Thursday Open Thread

55
  by: Colorado Pols Thu September 27, 2012 at 3:38 PM MDT

“The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.”

–Norman Vincent Peale


Full story: Thursday Open Thread

55 Community Comments, Facebook Comments

  4. VanDammerVanDammer says:
    Thu September 27, 2012 at 3:54 PM MDT

    В You are smarter than that …

  5. ClubTwittyClubTwitty says:
    Thu September 27, 2012 at 4:14 PM MDT

    Why waste time here, as much as the negative attention seems to make you feel popular?  Sell your home, sell your car and head over to INTRADE where a bet on Mittens will pay out about 4:1 on a win!  Once you QUADRUPLE your money, you’ll have lots of ‘friends.’

  6. Gadfly says:
    Thu September 27, 2012 at 5:33 PM MDT

    How come the DCCC is running ads attacking Mike Coffman but no ads attacking Scott Tipton. Is Sal toast?

  7. AristotleAristotle says:
    Thu September 27, 2012 at 5:52 PM MDT

    Countering the notion that conservatives vote based on ideology, a judicial primary in Washington state reveals racial prejudice is the chief criterion by which rural voters decided in a statewide judicial primary last summer.

    (One should be aware of Washington’s geographic division. “Eastern Washington” means the roughly 2/3 of the state east of the Cascade Range, which runs from northern California into Canada, and “Western Washington” the west 1/3. Western Washington has something like 70-75% of the state’s population.)

    Incumbent justice Steve Gonzalez, who had raised hundreds of thousands of dollars and had all the endorsements, was challenged by attorney Bruce Danielson, who had absolutely no campaign, raised no money whatsoever, and had no endorsements.

    The crucial wrinkle is this: The state did not issue a voter information pamphlet due to budget constraints. Therefore, there was literally no information delivered to voters about Danielson. The curious could probably find a website, but that obviously has no reach when there was no campaign.

    Nonetheless, Danielson won every single county in Eastern Washington, and several rural ones in the West as well. Gonzalez carried only 10 counties.

    Luckily for him, those were all the population-heavy urban counties where the bulk of the state’s population lives. He ended up with a decisive 60% of the vote.

    Still, it was very curious to see that someone with absolutely no name recognition, no endorsements, and no information carry so many votes anyway. Some suggested that it had to do with ideologies – Gonzalez is liberal, Danielson conservative – but another judicial race featuring an incumbent liberal judge and conservative challenger resulted in the incumbent carrying every single county in the state.

    Now, several months later, a University of Washington researcher has gone over the results with a fine-tooth comb and concluded that the results of this race can only be explained that rural voters chose the Danielson over Gonzalez because of race. Danielson’s name is Anglo, Gonzalez’s is Hispanic.

    Read about it here.

    • BlueCat says:
      Thu September 27, 2012 at 7:18 PM MDT

      a few elections back.  Vanilla northern European last name (he entered because, at the time, no else had and proceeded with a budget of pretty much nothing) vs Chinese last name.  Vanilla, pretty much completely unknown to voters, won three to one and the joke was on strongly red leaning Centennial. City Council is a non-partisan race but Vanilla was the Dem. The other guy was the R.

  9. AristotleAristotle says:
    Thu September 27, 2012 at 6:16 PM MDT

    By getting the federal government to pay for it.

    Many records were set at the 2002 Winter Games, but chances are that one will never be broken. That’s the amount of federal dollars that Romney and his crew siphoned out of the federal treasury to help pay for the Olympic games: $1.5 billion. That was more than the federal government had spent on all seven Olympic Games held in the U.S. since 1904-combined. In inflation-adjusted dollars.

    Follow the above link and learn how Romney pulled this off so successfully that it’s completely at odds with the image and ideas he’s running on today.

  10. raymond1 says:
    Thu September 27, 2012 at 6:42 PM MDT

    This is big news.

    A breakdown by industry sector showed 453,000 more total private sector jobs were created than initially thought, including 145,000 more jobs in the trade, transportation, and utilities category, plus 85,000 more in construction.

    In contrast, the benchmark revision lowered the estimate for job creation in the government sector by 65,000

    Key implications:

    1) Average job creation for the year ending March 2012 (the last month for which these revised calculations exist) is +194,000 — above population growth by enough that the drop in unemployment reflects real job growth, not just additional folks dropping out of the labor market.

    2) There officially has been a net jobs gain since 1/09, so even if the Republicans can charge Obama with all 2009 job losses (which is absurd), there has been a net job gain during Obama’s term.

  11. CaninesCanines says:
    Thu September 27, 2012 at 7:01 PM MDT

    http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes….

    On Wednesday, the couple and their photographer, Kristina Hill, sued the conservative group, a nonprofit based in Virginia called Public Advocate of the United States, in federal court in Denver. They accuse Public Advocate of infringing on Ms. Hill’s copyright and misappropriating the couple’s likeness…

    Public Advocate used the photo, which had been posted on the couple’s blog, twice, the suit alleges. In the spring, it sent out a mailer against State Senator Jean White, a Republican who has supported civil unions for gay couples, with the couple’s photo and the words “State Senator Jean White’s Idea of ‘Family Values?’” written across it.

