In my mind, the town of Aspen would be a celebrity filled haven of glitz and glamour and maybe some snow. We found none of this. For us Aspen lacked Vail's charm, but the drive there was exceptional-tight roads, fall colors, steep mountains and steep drop offs. For these reasons Aspen was only worth driving through, but what a drive.
We did stop in the town of Cripple Creek which was wrapping up an antique car show. This meant lots of people shuffling around the small town but also meant that all the free fudge samples had been pounced on by punctual vultures. My only complaint with the town (actually her second-she was pissed about the fudge) was its name and that the pitiful name (which it seems she took a little too literally) was emblazoned on every item in every store that lined Main Street. Like I'm going to send someone a cripple creek cane.
I was disappointed as the town was nothing like The Band's song of the same name.
The neighboring town of Victor also held disappointment. I want ghosts in my ghost town not mere dilapidation, and though it was small there were no ghosts. No ghosts but plenty of police. Maybe they were keeping the spooky spirits in line.
Our final stop was Colorado Springs which was an entirely different experience. The town was huge and offers more Walmarts and Goodwills than is reasonable and therefore was like a mecca(that is so, so sad). Actually the overabundance proved useful. When one Walmart said no Overnight parking we just continued on until we found one that would host us. When one Goodwill had shoes we bought them. And when the next one had some we bought those too. More precisely Isaiah bought those. All three pairs.
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Day 80 (Saturday 9/8/12)- Vail, CO
After thoroughly exploring the populated NE of Colorado we decided it was time to move on. We left with mixed feelings as we have grown to love this part of Colorado, especially Fort Collins, and because the van's brakes, when used, wince. Because of Vandrea's whininess we omitted some more aggressively mountainous detours while still getting plenty of paved up and downs and spectacular mountain views on our way to Vail.
Since Aunt Barb shares the town's name we had to stop in. We found that the town had much more than just a familiar name so we lingered.
A very active ski town for most of the year, it was strange to see bright green mountain tops and not snow. We came at just the right time as the leaves on all the trees have slowly started to transition into autumnal yellows and oranges which made for a beautiful view of the valley.
Though the town of Vail is inherently touristy and expensive we managed to find two free ways to enjoy it. The first was a Ski museum which charts the history of the sport and its symbiotic relationship with the town. Snowboarding or snurfing as it was originally named was also covered. We learned the spin off sport was invented in the 1950's by a father on Christmas who improvised a scheme to get his children out of the house by nailing two skis together and sending them down the backyard hill. Christmas dinner waited in the family's empty home and surrounding houses too. Later a kid in a high school shop class came up with technical improvements.
It was humorous to read the museum's collection of antiquated sounding rejection letters that had been returned to inquiring snowboarders. These letter which kept denying slopes to snowboarder stretched into the mid 90's. Though I can't think of another sport who's athletes on one extreme are rich people with leisure time and frequent flier miles and on the other young people with near suicidal energy and a group affinity for marijuana.
The state didn't just turn down snowboarders it even turned down the Olympics. In 1976 voters kept the Olympic games from Colorado for fear of cost, environmental harm, and invasion of outsider opportunist, the first to ever do so.
The second free and absolutely beautiful thing to do in Vail is visit the Betty Ford Alpine Gardens (I guess we just publicly admitted we didn't hand over the suggested donation). The gardens sit on the edge of town and hosts an array of plants exclusive to high elevations. The exquisitely maintained grounds feature attractive walking paths, several waterfalls and a tranquil feel throughout. I don't know if I've been in a town so well incorporated into nature. It wasn't a city who added parks to beautify itself. Instead it's like you are taking a short nature walk along a mountain stream and almost forget their are people living in structures on either side of you.
For the evening we stayed in the town of Glenwood Springs. Since this was just a place to lay our heads we caught up on missed media, including "The Artist." Since the film was such an Oscar success we had planned on watching it for some time, but being exhausted each time we approached Red Box we felt we couldn't commit the attention it deserved. I went into the movie thinking that I couldn't possibly like a silent film and was blown away by how compelling it was even with the absence. Isaiah thought it proved the importance of sound on a film's emotional impact. (I thought the climax was clever and it was an expert blend of cutesy, whimsical, theatrical, and sad)
I don't know what to attribute it to but we have, I hope, hit the depths of our bad movie wallowing. Lately we have been watching more interesting films. Along with the Artist we saw "Bernie" which had an innovative twist, not a Sixth Sense kind of twist, but a modest and delightful casting twist, which despite the participation of Matthew Mcconaughey didn't suck, and features Jack Black, no lie, acting (despite playing an over the top character who is continuously singing, somehow he doesn't fall back on the Jack Black formula) and Carnage, which I liked and Isaiah appreciated in parts (It was an acting showcase, though again too much stage type acting for me, though again with reasons -the story was originally a play-with an impressive shifting of conflict and character revelation, though almost all sides of every character was unlikeable. I've complained about character unlikeability before. I guess I'd rather watch a complexly evil person, than one complexly shallow, or one who's whininess is deeply layered).
Our foolishly obscene amount of soda consumption sadly remains steady. This all seems to be leading up to a confrontation that will take place in New York City. Will we be so hooked that we will pay $10 for a coke?
Since Aunt Barb shares the town's name we had to stop in. We found that the town had much more than just a familiar name so we lingered.
A very active ski town for most of the year, it was strange to see bright green mountain tops and not snow. We came at just the right time as the leaves on all the trees have slowly started to transition into autumnal yellows and oranges which made for a beautiful view of the valley.
Though the town of Vail is inherently touristy and expensive we managed to find two free ways to enjoy it. The first was a Ski museum which charts the history of the sport and its symbiotic relationship with the town. Snowboarding or snurfing as it was originally named was also covered. We learned the spin off sport was invented in the 1950's by a father on Christmas who improvised a scheme to get his children out of the house by nailing two skis together and sending them down the backyard hill. Christmas dinner waited in the family's empty home and surrounding houses too. Later a kid in a high school shop class came up with technical improvements.
It was humorous to read the museum's collection of antiquated sounding rejection letters that had been returned to inquiring snowboarders. These letter which kept denying slopes to snowboarder stretched into the mid 90's. Though I can't think of another sport who's athletes on one extreme are rich people with leisure time and frequent flier miles and on the other young people with near suicidal energy and a group affinity for marijuana.
The state didn't just turn down snowboarders it even turned down the Olympics. In 1976 voters kept the Olympic games from Colorado for fear of cost, environmental harm, and invasion of outsider opportunist, the first to ever do so.
The second free and absolutely beautiful thing to do in Vail is visit the Betty Ford Alpine Gardens (I guess we just publicly admitted we didn't hand over the suggested donation). The gardens sit on the edge of town and hosts an array of plants exclusive to high elevations. The exquisitely maintained grounds feature attractive walking paths, several waterfalls and a tranquil feel throughout. I don't know if I've been in a town so well incorporated into nature. It wasn't a city who added parks to beautify itself. Instead it's like you are taking a short nature walk along a mountain stream and almost forget their are people living in structures on either side of you.
For the evening we stayed in the town of Glenwood Springs. Since this was just a place to lay our heads we caught up on missed media, including "The Artist." Since the film was such an Oscar success we had planned on watching it for some time, but being exhausted each time we approached Red Box we felt we couldn't commit the attention it deserved. I went into the movie thinking that I couldn't possibly like a silent film and was blown away by how compelling it was even with the absence. Isaiah thought it proved the importance of sound on a film's emotional impact. (I thought the climax was clever and it was an expert blend of cutesy, whimsical, theatrical, and sad)
I don't know what to attribute it to but we have, I hope, hit the depths of our bad movie wallowing. Lately we have been watching more interesting films. Along with the Artist we saw "Bernie" which had an innovative twist, not a Sixth Sense kind of twist, but a modest and delightful casting twist, which despite the participation of Matthew Mcconaughey didn't suck, and features Jack Black, no lie, acting (despite playing an over the top character who is continuously singing, somehow he doesn't fall back on the Jack Black formula) and Carnage, which I liked and Isaiah appreciated in parts (It was an acting showcase, though again too much stage type acting for me, though again with reasons -the story was originally a play-with an impressive shifting of conflict and character revelation, though almost all sides of every character was unlikeable. I've complained about character unlikeability before. I guess I'd rather watch a complexly evil person, than one complexly shallow, or one who's whininess is deeply layered).
Our foolishly obscene amount of soda consumption sadly remains steady. This all seems to be leading up to a confrontation that will take place in New York City. Will we be so hooked that we will pay $10 for a coke?
Sunday, September 16, 2012
Day 79 (Friday 9/7/12)- Denver, CO
I took up the reigns of planning for a change. According to the city of Denver's website in the evening of the first friday of the month ten of the city's museums are free. It turns out the museums themselves are unaware of these promises. We bounced around the Golden Triangle District like pinballs being turned away at every museum, except those that were even more maliced and had already closed.
Though the museums weren't free or open late, many of the galleries in town were. At the Byers House museum we were treated to cookies, cheese, crackers, infant sized water bottles and a showing from three local artists. Afterwards we wandered in an effort to find more studios or a more substantial serving of water. In our wandering we came across a friendly and well dressed drug pusher. Maybe drug salesman would be more accurate. He really wasn't very pushy. We passed the salesman in smart business attire and with an illegal smile he commented on what a happy couple we seemed to be (this must be true, that or people in Denver are depressed, or perhaps happy and single, because this is the second time in the city our happy couple status has been commented on). He continued that if there was anything that could possibly make us even happier, he knew what it was, and quite conveniently he had some of the magic marajuana right there with him. We politely declined. He countered by asking me to at least smell the quality of his product and whipped out (on a busy sidewalk in daylight) a bag of glaucoma treatment. I inhaled (the scent). "Oh that's stanky!" I said. Perhaps it was this comment that assured him he would not be closing the sale. Still he wished us a good day. During several walks through the streets of Denver we have been solicited by many people with many causes, claims and products- this was by far the most pleasant encounter yet.
