Monday Open Thread

62
  by: Colorado Pols Mon September 10, 2012 at 3:23 PM MDT

“With audacity one can undertake anything, but not do everything.”

–Napoleon Bonaparte


Full story: Monday Open Thread

62 Community Comments, Facebook Comments

  1. parsingreality says:
    Mon September 10, 2012 at 3:51 PM MDT

    I brought the morning paper in.  Lesseee……

    Looks like the repeal of DADT hasn’t affected troop readiness or morale.  Shock!  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

    Rmoney now decides that some parts of Obamacare are good, but not all his mouthpieces get the latest flip flop:

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

    Rmoney offers details on tax plans! Sure, Charlie Brown! http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09…

    More young people have health insurance than ever, thanks to that mysterious god known as The Marketplace.  No, sorry, it’s due to a bird, a plane, it’s Obamacare!

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09…

    Well, time to pour another cup, make some donations to my favorite candidates, and ramp up to another Obama victory!

    • Libertad says:
      Mon September 10, 2012 at 11:09 PM MDT

      Although thousands of headlines appear everyday, it’s those that have stickiness that impact American society the most.


      Mitt Romney: Chicago teachers turning backs on students

      – newsday opines on nearly 400,000 Chicagoland students who are “schooless” … shuttered to parks and just how strongly Barrack Obama backs the union bosses via direct quotes from his mouthpiece Joe Biden

      Will Barack Obama’s Convention Bounce Last?

      – US News investigates Rassmussen polling on %5 Obama convention bump


      Insight: GM’s Volt: The ugly math of low sales, high costs

      – Reuters digs into an auto manufacture consultants study of the Government Motors Volt product


      Eastwood on convention speech: ‘Mission accomplished’

      - NBC opines of Mayor Eastwood’s local newspaper interview


      GM losing $49G on each Volt sold, according to report

      – FoxNews opines on further ramifications of the Volt product


      FBI arrests Trenton Mayor Tony Mack (aka Napoleon) in corruption probe

      - LA Times reports on DOJ investigation and FBI arrest of NJ Democrat mayor

      I’d post the links, but your better served to self link via Google search.

      • Phoenix RisingPhoenix Rising says:
        Mon September 10, 2012 at 11:18 PM MDT

        It’s about time Trenton’s Mayoral screw-up was busted by the Feds.  Even Mayor Mack’s former aides thought he was a corrupt ass.  And his partner in crime is a convicted child molester (a crime in which apparently Mack’s city offices were searched at the time for links).

        You can chalk this one up to local politics, though, not political affiliation – NJ politicians have a long history of corruption backing them.

      • Phoenix RisingPhoenix Rising says:
        Mon September 10, 2012 at 11:22 PM MDT

        Central figure in election-rigging scandal goes missing as FBI probes Republican Rep.

        And I’ll even provide a link to this story, about Rep. David Rivera (R-FL)

        • Libertad says:
          Mon September 10, 2012 at 11:43 PM MDT

          Meanwhile the campaign manager for former Democrat congressional nominee Justin Lamar Starnad is AWOL from a DOJ interview seeking clarification from her on Democrat campaign filings.

          Sternad may have violated federal campaign-finance laws after spending thousands of dollars in cash on mailers without disclosing the source of the funds to the Federal Election Commission.

          The last FEC report Sternad filed for the monthly period ending July 25 showed he spent $11,262 and spent $10,440 to pay for the state fee to qualify for the ballot in the newly drawn congressional District 26 primary race, which stretches from Kendall to Key West. He listed just $11,000 in his campaign account.

          Amid the newspaper reports and the launch of a federal probe, Sternad amended his financial disclosures to show he had loaned himself nearly $53,000 more than he originally reported.

          Sternad’s opponents in the Aug. 14 Democratic primary claimed Sternad’s campaign was directed by Rivera, who is a Republican.

          Campaign vendors have told the Herald that Sternad, who had never run for public office, ran a sophisticated mail campaign orchestrated and funded by Rivera.

