Vacation Pics

Yes... I do have a life outside of my political passions. Alice and I had a glorious week in California. Visiting Lake Tahoe and Yosemite National Park. Here are a few pictures.

We happened to be in Yosemite during three days of record-breaking Spring heat creating rapid snow melt. The waterfalls are rarely flowing as full as they were during this time. The first picture is Yosemite Falls.

The rainbow effect around the edge of Bridal Veil Falls below is completely genuine. The shot was taken from the "Tunnel View" lookout point with the rainbow from the mist

Full shot of Tunnel View with the rainbow on Bridal Veil Falls.

The intense water flow created equally intense mist making rainbows common in the afternoon sun. Following picture is just below Vernal Falls after hiking the Mist trail followed by a full shot of the same falls.

Lake Tahoe was equally amazing.

Newt Gingrich is wrong.

There are many descriptors I'm tempted to use, but I'll settle for 'wrong'. Gingrich is calling Obama's foreign policy a 'fantasy'. This statement can not even pass for opinion. If I give him the benefit of the doubt, it is more accurately labeled a delusion. President Obama has been extraordinarily consistent throughout his campaign and early presidency. He has never limited military force as an option, he has always acknowledged that evil exists in the world and 'must be confronted'. To implement a foreign policy that emphasizes diplomacy over brute force is not a fantasy, Newt. It is called a vision. Our greatest leaders have always been visionaries. When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of seeing the mountaintop, equal rights for people of color in this country were as much of an impossibility as world peace is today. Dr. King maintained the vision and pragmatically, courageously, led this country toward realizing that vision. He knew it would not happen in his lifetime but the vision, the goal, remained unchanged. Seeing potential does not imply blindness to reality. Seeing the end of the road in the distance does not imply ignorance of the roadblocks along the way. The vision of a better world is vital to achieving a better world. No one, including President Obama, believes the goal is easy to reach. Thankfully, we now have a president who is both a visionary and a pragmatist. Yes, Newt, it is possible to be both. To honestly believe Obama is conducting a fantasy foreign policy is, at best, naive and grossly misinformed of the facts.