On our way out of downtown and to our van we happened upon a few more galleries and viewed some interesting artwork. The mostly suprising "piece" was the display case full of naked Barbie dolls intertwined in excrutiating looking positions with, to put it tamely, foreign objects in delicate places. Isaiah's most interesting find was the work of two artists with the last name of Felix, who, in their own ways, had colorful and cartoonish takes on the mountainsides of Colorado.
Though the museums weren't free or open late, many of the galleries in town were. At the Byers House museum we were treated to cookies, cheese, crackers, infant sized water bottles and a showing from three local artists. Afterwards we wandered in an effort to find more studios or a more substantial serving of water. In our wandering we came across a friendly and well dressed drug pusher. Maybe drug salesman would be more accurate. He really wasn't very pushy. We passed the salesman in smart business attire and with an illegal smile he commented on what a happy couple we seemed to be (this must be true, that or people in Denver are depressed, or perhaps happy and single, because this is the second time in the city our happy couple status has been commented on). He continued that if there was anything that could possibly make us even happier, he knew what it was, and quite conveniently he had some of the magic marajuana right there with him. We politely declined. He countered by asking me to at least smell the quality of his product and whipped out (on a busy sidewalk in daylight) a bag of glaucoma treatment. I inhaled (the scent). "Oh that's stanky!" I said. Perhaps it was this comment that assured him he would not be closing the sale. Still he wished us a good day. During several walks through the streets of Denver we have been solicited by many people with many causes, claims and products- this was by far the most pleasant encounter yet.
On our way out of downtown and to our van we happened upon a few more galleries and viewed some interesting artwork. The mostly suprising "piece" was the display case full of naked Barbie dolls intertwined in excrutiating looking positions with, to put it tamely, foreign objects in delicate places. Isaiah's most interesting find was the work of two artists with the last name of Felix, who, in their own ways, had colorful and cartoonish takes on the mountainsides of Colorado.
Sculpture outside the Denver Art Museum
Denver Art Museum building
Building in downtown Denver
Church in downtown Denver
Day 78 (Thursday 9/6/12)- Golden, CO
On the frightfully curvy mountainside in Golden sits the grave of Buffalo Bill Cody (Dude got around. We learned -not from a museum, but from a couple at the bar-that both Cody, WY and North Platte, NE battled over hosting Bill in their respective graveyards. So serious were they, Golden had to entomb Bill in concrete so that he couldn't be stolen and replanted. After having been to all three towns, I'd say he died in the wrong one. He should have held out for his namesake). The only other feature of interest in Golden (other than being the childhood home of Miles and Frankie) is Coors.
We were feeling thirsty not morbid, so you can guess which of the two attractions had motivated our drive to Golden.
Coors is the second biggest beer maker in the world, but as Golden is the company's headquarters and only production site, it makes for the planet's largest brewery. Unlike New Belgium who prides itself on reducing its environmental impact, Coors openly brags about having the biggest footprint of any brewery in the world. A Coors bus drove us around historic Downtown Golden and then dropped us off at the doors of Coors.
Unfortunately the Coors factory is similar to it's beer, it hasn't been improved upon in years. (Hey, if it was good enough for Burt Reynolds, Paul Newman, and Gerald Ford..) The factory is huge but has chipped paint and old equipment (their monitoring lab looked like a 1960's space station). The self-guided tour allows you to set your own pace which for some means ditching their headsets and heading straight for the bar. We took our time and watched beer science cartoons and tolerated excruciating puns from our pre recorded tour guide.
The story of Coors was more interesting than the shabby visuals.
-Bill Coors, grandson of the creator Adolph Coors, invented the two-piece aluminum can. Prior to that beer had been served in a tin can which left an unpleasant tin can taste.
-They were also the first to offer a reward for recycling in 1959, one penny per can.
-In 1916 when prohibition began they were able to keep the factory going by making malt milkshakes.
-Their bottling line is currently able to produce anywhere from 1,100 to 1,800 bottles per minute when running at full capacity. This is slower than Budweiser but only by a couple hundred cans.
The best part of the tour was of course the end. Not that it was so bad we were eager for it to end, but that the end meant samples. You had your choice of three alcoholic drinks and unlimited soda. The options were limited but thankfully extended beyond just Coors or Coors Light (aka banquet or bullet).
What's beer without pizza? In a customer appreciation promotion Cici's pizza was offering a $2.99 pizza buffet and though we had previously never heard of Cici's, much less visited them, we accepted their thank yous and appreciated, between the two of us, several pizzas, including macaroni and hot wing pizzas.
We were feeling thirsty not morbid, so you can guess which of the two attractions had motivated our drive to Golden.
Coors is the second biggest beer maker in the world, but as Golden is the company's headquarters and only production site, it makes for the planet's largest brewery. Unlike New Belgium who prides itself on reducing its environmental impact, Coors openly brags about having the biggest footprint of any brewery in the world. A Coors bus drove us around historic Downtown Golden and then dropped us off at the doors of Coors.
Unfortunately the Coors factory is similar to it's beer, it hasn't been improved upon in years. (Hey, if it was good enough for Burt Reynolds, Paul Newman, and Gerald Ford..) The factory is huge but has chipped paint and old equipment (their monitoring lab looked like a 1960's space station). The self-guided tour allows you to set your own pace which for some means ditching their headsets and heading straight for the bar. We took our time and watched beer science cartoons and tolerated excruciating puns from our pre recorded tour guide.
The story of Coors was more interesting than the shabby visuals.
-Bill Coors, grandson of the creator Adolph Coors, invented the two-piece aluminum can. Prior to that beer had been served in a tin can which left an unpleasant tin can taste.
-They were also the first to offer a reward for recycling in 1959, one penny per can.
-In 1916 when prohibition began they were able to keep the factory going by making malt milkshakes.
-Their bottling line is currently able to produce anywhere from 1,100 to 1,800 bottles per minute when running at full capacity. This is slower than Budweiser but only by a couple hundred cans.
The best part of the tour was of course the end. Not that it was so bad we were eager for it to end, but that the end meant samples. You had your choice of three alcoholic drinks and unlimited soda. The options were limited but thankfully extended beyond just Coors or Coors Light (aka banquet or bullet).
What's beer without pizza? In a customer appreciation promotion Cici's pizza was offering a $2.99 pizza buffet and though we had previously never heard of Cici's, much less visited them, we accepted their thank yous and appreciated, between the two of us, several pizzas, including macaroni and hot wing pizzas.
Monday, September 10, 2012
Day 77 (Wednesday 9/5/12)- Fort Collins, CO
If you read Saturday's blog you already know that we have good reason to love New Belgium. Today we got several more reasons. (Yes, Kurt we went back to Fort Collins. Yes, we are aware that it is in the opposite direction).
We have found two types of beer tours. The first- breweries with good beer and cool people, but people too cool to give legitimate tours. The second- breweries that are possibly too big to make interesting beers, but who can put in a little money to train their employees on public speaking and company history.
I doubt New Belgium will be surpassed on its excellency on the tour/beer/samples trifecta. Perhaps this is the zenith, but don't worry, we'll keep trying.
I'll start from the beginning so you get the full effect. To get anyway near a tour at New Belgium you have to make reservations in advance. On our first trip through town they were booked for days. We had the foresight to get our reservations, but still almost missed another tour. Running late again and again literally running, we picked the closest door, which happened not be the main entrance or the door to the tour check in, but one that led to the brewhouse, which happened to be the first stop of the tour already in progress. Had we chosen another door we would have probably been turned away. Another piece of luck was getting Lauren as our our tour guide. She reminded us of our friend Addy. She was cool, yet enthusiastic. Informative if not professional. Describing the company's genesis: the founder, when in Belgium, having found an old Brewmaster to teach him beer secrets, "geeked out hard." On the topic of their Belgian tripple: "drink tripple til you see double and start acting single." Exhausting in her exhaustiveness, she talked for an hour and a half, served us 4 sample beers in as many buildings and breathed maybe 3 times.
If the camera had been working we would have more pictures than necessary, but since it drowned I will try my best to describe New Belgium. Each area we visited had some sort of cool addition. In the brew kettle room the floors were lined with multi-colored tile murals, the barrel-aging area was equipped with a climbing wall (a present to employees on the brewery's 10-year anniversary. Very cool, but more ornamental than functional, as Lauren explained, in order to climb it employees must wear safety gear and be sober and thus it "gets used very little"), the ceiling of the bottling room was lined with a beautiful beer bottle light fixture and the packaging area had chandeliers made of Fat Tire beer cans. At the end of the tour we even got to go down a slide built right into the brewery. It was fast, in tight spirals, and made of unfriendly metal. Apparently here you don't need safety gear or sobriety.
The bar itself had a nice laid back vibe, so much so we spent a good chunk of the afternoon there, Isaiah sipping on exclusive specialty beers. Sour beer (not a bitter hoppy beer, but a full on, purposeful, spent years souring sour beer) and a chocolate mole jalapeno pepper beer were favorites (Yes, favorites). As DD I was stuck with seltzer water. But even that tasted like the best apple cider of my life. It came out of a self serve dispenser and I dispensed with multiple glasses. All the employees were super helpful and friendly (likely because as co-owners they get paid well enough to send their bar tips to charity. After 10 years with the company they are sent on a 6-week paid sebatical).
New Belgium is also clearly committed to the environment- they were the first brewery to get 100% of their electricity from wind power.
Following our visit to New Belgium we stumbled next door to the Odell Brewing Company. Even ignoring the great fun of New Belgium, Odell's was nothing much to talk about but we got a tour and a beer and they've doubled their size in the past few years.
