CO-04 (Special Election) See Full Big Line

(R) Greg Lopez

(R) Trisha Calvarese

90%

10%

President (To Win Colorado) See Full Big Line

(D) Joe Biden*

(R) Donald Trump

80%

20%↓

CO-01 (Denver) See Full Big Line

(D) Diana DeGette*

90%

CO-02 (Boulder-ish) See Full Big Line

(D) