremists by refusing to negotiate with them, and the Republicans would wind up having to simply raise the debt ceiling without any concessions from the Democrats.

This has been a very emotional time for me. The time I’m referring to is the seven decades in which I have lived or, rather, until my recent discovery, merely existed. From the time I was born, I was uncomfortable with the society-imposed notion that I was sometimes wrong. I knew deep down that it was a lie. I knew deeeeep down that I was an infallible trapped in a fallible body. I knew deep down that I’m always right. It hurt. It hurt to be told by infalli-phobes that I was not infallible. How dare they!

In a 168-page commentary by a former wisenheimer local newspaper columnist, one doesn’t expect to find the breadth and depth of Alexis de Tocqueville or the wit and wisdom of H.L. Mencken when it comes to vibrant, insightful social analysis. But in his newly-published book “High Attitude: How Woke Liberals Ruined Aspen,” Glenn Beaton has his moments. Here’s one of them: “Aspen and the rest of America changed in the ’60s, in some ways for the better but mostly for the worse. America recovered, but Aspen never did.”

The Supreme Court decision last year in Dobbs v. Jackson overruled Roe v. Wade, their 1973 decision that purported to find an abortion right in a U.S. Constitution that never mentions or alludes to it. Abortion is now rightly governed by the people’s elected legislators, and, sadly, to some extent by unelected bureaucrats, but, in any event, not by judges. The Dobbs decision was leaked a couple of months in advance of its issuance.

The unemployment rate is very low, but we have millions fewer people working in America than pre-pandemic. So what gives? Here’s what gives. It’s because the unemployment rate does not measure the total number of people who are unemployed. It instead measures the number of people who are unemployed but looking for work. Many people who are unemployed today are simply not looking. Work is not to their liking.

My book was published April 18, 2023 and is available on AMAZON. I would be grateful if you would read AND offer a review on Amazon, which is very important for the book to get traction. Here are a few items of “Advance Praise” by people I really respect who took the time to read advance copies: “Aspen, Colorado, is one of the most celebrated places in the United States, but like any other community it has its preening airheads, community-minded heroes, political bigots and ripoff artists. What most communities don’t have, however, is an alert critic who has seen it all and can write it up.

I have only one criticism of the just-released book by long-time superstar FBI agent Thomas Baker entitled “The Fall of the FBI.” It really should be entitled “The Winter of the FBI.” That’s how bad things have gotten in the upper echelons of the Bureau. It wasn’t always that way. More than half the book is a collection of true crime stories that illustrate the competence and professionalism of the Bureau in the old days. Most end with the bad guys in jail. Baker had a first-hand view of these cases because he was involved in many of them.

There has been a spate of high-profile violence lately by women who think they are men and, especially, by men who think they are women. In Nashville, a woman pretending to be a man slaughtered six in an elementary school, including three 9-year-olds. Beforehand, the shooter had written a “manifesto” that evidently justified her shooting spree on the grounds that the school – a Christian grade school – failed to endorse her perversion. (We don’t know for sure what the manifesto says because the cops won’t release it – which suggests that it does indeed say that.)

In the 1977 action-comedy “Smokey and the Bandit,” Burt Reynolds plays a bootlegger named Bo. Everyone calls him “Bandit” because the name “Bo” was apparently too informal for his friends. The script was so trite that the actors made up much of the dialogue as the cameras rolled. The alleged plot centers on a rich Georgia businessman’s offer of $80,000 to Bandit to drive to Texas and back to fetch him a semi full of Coors beer. In both the movie and real life, you may recall, Coors was illegal east of Texas at the time.

In my prime back in the last century, I played a lot of basketball. I was quick, had a good first move to the basket, could shoot OK, and played pretty good defense. At 6’1”, on a good day I could dunk the ball. But I had little understanding of the game, and was not a good passer. To me, a “play” was a simple screen. I wasn’t a good ball player, even at the pick-up game level. But I knew I could beat the women. In fact, I knew I was as good as the women college players.

Another week, another slaughter in the schools. This time, it was in Nashville. A cowardly nut blasted into a Christian elementary school and started shooting people. She killed three helpless adults in their 60s, one of whom was the woman headmaster who ran straight toward the sound of gunshots to protect the children in her charge. And three nine-year-olds. Police – remember them, the folks the wokesters wanted to ban? – were on-scene within 10 minutes. With fear (who wouldn’t be?) but without hesitation, they too ran toward the gunshots.

Like many school boards, the Denver School Board years ago asked the police for help in quelling violence in the schools. The police succeeded to some extent. So far, so good, though it’s a poor reflection on our society, our schools, our students, and their parents. In 1975, about 1% of schools had cops onsite. By a few years ago, it was over 50%. The presence of cops did help. But the Denver School Board was disappointed that the encounters by the school police involved a disproportionate number of students of color. That was no surprise to anyone paying attention to crime statistics.