Day 76 (Tuesday 9/4/12)- Denver, CO
An accident in my pants
In exploring Downtown Denver's shopping district I stayed a little too long at a store (she is too embarassed to name the store. I won't rat her out, but she should be embarassed) which meant next a timed marathon. We had 15 min to get to our 3 o'clock tour at Great Divide Brewing. It took us 30 minutes to determine we were nowhere close. We did eventually make it there to find they also had a 4:00 tour and that we hadn't yet missed it. The news eased some of the guilt of making us run 10 Denver city blocks, but not entirely, so I got us some drinks. But first I had to use the bathroom. I'd be back in a minute and would order an apolgy drink for Isaiah. (It took her10 min to return). I had an accident. My pants were soaked to prove it. My waterpak had errupted. It wasn't until later when I could survey the damage that I remembered the camera had been in the pack. It is still somehwhat functional, I just can't see what I am taking a picture of or afterwards verify how far off target I aimed. Lucky for you we can still post our blindly composed pictures. So if things look askew it is not due to all the breweries we have been perusing.
The tour took us through their small, hipster brewery and talked about their brewing process and plans for future growth. A cool little brewery, but one that lacked free samples. However they do make a scotch beer that is excellent.
Day 75 (Monday 9/3/12)- Denver, CO
As we learned when we got into town, Labor Day weekend coincides with Taste of Colorado. This meant trying to learn fluency in the Denver transit system immersion style, to get over to the park before all the good samples had run out.
Though much larger than Taste of Tacoma the vendors were less generous. The event was so big in fact, it seemed they didn't expect you to go through the whole thing. Vendors had multiple booths. This repetition, as well as the size and the congestion made it very easy to get temporarily lost.
Though the samples were rare and small, there was one exception that dribbled the heart like a basketball. International Coffee House's new product line of iced coffee was available, and perhaps a refill, and if you snuck around to another side perhaps another. It can best be described as chocolate milk crack. We drank as much as physically possible and within a short amount of time they had two new converts. (Maybe we shouldn't mix drug and religion metaphors. Who are we Karl Marx?)
In a pointless attempt to make up for me learning that we missed a free Pointer Sisters concert, Isaiah and I saw "G Love and the Special Sauce." We did have fun laughing about how "G Love" can't play guitar, rap or sing and he spent the concert doing all three.
(He made John Mayer look like John Lee Hooker. Or Anthony Kedis look like Rakim. Maybe a younger stepbrother to Beck, who, while doing a keg stand at his frat, slipped and gave himself brain damage... I'm being too harsh. It's not fair to critcize something against something that doesn't exist (unless El-P joined the Black Keys...I mean I'm not even asking that he sound like Biggie rapping over Muddy Waters) There were many, many people and they really liked it. It was curious though that leading up to the concert 30%ish of the crowd was African American. Once the white boy blues rap started, it shrunk to less than 1%. Later on there was some flag waving country that made Toby Keith sound nuanced. Carrhart then launched into "Bust a Move." It was awesome and way better than Mr. Love and his mayonaise.
And if you saw our feet tapping it was only because they were twitching from the ice coffee. Speaking of keg stands, you think the ice coffee comes keg size?
Inside and leading up to Taste of Colorado were magicians. We were quite impressed with one who pulled a goldfish (complete with bowl) from his hat, until we saw on the shoulder of a pedestrian next to us a brightly colored parrot, (not part of the act) thereby becoming the craziest thing we saw that day. Also in the running was a group practicing Canto do Galo Capoeira, which involves pretend fighting while chanting. It looks like hippie Tae-bo. A break dance-off at a Dave Matthews concert.
It was back to the bus and then back to the van.
Though much larger than Taste of Tacoma the vendors were less generous. The event was so big in fact, it seemed they didn't expect you to go through the whole thing. Vendors had multiple booths. This repetition, as well as the size and the congestion made it very easy to get temporarily lost.
Though the samples were rare and small, there was one exception that dribbled the heart like a basketball. International Coffee House's new product line of iced coffee was available, and perhaps a refill, and if you snuck around to another side perhaps another. It can best be described as chocolate milk crack. We drank as much as physically possible and within a short amount of time they had two new converts. (Maybe we shouldn't mix drug and religion metaphors. Who are we Karl Marx?)
In a pointless attempt to make up for me learning that we missed a free Pointer Sisters concert, Isaiah and I saw "G Love and the Special Sauce." We did have fun laughing about how "G Love" can't play guitar, rap or sing and he spent the concert doing all three.
(He made John Mayer look like John Lee Hooker. Or Anthony Kedis look like Rakim. Maybe a younger stepbrother to Beck, who, while doing a keg stand at his frat, slipped and gave himself brain damage... I'm being too harsh. It's not fair to critcize something against something that doesn't exist (unless El-P joined the Black Keys...I mean I'm not even asking that he sound like Biggie rapping over Muddy Waters) There were many, many people and they really liked it. It was curious though that leading up to the concert 30%ish of the crowd was African American. Once the white boy blues rap started, it shrunk to less than 1%. Later on there was some flag waving country that made Toby Keith sound nuanced. Carrhart then launched into "Bust a Move." It was awesome and way better than Mr. Love and his mayonaise.
And if you saw our feet tapping it was only because they were twitching from the ice coffee. Speaking of keg stands, you think the ice coffee comes keg size?
Inside and leading up to Taste of Colorado were magicians. We were quite impressed with one who pulled a goldfish (complete with bowl) from his hat, until we saw on the shoulder of a pedestrian next to us a brightly colored parrot, (not part of the act) thereby becoming the craziest thing we saw that day. Also in the running was a group practicing Canto do Galo Capoeira, which involves pretend fighting while chanting. It looks like hippie Tae-bo. A break dance-off at a Dave Matthews concert.
It was back to the bus and then back to the van.
Sunday, September 9, 2012
Day 74 (Sunday 9/2/12)- Boulder, CO + Denver, CO
On Tuesday we got to watch Obama speak at Colorado State on live TV, next to the event, in the safety of the library. Today we got tickets. Today I got in. Today neither of us still has seen him.
That President Obama would be making a stop at CU was announced on Wednesday. It is amazing how quickly things can be organized to accommodate Norlin Quad where the speech was to be held we randomly ran into Kurt who happened to be waiting for a friend outside Starbuck's. For Kurt it was really random, as he had no idea we were coming back into town. He shouldn't have been so surprised as he has mocked our navigational style as, to be tactful, inefficient. I think Kurt actually said something more along the lines of "erratic."
We camped outside of the media entrance until about 20 minutes before the President was to speak when a staffer came out and gave us tickets. Both lucky and not. We had not planned on actually being able to get in so we had brought a laptop, water, food, etc. all of which were not allowed. Isaiah the hero ran all this back to the car but with the distance, weight and heat it was not easy. We had parked over half an hour a way, Isaiah did it in half that, but took five minutes too long. They had just stopped allowing people inside, so he was trapped along the fence line. (I've got some complaints about security. I seemed to run into police of all types and jurisdictions, including a Secret Service guy who looked straight out of the movies and they must all have some sort of affirmative action policy for mute hirees. Now I understand they need to look tough and they looked tough, but they all were under the impression it was a national security risk to talk to me, to tell me that they were no longer letting people in. Anyone, anywhere. They would just shake their heads negatively. I would move five feet to the side, again hold up my ticket and they would scowl. Once I must have really done something wrong, because one stuck up his palm, indicating for me, I guess, to stop. He might have been trying to give me a high five, but I left him hangin'. I might have been arrested. I would have finally gotten them to speak though, if only to issue me my Miranda Rights). I did manage a few unobstructed and distant glimpses of Obama and heard the first part of his speech, but the disappointment of Isaiah not getting in was too much and I went out to sit with him. (I could only hear the echo of a famous voice, not actual words. Though I could hear the tone and it sounded more passionate, prepared and rousing then the CSU speech I earlier in the week disparaged).
It was shocking when Obama came out to the podium...didn't he have black hair just 4 years ago? It's so gray now.
Day 73 (Saturday 9/1/12)- Fort Collins, CO
Fort Collins is already at the top of our favorite city list (Missoula, MT is close but as nothing surrounds it, it falls to 2nd place). Tour De Fat is just another reason to absolutely love this town. After briefly switching it up with tea, it was back to more beer.
New Belgium calls Fort Collins home and as Fat Tire is their best selling beer they host a beer festival every year, but with a twist- everyone dresses like it's Halloween and rides around on their bikes. There's another twist-the men dress sluttier than the girls. Some are even so drunk they might even be mistaken that it is Halloween. Tour de fat, is an actual touring event that stops in several cities across the nation, but when it pulls into Fort Collins it gets it's largest numbers, and I have to imagine it's craziest attendees.
If we hadn't been told by some locals what to expect I don't know how we would have reacted when we ran into over 20,000 drunk, costumed people who entered the bike race and many thousands more milling around. In the end New Belgium raised $80,000 for local bike charities and got half the town drunk doing it.
Since our van hasn't the space for bikes or costumes we didn't get to fully participate, but gawking entertained us endlessly. The festival began around 11a as the bike race started winding down (the race begins at 9a, the drinking well before that, passed out napping around 12:30) and there were several stages with bands playing throughout the afternoon.
We took as many pictures as possible of all the creative, crazy, and disgusting outfits we saw, but the costumed being in droves and surprisingly swift, were hard to capture. There were bubble wrap jellyfish, painted human cotton candy, waffles, Oscar the Grouch, a girl with appropriately placed censor bars, the modern day Village People, New Belgium beer caps made of pie pans, a girl Tobias Funke in never nude attire, smartly dressed giant eyeballs...even a painted dog. The most popular costumes by far were Mario and Luigi, though some were quite elaborate and some were half assed (actually many of them were half assed), followed by lots of Flintstones and gnomes running around. Basically it was chaos. Well, I wouldn't say complete chaos. I detected two unwritten rules as to how to make a costume for the event.
1. Ensure it be as ugly as possible.
Sub rule A: Include copious amounts of neon.
Sub rule B: Loud and conflicting patterns are to be encouraged.
2. Take your outfit and chop it in half, so that, preferably, at least a butt cheek, or boob is hanging out.
If it sounds like feeding tens of thousands of people beer and putting them on bikes is a bad idea, the town had a great and novel approach. Security was lax. Drunks weren't quarantined in a beer corral. You could wander in and out of the event. And instead of swarming with cops, they had a large number of EMT's on stand by. So few cops, it was a few hours before I saw one. I saw a man with a freezer size zip lock bag of marijuana, waving it around like it was a handbag, but no cops. I suppose it's hard to stuff a gallon of weed into 2 inch shorts.
