From the Cheap Seats

SHORT LIST? Former Gov. Bill Ritter was rumored this week to be the object of President Barack Obama’s energetic affections, so to speak

Former Gov. Bill Ritter was rumored this week to be the object of President Barack Obama’s energetic affections, so to speak. The ex-gov. of Colorado is supposedly on the short list to replace Steven Chu as secretary of energy.

Bad as the original choice choice of Chu was – and Cheap Seats is aware that Chu hasn’t made any definitive statement about leaving – really, who but Obama would hire him?  Read more »

The Interior Department statement reads like a 1970s Soviet Union agriculture report that insisted grain production was up, despite intelligence reports documenting massive crop failures

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar continues to shred any vestiges of credibility with his latest feel-good report on oil-and-gas lease sales.

The Dec. 17 release credits “President Obama’s all-of-the-above energy strategy” with generating $233 million from onshore oil and gas lease sales conducted by the Bureau of Land Management in 2012. Read more »

The Federal Helium Program was originally created in 1926

This is the kind of dispute that can only happen among a bunch of Democrats named Alvin, Simon or Theodore.

U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) is trying to get federal fingers out of the helium business.

It seems that the Bureau of Land Management operates what is known as the Federal Helium Reserve (and if that doesn’t confirm your suspicions about the tenor, or lack thereof, of federal budget talk, nothing will) and shockingly ran the thing into $1.3 billion worth of debt. Read more »

GRINCH: Gay-rights activist and Democrat super-donor Tim Gill, fired off an e-card Wednesday entitled, “A Binder Full of . . . Wishes”

So far the Gill Foundation is running away with The Observer’s first annual contest for Colorado’s Most Political and Least Festive Holiday Card.

The foundation, headed by software moneybags and gay-rights activist Tim Gill, fired off an e-card Wednesday entitled, “A Binder Full of  . . . Wishes,” a none-too-subtle reference to Republican Mitt Romney’s debate reference to “binders full of women.” Read more »

UN ROADSHOW: All the “Debacle at Doha” did was guarantee a band of globetrotting international grifters another grab at the swag bag

There’s a pretty simple measure of the danger of global warming: If it ain’t real, the people who are pitching it won’t act like it.

That’s the case of the climate summit just completed in Qatar in the city of, as it’s known in reality circles, Doha-hahaha. Read more »

Vilsack, a former Iowa governor, scolded rural America for becoming less relevant

The Obama administration has found a new way to get it wrong, terribly wrong.

This time, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is the screw-up. Which is not to say this is his first time, just that it’s the most recent. Read more »

A word of warning to the ski and snowmobile industries: Beware of environmental groups that appear to care about the vitality of the winter-sports business, or any business

Environmentalists unveiled their latest front in the climate-change war this week with a plea on behalf of the ski and snowmobile industry, a spectacle almost as jaw-dropping as a Shaun White’s double McTwist 1260. Read more »

BUELLER?  Udall missed 4 percent of floor votes from January 1999 to July 2012, according to an analysis by CSU’s Rocky Mountain Collegian

Quick, what’s the biggest problem for the new head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee?

How about Mr. Maggie Fox, aka Sen. Mark Udall?

Yes, it seems the senior senator from Colorado is now the junior senator’s burden. Read more »

RACE BAITING: Liberal commentator and fearmonger Chuck Todd said a “very smart White House aide” told him there would still be slavery if it was up to todays GOP

If there was any doubt that the Obama administration represents the rise of the ignoramus, then Chuck Todd of NBC has unwittingly unveiled the ugly, half-witted truth. And of course protected the identity of the of the guilty. Read more »

HANDOUTS: Senator Udall (right) is delivering his 23rd speech today on how important it is to extend the life of a taxpayer subsidy for a failing industry

Few have gone so far to prove their fealty to corporate welfare than Mr. Maggie Fox, aka Sen. Mark Udall.

Udall, the senior senator from Colorado, is delivering his 23rd speech Thursday on how very, very, very important it is to extend the life of  a taxpayer subsidy for a failing industry that purports to produce electricity with the reliability of the Hoover Dam or a pile of coal outside Hayden Station near Craig. Read more »