Oh, wait. You’re not going to Aspen.
You’re spending the holiday weekend face up on your carpet pretending the insulation falling through the hole in your ceiling is snow and that, given enough effort, it could actually kill you. Until you’re gainfully employed again, you’ll take what you can get, even if it means putting on your swimsuit and sitting in your tub with a pitcher of margaritas that you’ll drink all by yourself.
Its Michelle Obama who’s going to Aspen. Because, of course she is.
First Lady Michelle Obama arrived in Aspen on Friday afternoon and is here with her daughters for a ski vacation.
Few details about her trip were available. Sources said she is staying at the home of Jim and Paula Crown, owners of the Aspen Skiing Co. She is reportedly skiing at Buttermilk today, where the Crowns, of Chicago, own a home on the Tiehack side.
Several people have known about the “low-key” vacation, with the Secret Service in town for the past few days scoping out places for the family to relax and enjoy what the resort has to offer.
That’s nice. It has been a whole month since she got back from Hawaii. But its cool. We weren’t using that money, anyway, or anything like that. Surplus. That’s what we’ve got.
Surplus.
Aspen.
Seriously? We’re closing in on a campaign. This is no longer about tax money or bizarre antics, this is about image. Aspen is a winter playground for the 1%, and Michelle will happily be a guest of a major campaign donor, who last year hosted a $10K-per-head fundraiser on President’s Day weekend in order to make Barack Obama’s February ski trip an effort. I suspect, this man may also light his evening fire with fine bourbon and $100 bills and melt 24 karat gold marshmallows into his hot chocolate, flown in from Belgium. But that’s speculation.
Next week, an economic report will surface indicating that the number of working-age American adults actually working has dropped sharply. The Obama Administration will have to express solidarity with those harmed by the economy. They will likely pin the problems on the excesses of the 1%. Only they will have to explain why they spent the last weekend in Aspen. Which is a communications problem.
Oh, well. Enjoy Aspen, I guess. I’ll enjoy my asbestos.
Another week, another vacation.
[...] at Naked D.C. Emily talks about this month’s Obama family vacation. Its Michelle Obama who’s going to Aspen. Because, of course she [...]
Michelle Obama is spending the night 4 blocks from my house here N Aspen.
What the occupy & the tea party movements have in common is the message of: “Enough!” Or:
Dear 1%/big govt, treat us little people with dignity.
…
I’d like to walk 4 blocks over from my house to my neighbor billionaire Paula Crown’s house [owner Aspen Ski Co/JP Morgan Chase.....] with a big fat Texas white trash sign on my pickup & park it in front of her drive like they do in real democracies down in South America that says:
…Dear Michelle,
Hope u r having fun skiing @ my neighbor’s “rustic” Petit Trianon. Are u talking art? [ROFL: Paula is on the Presidential Arts Committee & banned @ 1 time or another from Aspen Skico property: a song, a singer, a local newspaper and a whistleblower.] Or weapons? [not so ROFL: The Crowns' big $ is General Dynamics, a merchant of death that sells to both sides.]
btw, what’s the name of that song Skico banned?
I’m gonna B frank. We’ve figured u elites out. Games up. We r the 99%. Enough.
[google Chris Hedges 4 more on this.] If you take a morning walk on Monday, I’d suggest u take a left on Tiehack and go 3 blocks 2 my house & see the sculpture we [all 27 of us N occupy aspen--hey we grew!], made last week. It has lots of references to the Revolution, both American &…. French. We even made a guillotine and hung a barbie from the 3rd floor window. your host, our local Marie Antoinette tried to get the last sculpture removed—it was public art in a public place—really LOL —the City sent me a letter asking me to remove it. It gets funnier. The City copied two VP’s & a CEO from SKico on it.
Can u say company town?
but then your husband signed a law that allows him to send Americans 2 Guantanamo without trial without warrant without limits on time….& I love my community here in Aspen so I resort to the power of the net. besides, the hardware store gossip was that the X-tra visitors in town looked like Chicago thugs. not the crown royals —the secret service.
my european friends remark: u americans r only free 2 do what they tell u. ironically, the aspen art museum summed it up nicely in a recent exhibition on Crown owned property: AMERIKA
little people, unite. occupy the tea party
The vacay might be “low key” but as usual, it certainly won’t
be “low cal”.
Wish I could just go out to dinner….thanks for taking all my real estate equity, Obumma!! These people are completely uncouth! No class!
You don’t need class to push for class warfare.
You just need to know how to lie…
The silence is deafening
by Johnny Boyd, Aspen Daily News Columnist
Monday, December 17, 2012
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The sale of the Snowmass Lodge and Club to the Toll Brothers creates more questions than answers in Snowmass. The lack of developable land would disqualify this venture from the definition of an extreme money-maker. The only true benefit that I can see is that it gives maverick artist Lee Mulcahy one more place he can visit without fear of arrest. Money can’t buy the lack of headlines.
Lee Mulcahy’s ongoing drama is exposing Aspen for what it is — a town with an amazing lack of balls. The idea that Aspen could sit back complacently and allow one person to be persecuted by the most powerful interests in town is reprehensible. Aspen used to rebel against the company town image, now it defines it.
The silence from the community appears to condone the loss of rights by one of its members. Does this mean the loss of rights by anyone the company deems unfit is acceptable? The SkiCo has attempted this crap before with Dan Dunn and the chick formerly known as The Princess. In both of those instances it had the power to pull the offender’s ski pass and fire them. What’s next?