          Sternad and his attorney, Rick Yober, have declined comment. Rivera has vehemently denied working with Sternad, referring the Herald to his statement on the matter.

          “Congressman Rivera has never met or spoken to Mr. Sternad and knows absolutely nothing about him or his campaign,” the statement said.

          • parsingreality says:
            Mon September 10, 2012 at 11:47 PM MDT

            Although he was cleared of wrong doing a month or two ago in one investigation, there are about five or six more lined up.  

            Where there’s smoke, there’s fire?

            http://www.bing.com/search?q=v…

          • Phoenix RisingPhoenix Rising says:
            Tue September 11, 2012 at 12:42 AM MDT

            Rivera’s office was caught dropping off bundles of cash to Sternad’s campaign mailing firm – the same mailing firm Rivera used at one point. And Sternad curiously used Rivera’s talking points.

            Sternad’s campaign manager describes herself on Twitter as a “Republican Political Guru and Conservative Bad Girl!”.  And of course there’s this: “Ana Alliegro for State Representative, District 112 (Republican)”  Or perhaps some more direct tie to Rivera, like a photograph of the two of them together?

            Rivera, of course, is no stranger to interfering in elections.  In 2002 he was accused of ramming a Liberty Mail truck containing flyers for his opponent.

      • parsingreality says:
        Mon September 10, 2012 at 11:45 PM MDT

        It’s not that the kids are missing out on some education, it’s that the parents are missing their M-F babysitters.

        • Libertad says:
          Mon September 10, 2012 at 11:59 PM MDT

          Unfortunately it is about the kids….nearly 92,000 of these current taxpayers are at the point of driving and/or working. They are themselves at the age to babysit.

          So it may be interesting to you, but these taxpayers are being cheated by government workers at the direction of their union boss overlords.

          Union overlorads have put nearly 400,000 Chicago kids to the street in their effort to extort even more than the 16% 4 year salary hike and spending orgy so that Chicago may graduate @50% of its high schoolers.

          Once again we as a nation look to Barrack Obama for leadership and there he sits like an empty chair.

      • SSG_Dan says:
        Tue September 11, 2012 at 2:10 AM MDT

        I used to think you understood financial-thingies. But when you repeated the Faux News BS headline that Volt’s have a loss of $49K built into them, well, you just tossed that tiny crumb of respect just disappeared…

        The Real Story On GM’s Volt Costs

        The statement that GM “loses” over $40K per Volt is preposterous. What the “analyst” in whom poor Ben Klayman placed his faith has done is to divide the total development cost and plant investment by the number of Volts produced thus  far. That’s like saying that a real estate company that puts up a $10 million building and has rental income of one million the first year is “losing” 9 million dollars, or several hundred thousand per renter.

        Listen- that’s not how car business cost accounting works.

        Let me provide a look at how a car company tracks profitability of a product program:  measured are material cost and labor, and these are deducted from the selling price. The positive difference is called “gross margin.” Then, one allocates per-unit “fixed cost” (advertising, general overhead, etc.) plus per-unit depreciation and amortization of the initial investment, based on the TOTAL NUMBER TO BE PRODUCED OVER THE LIFETIME of the product. If the margin, after all deductions, is still positive, then we call it a “fully accounted profit,” and the car is a winner.

        The Volt “variable cost” (labor and materials, without revealing any confidential GM information), looks very roughly like this: A Li-Ion battery today runs about $350 per KWh. The Volt’s is 16KWh, so that’s roughly $6000. Add $4,000 for the battery pack structure, the cooling, the high-voltage wiring, the motor and the power electronics. So, that’s the electric portion. Add about 20 hours of assembly labor which we’ll round to a very generous $1000. The dealer net price is, say, $37,000. We now have $26,000 left for the rest of the car, which, cost-wise, is about equal to a Chevy “Cruze” which sells for around $22,000 retail! (And the Volt has no costly conventional transmission.)