  12. parsingreality says:
    Thu September 27, 2012 at 7:14 PM MDT

    1985.  Mentions that the companies before “harvesting,” that they were “ongoing.”

    The man is beneath contempt.

    For Obama, this keeps getting better and better.

  13. parsingreality says:
    Thu September 27, 2012 at 7:14 PM MDT

    1985.  Mentions that the companies before “harvesting,” that they were “ongoing.”

    The man is beneath contempt.

    For Obama, this keeps getting better and better.

  15. AristotleAristotle says:
    Thu September 27, 2012 at 7:33 PM MDT

    And they’re not going after traditional Republican voters.

    Lori Monroe, a 40-year-old Democrat who lives in central Ohio, was startled a few weeks ago to open a letter that said a stranger was challenging her right to vote in the presidential election.

    Monroe, who was recovering from cancer surgery, called the local election board to protest. A local tea party leader was trying to strike Monroe from the voter rolls for a reason that made no sense: Her apartment building in Lancaster was listed as a commercial property.

    “I’m like, really? Seriously?” Monroe said. “I’ve lived here seven years, and now I’m getting challenged?”

    …

    The names selected for purging include hundreds of college students, trailer park residents, homeless people and African Americans in counties President Obama won in 2008. [Ari's emphasis]

  16. Sir RobinSir Robin says:
    Thu September 27, 2012 at 7:46 PM MDT

    http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_n…

    This record doesn’t include the flip flops, which would add considerable more time to the chroniclers task.

    • ClubTwittyClubTwitty says:
      Thu September 27, 2012 at 11:08 PM MDT

      “The scientific community … has been concerned about this growing distrust in the public with science. And what I found in the study is basically that’s really not the problem. The growing distrust of science is entirely focused in two groups-conservatives and people who frequently attend church,” says the study’s author, University of North Carolina postdoctoral fellow Gordon Gauchat.

      In fact, in 1974, people who identified as conservatives were among the most confident in science as an institution, with liberals trailing slightly behind, and moderates bringing up the rear. Liberals have remained fairly steady in their opinion of the scientific community over the interim, while conservative trust in science has plummeted.

      http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lo…

    • parsingreality says:
      Fri September 28, 2012 at 5:02 AM MDT

      There have been other studies on these matters and the trendlines are consistent.  

      • ClubTwittyClubTwitty says:
        Fri September 28, 2012 at 5:28 AM MDT

        I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.

           John Stuart Mill

  18. ajb says:
    Thu September 27, 2012 at 11:28 PM MDT

    coming November 2013

    A new comet has been discovered that is predicted to blaze incredibly brilliantly in the skies during late 2013. With a perihelion passage of less than two million kilometres from the Sun on 28 November 2013, current predictions are of an object that will dazzle the eye at up to magnitude [minus]16. That’s far brighter than the full Moon. If predictions hold true then C/2012 S1 will certainly be one of the greatest comets in human history, far outshining the memorable Comet Hale-Bopp of 1997 and very likely to outdo the long-awaited Comet Pan-STARRS (C/2011 L4) which is set to stun in March 2013.

    http://www.astronomynow.com/ne…

  19. Fidel's dirt nap says:
    Thu September 27, 2012 at 11:34 PM MDT

    from Samuel L. Jackson

    Needs to be said, and in just that way.

  22. DavidThi808DavidThi808 says:
    Fri September 28, 2012 at 2:38 AM MDT

    One of my daughters asked me if I ever read what everyone said and when I told her that I had intended to but forget – I got a lecture.

    Thank you all for the nice comments.

    ps – I’ll try to drop in on Oct 3rd to discuss the debate – but I’m out at JavaOne and may not have the time.

  23. SSG_Dan says:
    Fri September 28, 2012 at 5:23 AM MDT

    …I still can hoot about things political for a few more days…

    Webb drops the hammer on Romney

    Jim Webb’s departures from party orthodoxy are frequent. As recently as last November, the retiring Virginia Democratic senator was reluctant to commit to campaigning for President Barack Obama.

    So Webb’s bladework today on Mitt Romney was as unexpected as it was memorable.

    “Those young Marines that I led have grown older now. They’ve lived lives of courage, both in combat and after their return, where many of them were derided by their own peers for having served. That was a long time ago. They are not bitter. They know what they did.

    But in receiving veterans’ benefits, they are not takers. They were givers, in the ultimate sense of that word. There is a saying among war veterans:  ”All gave some, some gave all.”  

    This is not a culture of dependency. It is a part of a long tradition that gave this country its freedom and independence. They paid, some with their lives, some through wounds and disabilities, some through their emotional scars, some through the lost opportunities and delayed entry into civilian careers which had already begun for many of their peers who did not serve.”

    http://www.politico.com/blogs/…

    SOMEONE had to say it…I’m glad Jim Webb did.

  24. Duke Coxdukeco1 says:
    Fri September 28, 2012 at 4:09 PM MDT

    Old home week.  Ralphie.?..MOTR?   You there?  

    I miss you…

Leave a Reply

Comment from your Facebook account


You may comment with your Colorado Pols account above (click here to register), or via Facebook below.