It might surprise you then that at the end of the event it was reported that everyone had behaved themselves and there had been no fights. We were then instructed by the MC to show him our butts (as if everyone hadn't seen enough of that) by bending down and picking up trash. A surprisingly family (we saw a lot of children) and earth (the port-a-potty karaoke booth was solar paneled) friendly drunk fest.
At 11:30 am
Shark Attack
In a diaper
Penguin and the PACE
DIY Jellyfish
Smoking gnomes
Birdman
Elephant man
Smurf man
Bob Marlio
Underwear guy
Waldo just got kicked in the balls by Leopard
and Hotdog guy stood by and laughed
He was posing for us. You can't get the full effect
because there is no "thrusting" setting on the camera
I've heard of Rhinestone Cowboy but...???
Censor Bars w/ a New Belguim pie pan hat
The Waffle and the egg
Oscar...who is he texting anyway? He has no friends
Yep karaokee...
...in a porta potty
Day 71 & 72 (Thursday 8/30/12 & Friday 8/31/12)- Boulder, CO
Our friend Kurt just started the PHD program at CU Boulder. Seeing him was our first stop in town. Since Kurt lives near campus we took a walk (about a 6 mile walk) all along campus and downtown, getting a feel for the area. Since he just got to CO about a month ago this put a lot of pressure on him as tour guide. The fact we know nothing about the town eased his pressure.
All the buildings on campus look the same. Though inside one we saw a state of the art black box theatre, but only because of Kurt's VIP status. Special and secretive, yet it did not require a retinal scan to enter, which according to Kurt is needed to submit a thesis at Arizon State. In another building, though I could not point it out to you if you asked, we found an ice rink, and a very talented practically Olympic ready skater performing her routine to music.
Kurt's whole family is very active and in between fits of hyperventilation Amanda and I discussed whether he or his sister Sara was the faster walker. We had a nice lunch at a downtown brewery and argued about what constitutes "outdoorsy." Kurt maintained it was not merely going outdoors, but must involve a strong risk of death. For example, he said, if one of us were to pass out as we were walking (there was a high risk of Amanda or I doing just that) we would wake up in a hospital and not not wake up, as might happen in the mountains. Don't worry Mom, despite all the National Parks, we are not at all outdoorsy.
We headed back to Kurt's and met his friendly and funny roommates and had a nice time talking with them. Eventually Kurt had to study, which gave us a chance to explore town-feet free, by car. Though we drove around for a bit, we ended up where Kurt did, at the Starbuck's. We met his barista friend who is moving to Portland and who warned us to be careful of the looming blue moon when strange people do stranger things. We later saw pictures of her suspended in the air, hanging from the ceiling by way of hooks pierced into her back flesh. Keep Portland weird indeed. We stayed in that night. If she was worried, we we're terrified.
Kurt in a supreme act of generousity gave up his brand new bed for us to sleep on. He downgraded significantly and spent the night on our squeaky air mattress.
Friday began with a cantaloupe feast for breakfast (we we're pressured into them by Kurt and glad he was so insistent) and then said our goodbyes to Kurt and headed out for a tour. No, in case you're starting to think us drunks, it did not involve beer. We got chemically adjusted with buckets of caffiene on the Celestial Seasonings Tea Factory tour.
Boulder is home to the only Celestial Seasonings factory in the world, where they mill and package all of their tea (except their mint teas which are too sticky and pungent. The three types-spearmint, peppermint, and...catnip. If they start marketing teas to cats I wonder whether tension tamer cat tea will be made out of speed) As we learned on the free tour all types of tea, be it white, black or green actually come from the same plant: Camellia Sinnensis. Herbal teas would more accurately be described as tea infusions as they don't actually contain any of the tea plant and therefore aren't tea.
The company impressed us as they actually let you walk through the factory. You can trust their tea is clean (Yeah, they made me not only cover my head, but wear a beard net too. I was not happy the costume was mandatory as stated in tour rule number 6. I was overjoyed at rule number 7-"no pictures allowed") The best part by far was the tea tasting. Both before and after the tour you are given a sampling cup and allowed to try as many of their teas as you would like. For us that meant three bathroom visits worth of tea. They have over 80 different teas, many exclusive to their store, and we tried to try them all. Never before have we been so amped up on failure.
From there we attempted to explore the city of Boulder but ran into excessive traffic and little parking. Driving through various states we've seen a pattern, so much so that when we were in say Wyoming or Montana and got cut off or saw something crazy on the road, we could expect to see the green and white of a Colorado license plate. Our beer teacher confirmed that Colorado has some of the nation's most aggressive drivers, more so than New Jersey even. In Boulder we found out why. When turning, green lights last 3 seconds. Yellow barely registers. Exasperated with Boulder I ate some bull testicles and we turned around.
All the buildings on campus look the same. Though inside one we saw a state of the art black box theatre, but only because of Kurt's VIP status. Special and secretive, yet it did not require a retinal scan to enter, which according to Kurt is needed to submit a thesis at Arizon State. In another building, though I could not point it out to you if you asked, we found an ice rink, and a very talented practically Olympic ready skater performing her routine to music.
Kurt's whole family is very active and in between fits of hyperventilation Amanda and I discussed whether he or his sister Sara was the faster walker. We had a nice lunch at a downtown brewery and argued about what constitutes "outdoorsy." Kurt maintained it was not merely going outdoors, but must involve a strong risk of death. For example, he said, if one of us were to pass out as we were walking (there was a high risk of Amanda or I doing just that) we would wake up in a hospital and not not wake up, as might happen in the mountains. Don't worry Mom, despite all the National Parks, we are not at all outdoorsy.
We headed back to Kurt's and met his friendly and funny roommates and had a nice time talking with them. Eventually Kurt had to study, which gave us a chance to explore town-feet free, by car. Though we drove around for a bit, we ended up where Kurt did, at the Starbuck's. We met his barista friend who is moving to Portland and who warned us to be careful of the looming blue moon when strange people do stranger things. We later saw pictures of her suspended in the air, hanging from the ceiling by way of hooks pierced into her back flesh. Keep Portland weird indeed. We stayed in that night. If she was worried, we we're terrified.
Kurt in a supreme act of generousity gave up his brand new bed for us to sleep on. He downgraded significantly and spent the night on our squeaky air mattress.
Friday began with a cantaloupe feast for breakfast (we we're pressured into them by Kurt and glad he was so insistent) and then said our goodbyes to Kurt and headed out for a tour. No, in case you're starting to think us drunks, it did not involve beer. We got chemically adjusted with buckets of caffiene on the Celestial Seasonings Tea Factory tour.
Boulder is home to the only Celestial Seasonings factory in the world, where they mill and package all of their tea (except their mint teas which are too sticky and pungent. The three types-spearmint, peppermint, and...catnip. If they start marketing teas to cats I wonder whether tension tamer cat tea will be made out of speed) As we learned on the free tour all types of tea, be it white, black or green actually come from the same plant: Camellia Sinnensis. Herbal teas would more accurately be described as tea infusions as they don't actually contain any of the tea plant and therefore aren't tea.
The company impressed us as they actually let you walk through the factory. You can trust their tea is clean (Yeah, they made me not only cover my head, but wear a beard net too. I was not happy the costume was mandatory as stated in tour rule number 6. I was overjoyed at rule number 7-"no pictures allowed") The best part by far was the tea tasting. Both before and after the tour you are given a sampling cup and allowed to try as many of their teas as you would like. For us that meant three bathroom visits worth of tea. They have over 80 different teas, many exclusive to their store, and we tried to try them all. Never before have we been so amped up on failure.
From there we attempted to explore the city of Boulder but ran into excessive traffic and little parking. Driving through various states we've seen a pattern, so much so that when we were in say Wyoming or Montana and got cut off or saw something crazy on the road, we could expect to see the green and white of a Colorado license plate. Our beer teacher confirmed that Colorado has some of the nation's most aggressive drivers, more so than New Jersey even. In Boulder we found out why. When turning, green lights last 3 seconds. Yellow barely registers. Exasperated with Boulder I ate some bull testicles and we turned around.
Tea pot on display at Celestial Seasonings
Tea pot on display at Celestial Seasonings
Monday, September 3, 2012
Controversial
Warning politics follows. I don’t want to scare off or rile our friends and readers, so if you get angry (at me) stop reading. If you just get angry in general, good. Vote
Also, I wrote this on Word and when I transferred it the formatting went funky. Graphs in particular. Sorry. Click on the links to get better, clearer images.
Our proximity to the President was thrilling. His speech, though, was disappointing. He seemed tired. Maybe even sick. I can see the complaint about his reliance on teleprompters because he stumbled through the speech unassisted. Though I don’t get how this makes for the cache of political ammunition that has been leveled at him-given the ineloquence of his predecessor and the awkward off script moments of his competitor. Here there was not the same vigor of hope and change. From the years of opposition there were new scars and some new anger. (I think in particular some angry words were alluding to the “you didn’t build that” ridiculousness. A perfect example of an awkward sentence turned into outright fabrication. I hate to even go to the trouble here, but somehow the lies are sticking. We’ve seen several “You didn’t build that" billboards in CO.
Here’s Jon Stewart’s take. The least serious of my sources, but the most entertaining
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/jon-stewart-rips-fox-and-romney-out-contex
The President hit some of the same notes (“Yes we can”) but sounded like a band on a reunion tour trotting out the tired hits. I don’t blame him, he’s got better things to do, but he has to pander if he wants to continue doing so. That his speech wasn’t polished doesn‘t bother me so much, it‘s the implications of it. I thought Obama’s best advantage was a verbal one, contrasting his ideas with Romney’s during the debates. I am not so sure now.
Here’s what feels like a painful confession-I like Obama. Or, if you're on the other side, I still like Obama. I feel bad for the guy. Nothing he does seems to please anyone.