        Thus, the “Volt”, by my estimate, is either close to “variable break-even” or may be on the cusp of a positive gross margin. Deduct the per-unit allocation for all fixed cost, depreciation and amortization and it is, surely, still “under water”….but not by much, and less and less so as the volume builds and other, higher-margin GM cars, like the Cadillac ELR, piggy-back off of the Volt’s initial investment.

        http://www.forbes.com/sites/bo…

        Stay away from the Energy drinks after your WoW missions, and drink some water before you post here…

    • Libertad says:
      Tue September 11, 2012 at 12:07 AM MDT

      Mayor Clint Eastwood said the outpouring of criticism from left-wing reporters and liberal politicians after his appearance at the Republican National Convention last Thursday night, followed by an avalanche of support on Twitter and in the blogosphere, is all the proof anybody needs that his 12-minute discourse achieved exactly what he intended it to.

      “President Obama is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” Eastwood told The Pine Cone this week. “Romney and Ryan would do a much better job running the country, and that’s what everybody needs to know. I may have irritated a lot of the lefties, but I was aiming for people in the middle.”

      …snip….

      “I had three points I wanted to make,” Eastwood said. “That not everybody in Hollywood is on the left, that Obama has broken a lot of the promises he made when he took office, and that the people should feel free to get rid of any politician who’s not doing a good job. But I didn’t make up my mind exactly what I was going to say until I said it.”

      ..snip…

      “Even people on the liberal side are starting to worry about going off a fiscal cliff,” Eastwood said.

      …snip….

      his remarks – starting with his observation about politics in Hollywood, then challenging the president about the failure of his economic policies, and wrapping up by telling the public “they don’t have to worship politicians, like they were royalty or something.”

      …snip……

      “There was a stool there, and some fella kept asking me if I wanted to sit down,” Eastwood said. “When I saw the stool sitting there, it gave me the idea. I’ll just put the stool out there and I’ll talk to Mr. Obama and ask him why he didn’t keep all of the promises he made to everybody.”

      http://www.pineconearchieves.com

      • sxp151 says:
        Tue September 11, 2012 at 12:19 AM MDT

        I’m totally no longer embarrassed for him or you.

      • CaninesCanines says:
        Wed September 12, 2012 at 1:34 AM MDT

        “But I didn’t make up my mind exactly what I was going to say until I said it…When I saw the stool sitting there, it gave me the idea. I’ll just put the stool out there and I’ll talk to Mr. Obama and ask him why he didn’t keep all of the promises he made to everybody.”

        Louis C.K. he ain’t.

        What was really funny was watching people in the audience, the ones who weren’t laughing, sitting there like stone-faced pillars of salt.

    • dwyer says:
      Tue September 11, 2012 at 3:32 AM MDT

      Got those batteries charged.  I got exhausted just reading all your posts…(.which I hasten to add, I really liked.)…but, I had to take a nap.

  2. ClubTwittyClubTwitty says:
    Mon September 10, 2012 at 4:01 PM MDT

    “I don’t think that there are any beneficial federal programs when it comes to helping the economy,” Casida said.

    http://durangoherald.com/artic…  

  3. parsingreality says:
    Mon September 10, 2012 at 4:03 PM MDT

    I think I heard on Sirius right now it was $114 to $111.  M…..m…m….millions, of course.  

    I expect September to be even worse news for Rmoney.  

    • BlueCat says:
      Mon September 10, 2012 at 6:52 PM MDT

      Considering the post Citizens United landscape and all the hand wringing about how there was no way Dems could compete, that says even more than the new polling does. Still just guardedly optimistic but my stomach’s starting to feel a little better.  

      • sxp151 says:
        Mon September 10, 2012 at 7:14 PM MDT

        The really big money is going to SuperPACs, and I’m pretty sure Romney is still winning that front.

        • BlueCat says:
          Mon September 10, 2012 at 7:54 PM MDT

          created by that decision and the fears raised, what you say is true but it hasn’t been confined only to SuperPACs, not to mention even more invidious anonymous entities. Obama has been out-raised for months, period. So this shows a good trend in ordinary voter support.

