Michael from Vail asks the Con Man why liberals hate America, and the Con Man fights back with a vengeance.
Click here for the complete "Con Games with Michael Conniff" for Thursday June 19, 2008.
Add comment June 19th, 2008
ASPEN, COLORADO (Post Time News)—In a contentious electronic mail exchange between members of the Citizens Budget Task Force (CBTF) and the Mayor of Aspen and the City Council, Mayor Mick Ireland is charging unnamed parties with violating Colorado campaign laws in a move he likened to the “Swift Boating” of Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004.
“This country has suffered greatly under Karl Rove and Dick Cheney,” the Mayor wrote in an email, “and I am not going to stand still for that same wedge politics, Swift Boat method being used here. If people want to raise money and run for office, let them do so under the Campaign Finance Act. I don’t like 527 attack groups and I am not going to wait until the attacks are launched before speaking out on what is happening. This is constant politics, don’t let the council do anything but respond to attacks and claims and spin and requests for tons of documents.”
Continue Reading 1 comment June 19th, 2008
Aspen, CO, June 12, 2008 –– The 2008 Aspen Institute McCloskey Speaker Series opens with a lecture by American historian Martin J. Sherwin, Pulitzer Prize-winning co-author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Knopf). Sherwin will discuss “Hiroshima’s Shadow: The First Nuclear World and Ours.”
Continue Reading Add comment June 19th, 2008
The Con Man decries the "Nucons"--the nuclear conservatives--then welcomes Aspen Music Festival and School CEO Alan Fletcher for a wide-ranging discussion of the meaning of music, his own composing, and "storytelling" to come in the summer 2008 season.
Click here for "Con Games with Michael Conniff" for Wednesday June 18, 2008.
Add comment June 18th, 2008
As soon as the food was gone, the chicks would immediately fall silent and settle back down to sleep. And I’d go back to work. I quickly became addicted to observing the new family, picking up my binoculars a dozen times or more each day. I cherished this routine and the rare opportunity to observe nature’s wonder at such convenience.
Within a week, the chicks began to develop their adult feathers, or ‘fledge’ as it’s called in the birding community. I anticipated watching them learn to fly; jumping out of the nest onto the thickly needled branches of their spruce abode, awkwardly testing their new wings as mom and dad encouraged them to explore the outer branches and eventually take that big leap. But it didn’t happen that way at all. One day they were there and the next day, they were gone.
Continue Reading 1 comment June 18th, 2008
Highlights of Ideas Festival sessions open to the public (tickets required) include:
· US Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff in conversation with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg
· Alice Waters in conversation with The Atlantic’s Corby Kummer, with dessert served from her cookbook
· Award-winning National Geographic photographer James Balog exploring ice on the run in his “Extreme Ice Survey”
· A global perspective on the US elections from Der Tagesspiegel’s Christoph von Marschall, Ha'aretz’s Ari Shavit, Edward Luce of the Financial Times, and others
· A talk with four young, resilient survivors of genocide, war, and gang violence, moderated by playwright and actor Anna Deavere Smith.
Continue Reading Add comment June 17th, 2008
Brian Williams reported to the nation last month that Detroit, Michigan high schools suffer a 76 percent drop-out/flunk-out rate for high school seniors. All totaled, 1.2 million eighteen year olds hit the streets functionally illiterate annually. In Denver, Colorado suffered a 73 percent jump of children living in poverty.
Continue Reading Add comment June 16th, 2008
I have made a very difficult decision to resign from the Task Force and Subcommittee. I deeply regret that I cannot continue the good work we have started together. I have learned so very much and most importantly, made new friends in the process.
The work of these two bodies is of critical importance to the community at this very crucial time. Future Burlingame plans and the future of our affordable housing are in question today. The community needs your strong, independent, and credible voice for information and guidance, and to rebuild confidence in the financial policies of the City. The City Council needs your objective input as well.
Continue Reading Add comment June 15th, 2008
The thing I love most about the Food and Wine festival here in Aspen is the famous people I’ve never heard of and would not know from Adam. It’s like going to the Super Bowl with no clue about frozen tundra—you should have stood in bed instead of taking up space in the stands.
A couple years back I was saving a chair at the Hotel Jerome for my fiancée when a woman took the chair for her husband without asking. She said something that indicated her husband was some kind of a big deal in the world of food, but I could not have cared less if he were Wolfgang Puck. It was our chair. I had saved the seat under the universal law found in the Constitution that decrees all men are created equal no matter how nifty you might be with pulled pork and coleslaw.
Continue Reading Add comment June 15th, 2008
The Food & Wine Classic has begun in Aspen and this year the libations are flowing with gusto while the food has left me hungry. Last night I attended the Wines from Spain soiree held at a private home where I chatted with chef Jose Andres. He was funny and truly engaging. The main dish at the soiree was “Paella” a Spanish version of jambalaya. His crew struggled with the altitude to find a boiling point to make the Paella and it showed in the dish … that being said the chef on the grill kept the party hopping with his chorizo sausage sandwich best described as a “Braut with a tasty bite”. I can’t wait to make those at home!
Continue Reading Add comment June 13th, 2008