He’s a socialist. He's anti business.
He’s been bought by wall street and repays them through bailouts and employment.
(actually not nearly as much as you might think)
http://www.factcheck.org/2012/02/obama-white-house-full-of-wall-street-executives/
He’s an out of touch elite, a Harvard lawyer (2 dirty words), who hasn’t helped regular Joes on Main street.
Yet who rather than work on wall street himself, worked in the inner city as a community organizer and with this poor codling mindset has created a welfare state to the detriment of the business community, the "Food Stamp President" (these critics forget all about the recession momentarily-strange as this is the only time they do so-somehow overlooking that people who lose their jobs become poor, and poor people haven’t the money to pay taxes, let alone eat, and since feeding themselves is difficult, might need some assistance).
He’s a millionaire, but wants to pay more taxes, who has been responsible for tax cuts galore.
He’s soft, and anti American. He’s going to criminalize gun ownership, but who wiped out upper echelon Al Qaeda leadership with drone attacks,
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/09/the-terrorist-notches-on-obamas-belt/
while scaling back troop presence. Who’s improving the world image of America while deporting more immigrants than Bush.
-According to the Pew Global Attitudes Project, in 2008 the positive view of the United States in Germany was 31 percent, in France it was 42 percent, and in Japan it was 50 percent. Last year, it was 62%, 75%, and 85%
(Some might use this as proof of his anti-Americanism, but wouldn’t you say people are less likely to try and blow you up if they like you?)
-“According to current figures from Immigration and Customs Enforcement -- the federal agency responsible for deportations -- Obama has removed 1.4 million people during his 42 months in office so far...If you instead compare the two presidents’ monthly averages, it works out to 32,886 for Obama and 20,964 for Bush, putting Obama clearly in the lead. Bill Clinton is far behind with 869,676 total and 9,059 per month. All previous occupants of the White House going back to 1892 fell well short of the level of the three most recent presidents.”
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/aug/10/american-principles-action/has-barack-obama-deported-more-people-any-other-pr/
While we're at it we might clear up the nasty anti-business rumor too.
"corporate profits are now at a peak in dollar terms and close to an all-time high as a percentage of GDP. Total cash reserves at U.S. corporations total more than $2 trillion, close to a 50-year high in relative terms."
http://business.time.com/2012/01/18/the-big-winner-of-the-great-recession-is/#ixzz26lKgR7OH
And despite these huge profits corporate taxes are near their lowest levels ever
("Since 1950, corporate tax receipts have averaged 2.7 percent of GDP. In the Obama years, they’ve averaged 1.16 percent of GDP.")
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/obamas-real-record-on-business/2012/06/11/gJQAcvr7UV_blog.html
He's a radical who ran as a centrist. He's the same as usual after promising transformative change.
He’s been blamed for the failure of the success that he had little to do with. Yeah, that’s as screwed up as it sounds. We’ll try it this way. No one wants to admit they were responsible for the stimulus, much less try to point out that it worked.
Speaking of the stimulus-it was too big, it was too small. And Obamacare, it’s a government takeover of health care. No, others say, Obamacare isn’t a government takeover of health care, and it should be. Either way Obamacare wasn’t written by Obama. In fact prior to Obama's involvement the individual mandate had some support from Republicans.
"I am for people, individuals -- exactly like automobile insurance -- individuals having health insurance and being required to have health insurance. And I am prepared to vote for a voucher system which will give individuals, on a sliding scale, a government subsidy so we insure that everyone as individuals have health insurance."
Who was that? Newt Gingrich actually (Meet the Press Oct. 3, 1993)
Democrats complain he’s ineffective. He’s a sell out, who did too little, who caved to Republican threats. Too tame, too timid. He spent way too much time trying to work with the other side, when a mutual deal was clearly impossible. Not diabolically evil, but naïve.
Yes, he hasn’t produced the types of change his campaign followers hoped for, like ending racism and immediately erasing all our problems, but many liberals forget or discount two things
1. His challenges
Don’t need to go into details here, on how much things sucked when he stepped in, but he had other difficulties, like -“only for roughly four months during Obama’s term did Democrats have the 60 Senate votes they needed to overcome a filibuster.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/magazine/what-the-left-doesnt-understand-about-obama.html (This article makes several of my points much better than I)
And they needed those 60 votes, because much of Obama’s plans have been filibustered. While only “41 senators, which could represent as little as 12.3% of the U.S. population, can make a filibuster happen” it takes 3/5 to break a filibuster, which is called Cloture.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate#Filibuster_and_cloture
The number of cloture filings have doubled during Obama’s presidency
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/the-history-of-the-filibuster-in-one-graph/2012/05/15/gIQAVHf0RU_blog.html
Here's a choice example of liberal unreasonableness-I think almost everyone would agree the word "stimulus" is political poison right now, but even at the beginning there was hesitation. $400-$500 was the conventional stimulus figure weeks before Obama’s larger proposal passed and did so barely. Yet despite robust Republican and public opposition many liberals now say that it was insufficient and should have been, and still should be, doubled and the fact that Obama passed the original bill, while facing widespread public criticism, is proof he's soft. That he slipped in a couple of smaller and more covert stimulus measures since the original tends not to get brought up.
2. He’s criticized for ineffectiveness despite a number of large accomplishments.
Which leads us right into the Republican side of things because one person’s accomplishment is another’s destruction of America. Strangely Republicans seem to view Obama in much higher regard than Democrats. He’s frighteningly effective (in his socialist agenda) in nearly everything, except the economy. Totally unwilling to work with Republicans or compromise to boot.
So is Obama a complex, conflicted man in a conflicted and dumbed down political landscape? Is he confused and inconsistent? Is he too modest? Has he, like he said he would, taken ideas from both sides? Has he for each particular issue depending on circumstances and feasibility adjusted? Has he focused on the end result and whether or not it was better than the alternative nothing, whether that be unrealistic liberal dreams that would have amounted to nothing or the more straightforward do nothing "no" of Republicans? Has he simply been lied about?
The most notable contradiction of Obama is that the man whose inspirational speeches got him elected, has during his presidency been such a poor communicator that most people don’t know what he has done or why he’s done it. (Though to be fair to him, he’s up against a powerful machine whose goal is to spread misinformation. If you don’t think so, consider this- If the problem was solely Obama’s lack of articulating his plans and motivations clearly, people would simply be confused. There would be no narrative to his presidency. Many people are emphatic, however, about what Obama has done and that narrative is the exact opposite of the truth. Here is the frightening effectiveness.
A main theme of the Republican narrative is that the debt is our biggest threat and that cutting it by shrinking government is our way out of the recession. This seems to be a popular believe, though I think cutting social programs now would be the worst time to do so. What’s worse than losing your job? Losing your job and finding out that, though all the time you were working you could have gotten food stamps and unemployment insurance, now that you need them those programs have been gutted.
People argue about the proper size of government and what governmental employees should be paid, but government jobs are jobs, that pay real money, that in turn get spent on real things like food and rent, putting money into the economy. When so many have lost their jobs the idea that we would voluntarily elect to terminate existing jobs (while also claiming that this is somehow helping the economy) seems foolish.
If a construction worker is unemployed, instead of giving him unemployment, why not have him build a road? I guess there’s another option. If he’s already working for the government, fire him, and slash his unemployment benefits.
The seeming one consistency between Republicans and Democrats is that if Obama acted differently (though they have wildly different ideas on what that better would entail) the economy would be in better shape.
Some of this is understandable. The economy stinks. Obama’s in change, so he gets blamed. But if he is blamed for underestimating our economic problem this applies to his critics also, that without his actions things would be much, much worse. It’s kind of like if you caught on fire and a doctor saved your life and you can’t stop complaining because it hurts and you think he botched the reconstructive surgery. (All my metaphors, for some reason, are going to involve fire by the way).
Then again recession problems are tied to consumer confidence. It would do no good for Obama to be excessively dire about the state of the economy. I guess we won’t know how naïve he was or wasn’t.
Here’s how the austerity (Don't spend money) vs. stimulus debate played out.
First Bush and Republicans thought stimulus was a good idea. Once Obama showed up it wasn’t such a great idea, but still got passed. And then it was time to deal with the debt..well, unless we’re talking about taxes.
Obama could have refused to extend the Bush tax cuts on income over $250,000, but if he did Republicans would ensure tax cuts for everyone would end. Obama made a deal keeping all the tax cuts and getting an extension of unemployment benefits, that otherwise wouldn’t have happened. Later Republicans refused to raise the debt ceiling until they got spending cuts. For fear of a economic catastrophe, Obama again caved.
Both of these examples show not only was Obama’s focus on the economy, but that he acted in a way more consistent with fixing it than his opposition.
A third example would be his dealing of Wall Street. Lets say a crew of firefighters show up to a house fire. They discover the fire is the result of a meth lab explosion. They wouldn’t ignore the fire because it was the result of illegal, immoral, and dangerous behavior. The firefighters would be guilty of something similar-not acting when inaction means danger for the whole community. They would deal with the fire and prevent it from spreading. Punishment would come later (Yeah, I‘m waiting for that too).
If you don’t think it was an emergency, a financial fire, or if you think we shouldn't have bailed out the banks, well we tried that. Albeit very briefly. It didn't go well.
From 9/12-9/17/08 as Lehman Brothers (a smaller bank) collapsed without government intervention the stock market dropped over 7%. What’s worse? Later as the first attempt at passing the bank bailout stimulus failed the stock market had its largest single day drop ever, falling almost 7%, or $1.2 trillion (9/29/08)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_daily_changes_in_the_Dow_Jones_Industrial_Average
If it wasn't an emergency, then why did 58 Representatives change their minds and days later vote for the stimulus bill they had just voted down?
To help prevent a bigger catastrophe for everyone the banks were bailed out. Just as the bank's financial problems, when exposed, became America's financial problems, punishment of banks, though vindicating, would be masochistic because it would again punish all of America.
