Here’s what the venerable, if seldom venerated, Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter said upon the occasion of changing his party affiliation.

“Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans.”

Gotta hand it to ol’ Arlen - at least he’s honest about it.  He minimized the high-minded, principled rhetoric that most party switchers use to ennoble their switcheroo “The party moved away from me”, “I agonized over the decision for months”, “I regret the pain my decision must cost to some of my dearest friends [here a tear appears]“, and, of course “I will never abandon the principles that have guided my political career!”

Specter understands the first principle of politics, which the colorful Leadville Republican Ken Chlouber once summarized after I’d finished telling him about all the great things I was going to do when I was elected to whatever i was running for at the time.

“That’s fine, John,” he said, “But if you don’t git elected, then you don’t git to govern.”

Alas, every pol has to leave office eventually. FDR died, Churchill got tossed out by the voters, and Reagan retired.  Willie Sutton robbed banks “because that’s where the money is,” and Arlen Specter, in the same admirable spirit, has become a Democrat because that’s where the votes are.

And Ken Chlouber?  A few years back, he thought about running for Governor.  An ardent burro racer ( a sport wherein you and your beast run 10 or 15 miles through the mountains, seeking to beat other man/beast teams), Chlouber toured his home district with his faithful burro, dressed as if to race.

He quit the race after a few weeks, but not before a prominent Denver political consultant had offered him some unsolicited advice.

1) Lose the donkey.

2) Wear long pants.

Good advice for any aspiring pol - but if I were Specter, I’d call up Ken & borrow a burro.

Good for party identification-right, Senator?

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on April 28th, 2009 :: Filed under Blog
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As you may know I spent last week vacationing in Madrid.

Both the Spanish capital and the Windy City are finalists in the competition to host the 2016 Olympics, together with Tokyo and Rio de Janeiro. The winner will be announced Oct. 3rd - and this is one Olympic competition in which there is only a gold medal.  The runners-up go home, with empty hands, shattered dreams, and millions spent in search of illusory glory.

I don’t know what factors the illustrious members of the IOC take into consideration when deciding upon a host city.  Infrastructure? History? Politics? How well the would-be hosts schmoozed and flattered the self-important nonentities who become big shots every four years?  Promised benefits, of whatever kind?  Ancient slights, or future favors?

Who knows?  We don’t, and their Olympian majesties aren’t about to tell us. 

But if mundane considerations such as airport adequacy come into play, Chicago is…well, let’s consider the words of Doug Moe, who coached the Nuggets when his weak, underachieving, and injured team, seeded 8th, were to face the mighty Lakers, seeded 1st.

Asked how he assessed his team’s chances in the series, Moe was blunt.

“We’ve got no shot,” he said, provoking howls of wrath from the NBA powers-that-be, which then as now brooked no deviation from the sportspeak party line, e.g. “We’re putting it all on the line, We have respect, but anything can happen, We’re professionals, and we know what to do, blah blah blah.”

But Moe was right.  The Nuggets were swept, and the Lakers cruised to the NBA title.

Based on two very recent experiences with Chicago’s O’Hare and Madrid’s gleaming new airpalace-I mean airport-Chicago isn’t even in the same league. If an airport can be still beautiful, as was Eero Saarinen’s 1950’s TWA building at New York’s Idlewild, Madrid passes that test.  It’s also clean, user-friendly, efficient, and sensibly engineered-especially for international arrivals and departures.

O’Hare, by comparison, is old, cramped, poorly designed, dirty, inefficient, and slow-especially for international arrivals and departures. Combine its inherent inefficiency with the callous bureacracies which “serve” travellers-customs, immigration, the TSA-and you have a supremely miserable travel experience. 

How miserable?  Try this-we exited our Madrid-Chicago cattle car at 2:00 PM, with plenty of time, so we thought, to catch a flight to Denver at 4:30.  We missed the flight. 

But the Lords of the IOC will see none of it-they’ll be flying first class, met by retainers, and whisked away.  They’ll have a classic Potemkin village experience-shielded from the misery of the serfs. 

But for us, the Americans who might actually go to the Chicago games, none of that matters.  We’re used to the chaos and inefficiency of domestic air travel, and Chicago’s a lot closer, and a lot cheaper, than Madrid or Tokyo, especially by car.