          If we continue to see this in post convention fund raising it will reinforce good polling news by showing a putting your money where your mouth is enthusiasm dynamic. People who contribute, especially ordinary people who make small contributions, are also people who get off their butts to vote.

          That’s why I really like this news, not because I dismiss the GOP billionaire monetary advantage but because the caveat in all the polling is how many of those who poll for Obama are likely to vote. This is an encouraging development on that front.

          Besides, it’s not as if Obama has yet fallen behind, even temporarily, in a statistically significant way in the face of all the SuperPAC and other shady money, even during the months when Romney was also out-raising him in plain old campaign funding. Obama still has had enough to compete and is now seeing more.  More is better than less. It does not appear that his candidacy will be torpedoed by the Romney money advantage alone.  

  4. parsingreality says:
    Mon September 10, 2012 at 4:04 PM MDT

    Inquiring minds want to know……

    Maybe very quietly so as to not draw attention to the Rmoney Missing Years?

    Or, not at all? Yet?  Where’s the outrage?

  5. ScottP says:
    Mon September 10, 2012 at 4:21 PM MDT

    defraud the government and it’s the gov’mint’s fault. I still haven’t figured out how this works.

  6. SSG_Dan says:
    Mon September 10, 2012 at 5:10 PM MDT

    Of course, I’m sure the Romneybot ticket sees this as an example of “out of control guvmit spending” since it helps the demographic that “isn’t important.”



    Surprising methods heal wounded troops

    Scientists are growing ears, bone and skin in the lab, and doctors are planning more face transplants and other extreme plastic surgeries. Around the country, the most advanced medical tools that exist are now being deployed to help America’s newest veterans and wounded troops.

    *In Los Angeles, surgeons used part of Michael Mills’ forehead to rebuild his nose after a bomb disfigured him in Iraq.

    *In Pittsburgh, doctors used an experimental therapy from pig tissue to help regrow part of a thigh muscle that Ron Strang lost in a blast in Afghanistan.

    *In Boston, scientists are making plans for the first implants of lab-grown ears for wounded troops after successful experiments in sheep and rats.

    *In San Antonio and other cities, doctors are testing sprayed-on skin cells and lab-made sheets of skin to heal burns and other wounds. The ingenuity is impressive: One product was developed from foreskin left over from circumcisions.

    Much of this comes from taxpayer-funded research. Four years ago, the federal government created AFIRM, the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine, a network of top hospitals and universities, and gave $300 million in grants to spur new treatments using cell science and advanced plastic surgery.

    http://www.google.com/hostedne…

    So, tell me Romneybots- why is it better for Millionaires to have a huge tax cut over funding research like this?

    • raymond1 says:
      Mon September 10, 2012 at 5:49 PM MDT

      … in light of the new polling data

      • BlueCat says:
        Mon September 10, 2012 at 6:57 PM MDT

        tell us all how our noting any good good news for our side is just another sign of our desperation. And maybe ‘tad will post another one of those approval/disapproval Rasmussens of his showing that Obama doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell. Check back later.

        • parsingreality says:
          Mon September 10, 2012 at 7:47 PM MDT

          Not gonna find the link, but a big story on Huffpo about all the polls trending upward for Obama.

          Of course, all the popular national polls seldom take into account the only races that really matter:  The half dozen or so critical swing states.  Doing that, Obama blows out Rmoney.

          Nate Silver has given Obama eleven more electoral votes than a week ago, and Rmoney that many less.  319 to 219.

          But deep in the heart of Arapaho County lurks the holder of truth. Right?  

          • BlueCat says:
            Mon September 10, 2012 at 8:00 PM MDT

            find solace in that one particular poll analysis he constantly posts. If that’s no longer in negative territory for Obama we may never hear from ‘tad again.

            As for Rasmussen, I’ve always noticed that when it comes down to the final weeks and days of an election they suddenly stop being ridiculously skewed and start being pretty accurate. Guess they switch from  partisan mode to desire for credibility mode. Somebody needs to warn tad.  