The stimulus, which spans two presidents and is extremely complicated, has many misconceptions (in part because of those two factors). Here are some potentially surprising facts about it.
-Both the bank and auto bailouts were started by Bush.
-It was not as expensive as people think.
-Job loss stopped and growth (though insufficient) began.
85% of Republicans in the house voted for the original stimulus.
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/110/house/2/votes/42/
The senate passed it 81 to 16.
Some familiar names voted for it-Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, John McCain, Eric Cantor, Michelle Bachmann, Lindsey Graham. In fact one person who didn’t vote for it was Obama (He didn’t vote at all. Must have been running for president or something)
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110&session=2&vote=00010
As to the cost of the most disliked elements of the stimulus-the bailouts:
“The Congressional Budget Office…reduced that (final expected cost of TARP) to $66 billion. Now Treasury reckons that taxpayers will lose less than $50 billion at worst, but at best could break even or even make money. Its best-case assumptions, however, assume that A.I.G. and the auto companies will remain profitable and that Treasury will get a good price as it sells its corporate shares in coming years. Whatever the final losses from housing, auto companies, A.I.G. or smaller banks, those will be offset by taxpayers’ profits from the big banks…They have repaid their loans and Treasury has collected about $25 billion more from dividends. Many smaller banks hold on to their loans, however,”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/01/business/01tarp.html
For the auto portion specifically:
“the $80 billion financial bailout…has cost taxpayers at least $14 billion….To put it in perspective, $14 billion is….roughly two months of operating expenses for the U.S. military in Afghanistan”
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/06/how-much-did-the-auto-bailout-cost-taxpayers/
-Also, the stimulus (including Obama's ARRA portion) was largely tax cuts (which if you ask Republicans is the greatest job creator).
“According to the Congressional Budget Office, tax cuts in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 reduced revenues by $253 billion between 2009 and 2011 – about a third of the budgetary cost of the stimulus package.
Further tax cuts agreed to by President Obama in 2010 added another $354 billion to the deficit in 2011 and a similar amount this year. Thus about $1 trillion of the deficit since 2009 came from tax cuts.”
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/14/blaming-obama-for-george-w-bushs-policies/
This leads into some perplexing arithmetic. When tax cuts are a central feature of a stimulus package attached to Obama this is considered astronomic, debt-exploding spending, but when the spendaholic proposes to eliminate some of the tax cuts, the issue is to Republicans not worth pursuing, apparently having a negligible effect on the debt.
-Influence of the stimulus on the economy
“The private sector has actually added jobs since Obama was sworn in -- 427,000 of them, to be exact. For context, remember that the private sector lost 170,000 jobs during George W. Bush's eight years.
Of course, it's not really fair to blame Obama -- or Bush -- for jobs lost in their first few months before their policies took effect. If we more sensibly look at private sector payrolls after their first six months in office, then Obama has created 3.1 million jobs and Bush created 967,000 jobs.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/08/a-full-fact-check-of-niall-fergusons-very-bad-argument-against-obama/261306/
Made by Obama, but generally validated by abc
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/bush-obama-cost-america-million-jobs-republicans-democrats-george-barack-loss-ron-claiborne-11998507
Next onto Obamacare which has been called both a distraction from the economy and a job killer. Both seem wrong. Containing the massive and expanding cost of health care is directly linked to our economy. While the Congressional Budget Office said about Obamacare-
[T]he effects of the two laws on direct spending and revenues related to health care will reduce federal deficits by $210 billion over the 2012-2021 period.”
-FactCheck.org calls the job killer claim a “whopper”
http://www.factcheck.org/2012/02/gops-job-killing-whopper-again-2/
Many new health care jobs should be created as many more people will have access. In fact insurance companies will get millions of new customers, which is why many liberals are upset with Obamacare. They want a public option to reign in private insurance abuse.
So his spending on the stimulus and Obamacare isn’t as drastic as some would make it out to be. In perspective:
The “roughly $2 trillion swing (from projected surplus to actual debt) as coming from four broad categories: the business cycle, President George W. Bush’s policies, policies from the Bush years that are scheduled to expire but that Mr. Obama has chosen to extend, and new policies proposed by Mr. Obama.
The first category — the business cycle — accounts for 37 percent of the $2 trillion swing. It’s a reflection of the fact that both the 2001 recession and the current one reduced tax revenue, required more spending on safety-net programs…
About 33 percent of the swing stems from new legislation signed by Mr. Bush. That legislation, like his tax cuts and the Medicare prescription drug benefit…
Mr. Obama’s main contribution to the deficit is his extension of several Bush policies, like the Iraq war and tax cuts for households making less than $250,000. Such policies — together with the Wall Street bailout, which was signed by Mr. Bush and supported by Mr. Obama — account for 20 percent of the swing.
About 7 percent comes from the stimulus bill that Mr. Obama signed in February. And only 3 percent comes from Mr. Obama’s agenda on health care, education, energy and other areas. “
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/business/economy/10leonhardt.html
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/07/24/opinion/sunday/24editorial_graph2.html?ref=sunday
Yet here’s the dominant and Republican narrative- Obama’s extravagant spending is hurting the economy. We need to stop him. This message (we’ll call it A) was extremely effective-endless filibustering, Republicans regaining the House, stimulus is an expletive, the debt is the national focus, passing the Budget Control Act that is expected to save $2.1 trillion over the next 10 years (All of that we’ll call B). Message A was so effective Republicans are running on it again. As if B not only didn’t happen, but completely ignoring that B’s occurrence makes A invalid.
It makes some sense though. Cycling through A and B sounds better than C-We claimed A, tried austerity (B) and the economy is still bad.
Here’s some additional reporting on his spending.
“Total government spending under his watch had the steepest annual decline in three decades. Imagine total government employees fell by the fastest rate in more than 60 years. Imagine that in his last two years, federal spending and federal employment grew by the slowest annual rate since the 1950s.
Now open your eyes. Welcome to Austerity USA. Total government employment -- that's federal, state, and local -- has indeed fallen by the sharpest annual rate since the 1940s. It's now
at 2006 levels and declining.
Total government spending has fallen by the sharpest rate since the 1970s. It is now at 2008 levels and declining.
Meanwhile in Washington, federal spending (which has grown every year since then 1960s) is increasing at its slowest pace in half a century, and federal employment is in true decline. Eighteen months removed from the start of the Census, it's shrinking at its fastest rate since the mid-1950s.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/barack-obama-austerity-president/252319/
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505123_162-57400362/is-obama-really-spending-and-regulating-more/
If feels when watching TV like I’m the only person who thinks Obama is reasonable and, given the circumstances, impressive. I hope he just had an off day.
Bonus Myth Buster.
Obama is driving up oil prices by denying access to oil and imposing steep environmental regulations. This accusation ignores that the price of oil is set by world markets and that if we’re paying more for gas everyone else is too. Oh, and then there’s the fact that, under Obama, we're for the first time actually exporting more oil than importing.
http://science.time.com/2012/03/08/0-44-million-barrels-per-day/
Feel free to make comments.
Also, I wrote this on Word and when I transferred it the formatting went funky. Graphs in particular. Sorry. Click on the links to get better, clearer images.
Our proximity to the President was thrilling. His speech, though, was disappointing. He seemed tired. Maybe even sick. I can see the complaint about his reliance on teleprompters because he stumbled through the speech unassisted. Though I don’t get how this makes for the cache of political ammunition that has been leveled at him-given the ineloquence of his predecessor and the awkward off script moments of his competitor. Here there was not the same vigor of hope and change. From the years of opposition there were new scars and some new anger. (I think in particular some angry words were alluding to the “you didn’t build that” ridiculousness. A perfect example of an awkward sentence turned into outright fabrication. I hate to even go to the trouble here, but somehow the lies are sticking. We’ve seen several “You didn’t build that" billboards in CO.
Here’s Jon Stewart’s take. The least serious of my sources, but the most entertaining
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/jon-stewart-rips-fox-and-romney-out-contex
The President hit some of the same notes (“Yes we can”) but sounded like a band on a reunion tour trotting out the tired hits. I don’t blame him, he’s got better things to do, but he has to pander if he wants to continue doing so. That his speech wasn’t polished doesn‘t bother me so much, it‘s the implications of it. I thought Obama’s best advantage was a verbal one, contrasting his ideas with Romney’s during the debates. I am not so sure now.
Here’s what feels like a painful confession-I like Obama. Or, if you're on the other side, I still like Obama. I feel bad for the guy. Nothing he does seems to please anyone.
He’s a socialist. He's anti business.
He’s been bought by wall street and repays them through bailouts and employment.
(actually not nearly as much as you might think)
http://www.factcheck.org/2012/02/obama-white-house-full-of-wall-street-executives/
He’s an out of touch elite, a Harvard lawyer (2 dirty words), who hasn’t helped regular Joes on Main street.
Yet who rather than work on wall street himself, worked in the inner city as a community organizer and with this poor codling mindset has created a welfare state to the detriment of the business community, the "Food Stamp President" (these critics forget all about the recession momentarily-strange as this is the only time they do so-somehow overlooking that people who lose their jobs become poor, and poor people haven’t the money to pay taxes, let alone eat, and since feeding themselves is difficult, might need some assistance).
He’s a millionaire, but wants to pay more taxes, who has been responsible for tax cuts galore.
He’s soft, and anti American. He’s going to criminalize gun ownership, but who wiped out upper echelon Al Qaeda leadership with drone attacks,
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/09/the-terrorist-notches-on-obamas-belt/
while scaling back troop presence. Who’s improving the world image of America while deporting more immigrants than Bush.
-According to the Pew Global Attitudes Project, in 2008 the positive view of the United States in Germany was 31 percent, in France it was 42 percent, and in Japan it was 50 percent. Last year, it was 62%, 75%, and 85%
(Some might use this as proof of his anti-Americanism, but wouldn’t you say people are less likely to try and blow you up if they like you?)