Nothing justifies a total ban from public lands of any taxpaying American. SkiCo can keep Mulcahy from riding its lifts, but hiking on national forest land? I’d love to see the lease that says a taxpayer can’t use his own land because the corporation that leases it says so. If such a lease exists, as a taxpayer I want that clause removed the next time America renews it. It appears that the Forest Service is as ball-less in the face of billionaires as the company town.
Perhaps Mulcahy has used the wrong rhetoric to describe his fight against the SkiCo. On his Facebook page he urged everyone to attend his recent hearing by likening it to the “gunfight at the OK Corral.” Anyone who read the report on that court appearance would never compare it to the infamous Tombstone shoot out.
It was SkiCo executives who engaged in histrionics about how scared they are of Lee Mulcahy. It was Mulcahy making impassioned speeches to tolerate his protest in the name of free speech and protecting his rights. It was a judge showing amazing common sense in shooting down (sorry SkiCo, hope that didn’t scare you) the restraining order the SkiCo was seeking. Mulcahy’s fight with the SkiCo was nothing like the battle between the Clantons and the Earps, although “Earp” might describe the noise SkiCo executives squeaked when Mulcahy showed up with his Alamo trailer.
Mulcahy may well become an Aspen legend. He is suing a billionaire for a dollar. Do I need to repeat that? He is suing a billionaire for a dollar! That’s the best punch line to the stupidest joke I’ve ever heard and the billionaire is taking it seriously and sending out an armada of high-priced attorneys to fight him. The entertainment value from this lawsuit alone will keep this column stoked with subject matter for years.
In a civilized society the ability to criticize our masters is the last bastion of freedom. It’s obvious that the SkiCo’s intent is to silence any dissent in its ranks and the community by culling one poor sap from the herd and destroying his rights completely. The complete silence by the other lambs headed for slaughter is deafening. Even if you think Mulcahy is an ass, you should stand up for his right to be one without being stripped of basic freedoms.
I have to give Lee Mulcahy credit. He has protested for his rights instead of slinking away after the corporation exiled him. The restraining order against him at the Aspen Institute proves that he isn’t about to stop. He has fought valiantly against overwhelming odds with little backing from anyone except a few friends. The lack of support for such a brave individual illustrates how few brave individuals there are. When they come for you, don’t whine because you didn’t speak out.
Don’t be part of the herd. Speak up. The SkiCo can’t be allowed to single out citizens for punishment. It’s petty. It’s cowardly. It’s unconstitutional. It’s embarrassing. It’s going to make a great movie after I’m done writing the screenplay. Working title: “Aspen: The Quiet Fears.”
Grow a pair, Aspen.
Email Johnny at snomasokist@msn.com.
Update from Aspen: She’s baaaaaaaaaaaack. Michelle Obama is back.
I went to a Tea Party meeting at the Aspen Institute last year run by some politician only in it for 1 thing: Big $. Typical. I believe in liberty as a guiding principle which makes me a tea partyer. When I told my fellow Texan Dick Armey that there were many of us tea partyers involved in occupy aspen, he ridiculed me. Not so fast—-We’re all little people fighting the elites. In Colorado, a third party could be formed to UNITE the tea party, the libertarians/occupiers and the mexicans but that’s just my dreaming??? Today, my friend Juan showed me his new Audi at church. Juan works 70+ hours a week. which to me is more American than Michelle Obama wearing $540 sneakers to a Food Bank. Here’s what’s happening this weekend in Aspen as the President golfs in Florida while his wife skis in Aspen… all at a time when millions are unemployed:
Queen Michelle “Let them eat cake” Obama and VP Joe “Big Jim” Biden are skiing in Aspen this weekend while millions suffer under their Rule. Is it #tyranny yet? One letter to the Aspen Times suggested the situation here in the “Glitter Gulch” is Rome in the 4th quarter. Aspen is Versailles—-it’s Crony Capitalism on steroids. Aspen’s former mayor was at breakfast today at the Hickory House, she said she was not invited to the Crowns. ROFL: My invite must have gotten lost in the mail.
Last year, the FLOTUS and her family crashed at the winter palace of my billionaire neighbors—-> the powerful Crown family, the owners of the company that owns the company town, Aspen Skiing. Google Lester Crown bribery New York Times or Chicago Tribune
Michelle’s host is most famous for being on the President’s arts council, as well as for firing singer Dan Sheridan, banning his song “Big $” from ski areas in national forest under lease, and censoring our local paper, the Aspen Daily News [all online.]
Last night, it was black SUV city at the Crowns at what locally is referred to as the “Petit Trianon, their palatial residence. There ain’t nothin’ “petite” about it.
The gossip at the hardware store is where did all the fleet of black SUV’s arrive from? Straight from the horse’s mouth, the SS [Secret Service]: 25 SUV’s had to be driven up from Peterson Air Force Base near Denver [only 8 are stored in Denver].
Wait, it get’s better, only 3 SUV’s can be loaded per cargo plane.
In addition, how come the Pitkin County airport opened the airport [closed normally until 7am] at 5am on Friday? What was the REAL total cost to taxpayers? Sometimes I’m lucky enough to get upgraded on United Airlines, trust me, it’s REAL nice. The Queen of Denmark flys commercial but VP Joe and Michelle need to take separate government airplanes? Pigs at the trough?
FOIA requests from the last sojourn revealed that the govt. said Michelle “$540.00 tennis shoes at a Food Bank” Obama’s trip cost $90K. Really? Don’t call us little people stupid. LOL. These Do AS I SAY liberals keep us chuckling 24/7 in A-town…..
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/12/dick-armey-leads-arme…