    • Diogenesdemar says:
      Mon September 10, 2012 at 5:53 PM MDT

      those scientists.  Always atryin’ to play God — When what God’s areally wantin’ is more tax cuts for the Kochs . . . and fewer gay football players.  (. . . iff’n they’re gonna be out there, they should at least have the decency to stick to bein’ student managers and cheerleaders and such.)

      Seriously Dan, is that last question one you really want to hear an answer from today’s GOP?

  8. Gadfly says:
    Mon September 10, 2012 at 5:55 PM MDT

    Shaffer vs. Gardner moved from likely Republican to Safe Republican.

    CD 7 has moved from likely Democratic to lean Democratic.  Maybe Joe Coors is for real in this one.  

  9. PitaPita says:
    Mon September 10, 2012 at 5:55 PM MDT

    God love Joe Biden.  He’s one of my all time favorites!

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

  10. ScottP says:
    Mon September 10, 2012 at 5:56 PM MDT

    What would you do? Would you work harder to get things done? Would you attempt to show that you should stay there or would you do the bare minimum so you don’t screw anything up?

    No wonder politicians aren’t well liked.

  11. DaftPunkDaftPunk says:
    Mon September 10, 2012 at 8:28 PM MDT

    Making a state “abortion-free”, as Mr Bryant says he wants Mississippi to be, has long been a goal of anti-abortion activists. Since 1973, when the Supreme Court held, tendentiously, in Roe v Wade that a “right of privacy” allows a woman to abort her fetus before it is viable, anti-abortion activists have tried and failed to have that decision overturned. Before it, states regulated abortion as they saw fit; since then state-level abortion bans have been tried and failed, thanks to the constitution’s supremacy clause, which holds that when state and federal law conflict, federal law wins. Activists have also tried to get “personhood” measures-defining life as beginning at fertilisation-on to the ballots of several states in recent election cycles.

    A more successful strategy, however, is to shut down abortion clinics by piling on regulations. Abortion-rights activists call such provisions “TRAP (targeted regulation of abortion providers) laws”, and argue that they have little to do with health or safety-it is difficult to see how having wider hallways in Virginia’s clinics would decrease complications, for instance-but instead aim to make running an abortion clinic impossible in practice.

    Puts the lie to “common sense” regulations.

  12. BlueCat says:
    Mon September 10, 2012 at 8:49 PM MDT

    Really interesting piece by Andrew Cohen in the Atlantic:

    On September 11, 1957, 55 years ago tomorrow, a national catastrophe was unfolding, one you likely have never heard about before. At the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons facility near Denver, inside the plutonium processing building, a fire had started in an area designed to be fireproof. Soon it was roaring over, through, and around the carefully constricted plutonium as one Cold-War-era safety feature after another failed. The roof of the building, the building itself, were threatened. And plumes of radioactive smoke went straight up into Colorado’s late summer night air. High into the air, if you believe the witnesses.

    For 13 hours on the night of the 11th, into the morning the next day, the fire raged inside that building, until firefighters put it out (with water — exposing themselves, and perhaps the entire front range of Colorado, to an even greater risk of radiation). When it was over, Energy Department officials, and the Dow Chemical officials who then ran the facility, did not share the extent of the catastrophe, or the radiation danger, with local officials or the media. For years, no one really knew how bad it had been, what it meant for those exposed to the radiation, or how such a dangerous event could be prevented in the future.

    Whole story at

    http://www.theatlantic.com/nat…

  13. Steve_I_Am says:
    Mon September 10, 2012 at 11:21 PM MDT

    by Stephen A. Justino, Co-Chair, Colorado Move to Amend

    Colorado Move to Amend congratulates our friends “Colorado Amend 2012″ – Colorado Common Cause, People for the American Way, and others – for collecting enough signatures to qualify “Amendment 65″ for the ballot.