-“According to current figures from Immigration and Customs Enforcement -- the federal agency responsible for deportations -- Obama has removed 1.4 million people during his 42 months in office so far...If you instead compare the two presidents’ monthly averages, it works out to 32,886 for Obama and 20,964 for Bush, putting Obama clearly in the lead. Bill Clinton is far behind with 869,676 total and 9,059 per month. All previous occupants of the White House going back to 1892 fell well short of the level of the three most recent presidents.”
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/aug/10/american-principles-action/has-barack-obama-deported-more-people-any-other-pr/
While we're at it we might clear up the nasty anti-business rumor too.
"corporate profits are now at a peak in dollar terms and close to an all-time high as a percentage of GDP. Total cash reserves at U.S. corporations total more than $2 trillion, close to a 50-year high in relative terms."
http://business.time.com/2012/01/18/the-big-winner-of-the-great-recession-is/#ixzz26lKgR7OH
And despite these huge profits corporate taxes are near their lowest levels ever
("Since 1950, corporate tax receipts have averaged 2.7 percent of GDP. In the Obama years, they’ve averaged 1.16 percent of GDP.")
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/obamas-real-record-on-business/2012/06/11/gJQAcvr7UV_blog.html
He's a radical who ran as a centrist. He's the same as usual after promising transformative change.
He’s been blamed for the failure of the success that he had little to do with. Yeah, that’s as screwed up as it sounds. We’ll try it this way. No one wants to admit they were responsible for the stimulus, much less try to point out that it worked.
Speaking of the stimulus-it was too big, it was too small. And Obamacare, it’s a government takeover of health care. No, others say, Obamacare isn’t a government takeover of health care, and it should be. Either way Obamacare wasn’t written by Obama. In fact prior to Obama's involvement the individual mandate had some support from Republicans.
"I am for people, individuals -- exactly like automobile insurance -- individuals having health insurance and being required to have health insurance. And I am prepared to vote for a voucher system which will give individuals, on a sliding scale, a government subsidy so we insure that everyone as individuals have health insurance."
Who was that? Newt Gingrich actually (Meet the Press Oct. 3, 1993)
Democrats complain he’s ineffective. He’s a sell out, who did too little, who caved to Republican threats. Too tame, too timid. He spent way too much time trying to work with the other side, when a mutual deal was clearly impossible. Not diabolically evil, but naïve.
Yes, he hasn’t produced the types of change his campaign followers hoped for, like ending racism and immediately erasing all our problems, but many liberals forget or discount two things
1. His challenges
Don’t need to go into details here, on how much things sucked when he stepped in, but he had other difficulties, like -“only for roughly four months during Obama’s term did Democrats have the 60 Senate votes they needed to overcome a filibuster.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/magazine/what-the-left-doesnt-understand-about-obama.html (This article makes several of my points much better than I)
And they needed those 60 votes, because much of Obama’s plans have been filibustered. While only “41 senators, which could represent as little as 12.3% of the U.S. population, can make a filibuster happen” it takes 3/5 to break a filibuster, which is called Cloture.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate#Filibuster_and_cloture
The number of cloture filings have doubled during Obama’s presidency
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/the-history-of-the-filibuster-in-one-graph/2012/05/15/gIQAVHf0RU_blog.html
Here's a choice example of liberal unreasonableness-I think almost everyone would agree the word "stimulus" is political poison right now, but even at the beginning there was hesitation. $400-$500 was the conventional stimulus figure weeks before Obama’s larger proposal passed and did so barely. Yet despite robust Republican and public opposition many liberals now say that it was insufficient and should have been, and still should be, doubled and the fact that Obama passed the original bill, while facing widespread public criticism, is proof he's soft. That he slipped in a couple of smaller and more covert stimulus measures since the original tends not to get brought up.
2. He’s criticized for ineffectiveness despite a number of large accomplishments.
Which leads us right into the Republican side of things because one person’s accomplishment is another’s destruction of America. Strangely Republicans seem to view Obama in much higher regard than Democrats. He’s frighteningly effective (in his socialist agenda) in nearly everything, except the economy. Totally unwilling to work with Republicans or compromise to boot.
So is Obama a complex, conflicted man in a conflicted and dumbed down political landscape? Is he confused and inconsistent? Is he too modest? Has he, like he said he would, taken ideas from both sides? Has he for each particular issue depending on circumstances and feasibility adjusted? Has he focused on the end result and whether or not it was better than the alternative nothing, whether that be unrealistic liberal dreams that would have amounted to nothing or the more straightforward do nothing "no" of Republicans? Has he simply been lied about?
The most notable contradiction of Obama is that the man whose inspirational speeches got him elected, has during his presidency been such a poor communicator that most people don’t know what he has done or why he’s done it. (Though to be fair to him, he’s up against a powerful machine whose goal is to spread misinformation. If you don’t think so, consider this- If the problem was solely Obama’s lack of articulating his plans and motivations clearly, people would simply be confused. There would be no narrative to his presidency. Many people are emphatic, however, about what Obama has done and that narrative is the exact opposite of the truth. Here is the frightening effectiveness.
A main theme of the Republican narrative is that the debt is our biggest threat and that cutting it by shrinking government is our way out of the recession. This seems to be a popular believe, though I think cutting social programs now would be the worst time to do so. What’s worse than losing your job? Losing your job and finding out that, though all the time you were working you could have gotten food stamps and unemployment insurance, now that you need them those programs have been gutted.
People argue about the proper size of government and what governmental employees should be paid, but government jobs are jobs, that pay real money, that in turn get spent on real things like food and rent, putting money into the economy. When so many have lost their jobs the idea that we would voluntarily elect to terminate existing jobs (while also claiming that this is somehow helping the economy) seems foolish.
If a construction worker is unemployed, instead of giving him unemployment, why not have him build a road? I guess there’s another option. If he’s already working for the government, fire him, and slash his unemployment benefits.
The seeming one consistency between Republicans and Democrats is that if Obama acted differently (though they have wildly different ideas on what that better would entail) the economy would be in better shape.
Some of this is understandable. The economy stinks. Obama’s in change, so he gets blamed. But if he is blamed for underestimating our economic problem this applies to his critics also, that without his actions things would be much, much worse. It’s kind of like if you caught on fire and a doctor saved your life and you can’t stop complaining because it hurts and you think he botched the reconstructive surgery. (All my metaphors, for some reason, are going to involve fire by the way).
Then again recession problems are tied to consumer confidence. It would do no good for Obama to be excessively dire about the state of the economy. I guess we won’t know how naïve he was or wasn’t.
Here’s how the austerity (Don't spend money) vs. stimulus debate played out.
First Bush and Republicans thought stimulus was a good idea. Once Obama showed up it wasn’t such a great idea, but still got passed. And then it was time to deal with the debt..well, unless we’re talking about taxes.
Obama could have refused to extend the Bush tax cuts on income over $250,000, but if he did Republicans would ensure tax cuts for everyone would end. Obama made a deal keeping all the tax cuts and getting an extension of unemployment benefits, that otherwise wouldn’t have happened. Later Republicans refused to raise the debt ceiling until they got spending cuts. For fear of a economic catastrophe, Obama again caved.
Both of these examples show not only was Obama’s focus on the economy, but that he acted in a way more consistent with fixing it than his opposition.
A third example would be his dealing of Wall Street. Lets say a crew of firefighters show up to a house fire. They discover the fire is the result of a meth lab explosion. They wouldn’t ignore the fire because it was the result of illegal, immoral, and dangerous behavior. The firefighters would be guilty of something similar-not acting when inaction means danger for the whole community. They would deal with the fire and prevent it from spreading. Punishment would come later (Yeah, I‘m waiting for that too).
If you don’t think it was an emergency, a financial fire, or if you think we shouldn't have bailed out the banks, well we tried that. Albeit very briefly. It didn't go well.
From 9/12-9/17/08 as Lehman Brothers (a smaller bank) collapsed without government intervention the stock market dropped over 7%. What’s worse? Later as the first attempt at passing the bank bailout stimulus failed the stock market had its largest single day drop ever, falling almost 7%, or $1.2 trillion (9/29/08)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_daily_changes_in_the_Dow_Jones_Industrial_Average
If it wasn't an emergency, then why did 58 Representatives change their minds and days later vote for the stimulus bill they had just voted down?
To help prevent a bigger catastrophe for everyone the banks were bailed out. Just as the bank's financial problems, when exposed, became America's financial problems, punishment of banks, though vindicating, would be masochistic because it would again punish all of America.
The stimulus, which spans two presidents and is extremely complicated, has many misconceptions (in part because of those two factors). Here are some potentially surprising facts about it.
-Both the bank and auto bailouts were started by Bush.
-It was not as expensive as people think.
-Job loss stopped and growth (though insufficient) began.
85% of Republicans in the house voted for the original stimulus.
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/110/house/2/votes/42/
The senate passed it 81 to 16.
Some familiar names voted for it-Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, John McCain, Eric Cantor, Michelle Bachmann, Lindsey Graham. In fact one person who didn’t vote for it was Obama (He didn’t vote at all. Must have been running for president or something)
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110&session=2&vote=00010
As to the cost of the most disliked elements of the stimulus-the bailouts:
“The Congressional Budget Office…reduced that (final expected cost of TARP) to $66 billion. Now Treasury reckons that taxpayers will lose less than $50 billion at worst, but at best could break even or even make money. Its best-case assumptions, however, assume that A.I.G. and the auto companies will remain profitable and that Treasury will get a good price as it sells its corporate shares in coming years. Whatever the final losses from housing, auto companies, A.I.G. or smaller banks, those will be offset by taxpayers’ profits from the big banks…They have repaid their loans and Treasury has collected about $25 billion more from dividends. Many smaller banks hold on to their loans, however,”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/01/business/01tarp.html
For the auto portion specifically:
“the $80 billion financial bailout…has cost taxpayers at least $14 billion….To put it in perspective, $14 billion is….roughly two months of operating expenses for the U.S. military in Afghanistan”
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/06/how-much-did-the-auto-bailout-cost-taxpayers/
-Also, the stimulus (including Obama's ARRA portion) was largely tax cuts (which if you ask Republicans is the greatest job creator).
