Gingrich wants cheap power

BEAVER CREEK, Colorado — Cheap energy sounds like a fairy tale; it’s like eating your cake and having it too.

But that’s exactly what former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich suggested as a possibility Friday in a speech to a small group at the home of Republican state House candidate Muhammad Ali Hasan.

Hasan, who joked that he is trying to fill Gingrich’s shoes, lives in Beaver Creek and is a candidate for House District 56, which includes Eagle County.

Gingrich’s speech drew chuckles from the crowd as he poked fun at the Democratic party’s approach to the high cost of gas.

“There’s an ideology on the left that would like everyone to walk,” he said. “If everyone on the left wants to say, ‘You’re not paying enough, let’s keep sending the money to Saudi Arabia … let’s make sure that Iran and Russia have all the money they need,’ I just think people are going to think this is nuts.”

The purpose of Gingrich’s appearance was to tell the attendees about a new organization he started as a grassroots approach to lower the cost of energy, especially gasoline, in the U.S.

“Here’s my theory,” he said. “Almost everybody in America pumps their own gas, so they stand at the pump for three to five minutes getting really mad — and they do it on average twice a week, so there’s this wave building.”

His organization, called American Solutions, is intended to channel that wave. He hopes it will be a tri-partisan group composed of at least 50 percent of each major political party in the United States, including the Independent party.

Gingrich said the goal of the organization is to find issues that garner nonpartisan support and unite Americans to find solutions to those issues.

“We were looking for … red, white and blue issues rather than red versus blue issues,” he said. “We found over 100, and we found the American people have a lot of common sense; it’s the elites that are nuts.”

 

Read the rest here.

Columbus jazz: Summer is here

Arguably, no artist grows up: If he sheds the perceptions of childhood, he ceases being an artist.

-Composer Ned Rorem

 

Art is a means of human exchange, not an end.

-Composer Modest Mussorgsky

 

   

 

Tonight was the opening night of the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival, with a concert by the Columbus Jazz Orchestra. The walk through Vail Village was gorgeous and summery and a reminder of how un-affordable Vail must be in the winter; restaurants with half-price menus still have entrees around $20 or $30.

 

 

The jazz performance was amazing – and as a rule I hate jazz. The musicians (mostly white, older men; I counted four black men and one woman) were so obviously enjoying themselves, it didn’t seem like they were performing for the crowd at all. They were playing a game with each other and the hundreds of people in the audience just happened to have walked in on the performance.

 

The crowd was composed primarily of – let’s say elderly people. They were certainly over the hill, anyway. Whether that is because elderly people like jazz more, or they are the only people in the valley who can afford concert tickets (around $60), or a combination of the two, is up for debate.

The swing vote in a swing state

Hispanic voters may determine if Colorado goes blue or red

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The upcoming presidential election has Manuel Pilas confused.

Pilas, a Mexican immigrant who came to the United States for college, said voting is important to him and he will vote in the election, but he has no idea who he will vote for.

“There’s no way a businessperson can open up completely — I cannot really take my flag out and say this is the way I’m voting,” said Pilas, who owns the Santa Fe Furniture store in Gypsum. “[But] I can say that in this election I’m going to be the most confused ever.”

Pilas is not alone. Hispanic voters will face a ballot this fall with both their Democratic favorite, Sen. Hillary Clinton, and their Republican favorite, Rudy Giuliani, missing from the ticket. A nationwide Pew Research Center survey conducted last December discovered that Hispanic Democrats favored Clinton by 59 percent, with only 15 percent of Hispanic Democrats supporting Obama. Only 10 percent of Hispanic Republicans supported GOP candidate John McCain.

Hispanic support for the Republican party has dropped substantially since the last presidential election. In the 2004 election, George W. Bush drew a record 40 percent of the Hispanic vote; the Pew survey shows that Latino Republican support is now down to 23 percent.

One voter’s solution will be to vote for her chosen candidate anyway. Hispanic Eagle resident Caroline Gonzales, 65, said she has been a Democrat all her life and will write Clinton in on the ballot in this year’s election.

Gonzales heard Obama speak at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, where she was a delegate from Iowa. “He has a lot of charisma, but that’s about it,” she said. “He looks like a wonderfully wrapped Christmas gift but you open the box and there’s nothing there.”

Read the rest here.

Summer reading

I’m about halfway through “Life of Pi” by Yann Martel. The title character, Piscine Molitor Patel, (incidentally, named after a swimming pool and shortened his name to Pi, after multiple unfortunate name-calling episodes in school), “belongs” to three religions (Hunduism, Christianity, and Islam) despite repeated attempts by his parents and various priests to persuade him that is impossible. Apparently the three religions will become more significant at some point in the book – or so I’m told – but for now, these quotes are thought-provoking:

 

Once a dead God, always a dead God, even resurrected. The Son must have the taste of death forever in his mouth. The Trinity mustbe tainted by it; there must be a certain stench at the right hand of God the Father. The horror must be real. Why would God with that upon Himself? Why not leave death to the mortals? Why make dirty what is beautiful, spoil what is perfect?

Love. That was Father Martin’s answer. (52)

 

Doubt is useful for a while. We must all pass through the garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with doubt, so must we. If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if he burst out from the Cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” then surely we are also permitted doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation. (28 )

Shedding pounds post-pregnancy

EAGLE COUNTY, Colorado — Labor pains are just the beginning of the learning curve for new moms. For many women, shedding the extra pounds put on during pregnancy just doesn’t fit in the schedule.

 

Even local celebrity mom Trista Sutter, famous for her title role in the premiere season of ABC’s “The Bachelorette,” shares the concern, although she had added incentive to lose her baby weight.

 

“A huge motivation for me was I was going to be on the cover of Us Weekly,” Sutter said.

 

Read the rest here.

Summertime in the Rockies

 

 

There’s still snow on the ground here in Vail. It starts at about 9,000 feet, actually, about 900 feet higher than the actual town – I know because that’s one of the articles I wrote this week – but Vail Pass, about ten minutes away, is above the snowline. It was a crazy experience to drive past untouched snowbanks and realize it’s almost the middle of June.

 

Here are a few pictures from a trail pretty close to the apartment. They don’t do the mountains justice but they at least give an idea what it’s like.

 

 

 

Here are links to the articles I wrote this week:

 

“Vail councilman blames self for missing ballot“

 

and a rabies story, here, and a weather story, here.

 

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Question of the day:

The back of the brownie box has “high altitude directions” for altitudes between 3500 and 6500 feet. So – what happens when one is OVER 6500, say in Vail or on top of Pike’s Peak? Does the high altitude recipe revert to normal? Should one add more flour, or double the oil, or cook it for a shorter amount of time? My brownies turned out less than amazing, so I guess I haven’t found the answer yet.