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on April 23rd, 2009 :: Filed under Blog
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American dollars! There was once a time, boys and girls, when everyone in the world wanted them. Unlike everyone else’s dicey, unstable currency, featuring crumpled bills of bizarrely large denominations (100,000 lira, 20,000 forints, 500 rubles) which might buy a beer and a pack of cigarettes, dollars were solid, predictable, and immutable. Other countries had pictures of mustachioed dictators on their bills, but not us. Our featured genuinely great men who had created, nurtured, and defended our American democracy. Washington, Lincoln, Jackson, Franklin-and we knew, as we proudly spent our ever-coveted dollars in foreign lands, that they’d be proud of the country that had chosen to so honor them. Things change.

In a Spanish tourist town (Marbella), dollars are not exactly sought after-quite the opposite. Every business offered payment in dollars had the same response-we don’t take ‘em. They don’t even offer you a lousy exchange rate-they just don’t accept dollars, period. Like the unfortunate citizens of Zimbabwe, or Argentina, or any of a dozen countries afflicted with hyperinflation and/or feckless governments, we’re pariahs.

So you scramble. You use ATMs, you beg at banks, you go to the moneychangers, and gratefully accept what they offer. Welcome to a new world, where the American dollar is just a green piece of paper, and Americans are, like Icelanders, just people who had everything going for them…and blew it.

Maybe we need to rename our country-shall we call it CitiLand? Or Greenspanistan?

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Posted by Rob Larimer on April 21st, 2009 :: Filed under Blog
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I’m on a little to vacation in Spain this week.Transatlantic flights are, unless you’re a CEO flying on the company dime, uncomfortable, dismaying, inconvenient, and expensive.

Flying from Chicago to Madrid in what can only be called supereconomy class (narrow seats, back of the plane all night, no sleep) puts you in a strange state that only, perhaps, those who have lived through the 60’s can fully appreciate.

The clocks here in Madrid say it’s 8 A.M., but it’s really 1 A.M. as far as I’m concerned.

Here it is - an airport so modern, so spacious, so-I don’t know, so 21st Century-that it makes DIA look like a collection of quonset huts. And to compare it to O’Hare is like comparing a Ferrari to a Chevy Vega.

And, Madrid isn’t atypical.

Airports throughout Europe are clean, modern, convenient, and new - the product of the furious infrastructure investment that has taken place during the last 15 years on this ancient continent. And what did we do during the same period? Argued, consumed, and paid a few thousand bankers tens of billions to destroy the world economy.

In Colorado, we did our part to invest in airports-look at DIA and our ten year old terminal in Colorado Springs. But in the rest of the country? JFK, O’Hare, Dallas-we’ve scarcely entered the last quarter of the 20th century, let alone the 21st.

But maybe we should just forget about these big, modern, uncomfortable jets and go back to DC-6’s. Slow, comfortable, propeller-driven, stopping in Iceland overnight to refuel…now that’s my kind of geezer flying!

And we could just land ‘em on dirt strips somewhere, and hike to our destinations.

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on April 16th, 2009 :: Filed under Blog
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This is one of many versions of an ancient Indian tale, which came to my mind this week.Each day, for many years, a beggar appears before the king. Without speaking, he gives the king a piece of fruit, which the king never acknowledges, but simply throws away. One day, the king gives the fruit to a pet monkey, who bites into it and reveals a gleaming jewel. Curious about the other pieces of fruit, the King investigates and discovers that they have all been tossed through a window into a locked chamber in his treasury. When he enters the room, he finds only rotten fruit-the gems have disappeared.

The beggar’s gift? The day itself - fleeting, precious, and as perishable as the freshly-picked fruit. The king, distracted by the affairs of his kingdom, threw away the greatest gift of all - to live in joy in our radiant, imperfect world.

Earlier this week, Springs artist Timber Kirwan ended his own life. He was gentle and sweet-tempered, a gifted artist, a man rich in friends, who seemed to float serenely through life’s turmoil. A memorial site was created on FaceBook, which hundreds have joined. His friends remembered the richness of his life, not the darkness which consumed him.

The day of his passing, a friend called to ask whether I knew a good art restoration person. Barbara Webb (Bobbie to her friends and family) had a family portrait which needed cleaning. I gave her a name, and we talked about her many projects, and about returning to Grace Episcopal on Palm Sunday after two years in exile. Bobbie was excited and busy, living in the moment and, with the sunny optimism that has always characterized her, anticipating the delights of days yet to come.

Bobbie is in her 94th year.

How many days did Timber throw away, overtaken by despair? And how fortunate are we who still live and can treasure each day!

So this Sunday, when I once again enter the church where, so many years ago, my parents were the first couple to be married beneath its soaring vaults, I’ll say a prayer for Timber, and offer thanks for the day itself.

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on April 3rd, 2009 :: Filed under Blog
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