“According to the Congressional Budget Office, tax cuts in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 reduced revenues by $253 billion between 2009 and 2011 – about a third of the budgetary cost of the stimulus package.
Further tax cuts agreed to by President Obama in 2010 added another $354 billion to the deficit in 2011 and a similar amount this year. Thus about $1 trillion of the deficit since 2009 came from tax cuts.”
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/14/blaming-obama-for-george-w-bushs-policies/
This leads into some perplexing arithmetic. When tax cuts are a central feature of a stimulus package attached to Obama this is considered astronomic, debt-exploding spending, but when the spendaholic proposes to eliminate some of the tax cuts, the issue is to Republicans not worth pursuing, apparently having a negligible effect on the debt.
-Influence of the stimulus on the economy
“The private sector has actually added jobs since Obama was sworn in -- 427,000 of them, to be exact. For context, remember that the private sector lost 170,000 jobs during George W. Bush's eight years.
Of course, it's not really fair to blame Obama -- or Bush -- for jobs lost in their first few months before their policies took effect. If we more sensibly look at private sector payrolls after their first six months in office, then Obama has created 3.1 million jobs and Bush created 967,000 jobs.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/08/a-full-fact-check-of-niall-fergusons-very-bad-argument-against-obama/261306/
Made by Obama, but generally validated by abc
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/bush-obama-cost-america-million-jobs-republicans-democrats-george-barack-loss-ron-claiborne-11998507
Next onto Obamacare which has been called both a distraction from the economy and a job killer. Both seem wrong. Containing the massive and expanding cost of health care is directly linked to our economy. While the Congressional Budget Office said about Obamacare-
-FactCheck.org calls the job killer claim a “whopper”
http://www.factcheck.org/2012/02/gops-job-killing-whopper-again-2/
Many new health care jobs should be created as many more people will have access. In fact insurance companies will get millions of new customers, which is why many liberals are upset with Obamacare. They want a public option to reign in private insurance abuse.
So his spending on the stimulus and Obamacare isn’t as drastic as some would make it out to be. In perspective:
The “roughly $2 trillion swing (from projected surplus to actual debt) as coming from four broad categories: the business cycle, President George W. Bush’s policies, policies from the Bush years that are scheduled to expire but that Mr. Obama has chosen to extend, and new policies proposed by Mr. Obama.
The first category — the business cycle — accounts for 37 percent of the $2 trillion swing. It’s a reflection of the fact that both the 2001 recession and the current one reduced tax revenue, required more spending on safety-net programs…
About 33 percent of the swing stems from new legislation signed by Mr. Bush. That legislation, like his tax cuts and the Medicare prescription drug benefit…
Mr. Obama’s main contribution to the deficit is his extension of several Bush policies, like the Iraq war and tax cuts for households making less than $250,000. Such policies — together with the Wall Street bailout, which was signed by Mr. Bush and supported by Mr. Obama — account for 20 percent of the swing.
About 7 percent comes from the stimulus bill that Mr. Obama signed in February. And only 3 percent comes from Mr. Obama’s agenda on health care, education, energy and other areas. “
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/business/economy/10leonhardt.html
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/07/24/opinion/sunday/24editorial_graph2.html?ref=sunday
Yet here’s the dominant and Republican narrative- Obama’s extravagant spending is hurting the economy. We need to stop him. This message (we’ll call it A) was extremely effective-endless filibustering, Republicans regaining the House, stimulus is an expletive, the debt is the national focus, passing the Budget Control Act that is expected to save $2.1 trillion over the next 10 years (All of that we’ll call B). Message A was so effective Republicans are running on it again. As if B not only didn’t happen, but completely ignoring that B’s occurrence makes A invalid.
It makes some sense though. Cycling through A and B sounds better than C-We claimed A, tried austerity (B) and the economy is still bad.
Here’s some additional reporting on his spending.
“Total government spending under his watch had the steepest annual decline in three decades. Imagine total government employees fell by the fastest rate in more than 60 years. Imagine that in his last two years, federal spending and federal employment grew by the slowest annual rate since the 1950s.
Now open your eyes. Welcome to Austerity USA. Total government employment -- that's federal, state, and local -- has indeed fallen by the sharpest annual rate since the 1940s. It's now
at 2006 levels and declining.
Total government spending has fallen by the sharpest rate since the 1970s. It is now at 2008 levels and declining.
Meanwhile in Washington, federal spending (which has grown every year since then 1960s) is increasing at its slowest pace in half a century, and federal employment is in true decline. Eighteen months removed from the start of the Census, it's shrinking at its fastest rate since the mid-1950s.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/barack-obama-austerity-president/252319/
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505123_162-57400362/is-obama-really-spending-and-regulating-more/
If feels when watching TV like I’m the only person who thinks Obama is reasonable and, given the circumstances, impressive. I hope he just had an off day.
Bonus Myth Buster.
Obama is driving up oil prices by denying access to oil and imposing steep environmental regulations. This accusation ignores that the price of oil is set by world markets and that if we’re paying more for gas everyone else is too. Oh, and then there’s the fact that, under Obama, we're for the first time actually exporting more oil than importing.
http://science.time.com/2012/03/08/0-44-million-barrels-per-day/
Feel free to make comments.
Day 70 (Wednesday 8/29/12)- Fort Collins, CO
The state of Colorado is second in the nation in number of breweries (Go Oregon!). Our quest to sample CO's bevy of beer began today with the King of Beers.
Anheuser-Busch (Home of Budweiser as well as many others) has 12 factories in the US. The Fort Collins factory offers free tours describing the history of the art of beer making, as well as free samples at the end. (You can get two free samples by stopping by anytime, but participating in the tour gets you not only a better perspective on the company, but bonus samples).
We spent almost an hour and a half touring the 130-acres factory (We walked a lot, but not that much). We learned about their use of beechwood chips. Though an outdated method by most standards the company famously swears by it. The beechwood chips allow the yeast a place to rest as it tackles the incredible job of fermenting sugars into alcohol.
Many unfathomable numbers were thrown at us as to the sheer size of their production line. Here's one: they can fill 2,000 cans or bottles of beer every single minute in this one factory alone. Though not at full speed we got to view the machinery in action and can confirm it's efficiency and speed. I can also attest to Isaiah's speed. In a heated trivia battle to win the coveted special give away of the day, Isaiah was able to get out the winning answer in record time (The question-when did Budwieser begin? The answer-not in my head, but fortunately in plain view, printed on the bottle, in the display case in front of us). This allowed us to go to Beer School for free. (Normally $10 a piece).
"School" began 20 minutes after our tour ended, but 20 min after our end of tour sampling started, meaning I drank 4 beers in 20 min. Hearing this our beer teacher stated he "liked our style." On to more beer. We had the class to our self and spent the next hour or so with a CSU student named Mark, learning about beer drinking etiquette. I had always thought that sniffing and swirling were only for wine but this is a common misconception. In fact the best way to enjoy any beer is in five steps: (1) Look for clarity in the beer, (2) Swirl it, (3) Sniff repeatedly, (4) Swallow, allowing it to fully wet your tongue and then (5) breath out through your nose after you swallow. Surprisingly this adds a lot to really getting the flavor of the beer. We did all of this convoluted snobby swirling and sniffing with Bud Light (and some more interesting beers too).
Even though the famous Clydesdale horses were out touring, as they are 300 days of the year, the factory is still very much worth the trip.
People might give us crap for choosing the most obvious and widely available brewer to visit, but New Belgium was booked for 4 days, another had conflicting hours, and at Fort Collins Brewery we found good beer, but that their tour is only available on Saturdays. Besides do you know how much free beer we got?!?
In the Budweiser Tour lounge
Anheuser-Busch (Home of Budweiser as well as many others) has 12 factories in the US. The Fort Collins factory offers free tours describing the history of the art of beer making, as well as free samples at the end. (You can get two free samples by stopping by anytime, but participating in the tour gets you not only a better perspective on the company, but bonus samples).
We spent almost an hour and a half touring the 130-acres factory (We walked a lot, but not that much). We learned about their use of beechwood chips. Though an outdated method by most standards the company famously swears by it. The beechwood chips allow the yeast a place to rest as it tackles the incredible job of fermenting sugars into alcohol.
Many unfathomable numbers were thrown at us as to the sheer size of their production line. Here's one: they can fill 2,000 cans or bottles of beer every single minute in this one factory alone. Though not at full speed we got to view the machinery in action and can confirm it's efficiency and speed. I can also attest to Isaiah's speed. In a heated trivia battle to win the coveted special give away of the day, Isaiah was able to get out the winning answer in record time (The question-when did Budwieser begin? The answer-not in my head, but fortunately in plain view, printed on the bottle, in the display case in front of us). This allowed us to go to Beer School for free. (Normally $10 a piece).
"School" began 20 minutes after our tour ended, but 20 min after our end of tour sampling started, meaning I drank 4 beers in 20 min. Hearing this our beer teacher stated he "liked our style." On to more beer. We had the class to our self and spent the next hour or so with a CSU student named Mark, learning about beer drinking etiquette. I had always thought that sniffing and swirling were only for wine but this is a common misconception. In fact the best way to enjoy any beer is in five steps: (1) Look for clarity in the beer, (2) Swirl it, (3) Sniff repeatedly, (4) Swallow, allowing it to fully wet your tongue and then (5) breath out through your nose after you swallow. Surprisingly this adds a lot to really getting the flavor of the beer. We did all of this convoluted snobby swirling and sniffing with Bud Light (and some more interesting beers too).
Even though the famous Clydesdale horses were out touring, as they are 300 days of the year, the factory is still very much worth the trip.
People might give us crap for choosing the most obvious and widely available brewer to visit, but New Belgium was booked for 4 days, another had conflicting hours, and at Fort Collins Brewery we found good beer, but that their tour is only available on Saturdays. Besides do you know how much free beer we got?!?
Carriages the Clydesdale Horses pull
On the Budweiser grounds
Holding tanks for Budweiser
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