    Amendment 65 will offer Coloradoans a chance to stand against the U.S. Supreme Court’s odious Citizens United v. FEC decision.  Citizens United is the case in which the Supreme Court found that corporations have inalienable rights under the 1st Amendment, and, that it is a violation of those new-found rights for governments to restrict a corporation’s independent political expenditures.

    As the proponents of Amendment 65 rightfully recognize, Citizens United opened the floodgates on corporate and secret money in our elections.  Already in 2012 outside spending is double what it was during the record-breaking 2008 elections.  Nearly all of that money comes from groups that do not disclose their donors.  In granting corporations inalienable constitutional rights, the Supreme Court has given powerful special interests undue influence in the democratic process. The deluge of corporate cash is drowning out the voices of ordinary citizens.

    Colorado Move to Amend shares those concerns.  Move to Amend has been organizing against corporate power for over a decade, and we have been fighting Citizens United since it was handed down in 2010.  It is from that position that we urge Colorado voters to vote “YES” on Amendment 65.  

    Our “YES,” however, is actually a qualified “YES, but . . .”

    We say “Yes, but . . .” because we understand that the threat to “small d” democracy posed by unlimited corporate spending in elections is not the “root cause” of the problem.  The torrents of corporate spending unleashed by Citizens United are just symptoms of the two fatal diseases afflicting our democracy – the specious, Supreme-Court-created doctrines of “money as speech” and “corporate personhood.”  

    Amendment 65 is an effort to deal with the problem of “money as speech.” But, it says nothing about the equally destructive problem of “corporate personhood.”   Any proposed constitutional amendment must go beyond overturning Citizens United, because the problems posed by “corporate personhood” go far beyond Citizens United.  

    Corporate abuse of the 1st Amendment is not limited to money in politics.  In recent years, energy corporations, tobacco corporations, chemical and pharmaceutical corporations, alcohol corporations, and banking corporations, have all successfully claimed corporate free speech rights to invalidate federal, state and local laws.

    Corporations are also abusing the 4th Amendment.  For example, people are typically stunned to learn that OSHA cannot do a surprise workplace inspection, but it cannot, because the Supreme Court has held that surprise OSHA inspections violate business’s inalienable rights to be free of unreasonable search and seizure under the 4th Amendment.  

    We, the People, have a moral, and ethical, obligation to regulate the corporations, and other artificial legal entities, that we create.  Corporations are using “inalienable constitutional rights” that they were never intended to have to overturn democratically enacted laws and regulations.

    Amendment 65 is a step in the right direction.   Americans across the country are discussing the need for a constitutional amendment to deal with the devastating impact Citizens United is having on our political system.  By passing Amendment 65, Colorado will be making an important statement in that national debate.

    Colorado Move to Amend does not endorse the language of Amendment 65, however.  We will not compromise on our core belief that any proposed amendment must say two things, clearly and unequivocally: 1) inalienable rights recognized under the constitution belong to human beings, only; and, 2) money is not speech and thus political contributions, and political spending, can be regulated.

    We say “Yes, but on Amendment 65″ because, in our opinion, in order to be effective, any constitutional amendment must say “Corporations are NOT People!” and “Money is NOT Speech!!”  Amendment 65 does not.  

  14. SSG_Dan says:
    Tue September 11, 2012 at 2:46 AM MDT

    …because I have some fundamental disagreements on some of the issues they choose to pursue.

    but sometimes, awesome must be recognized:

  15. Phoenix RisingPhoenix Rising says:
    Tue September 11, 2012 at 5:55 AM MDT

    … can be summed up by the actions of the Maryland State Democratic Party today.

    Democratic candidate for MD-01 Wendy Rosen withdrew from the race after the Democratic Party reported her to the state Attorney General and state prosecutor for being registered to vote in both Maryland and Florida and having voted in both locations in 2006 and 2008.

    Now I know our fun-loving co-bloggers on the right will want to pick this up and run with it, but here we have in one day two stories of election fraud – one by a Democrat, turned in by her fellow Democrats, and one by a Republican (Rep. David Rivera) who has the support of his party and is trying to cover his tracks against a federal investigation.

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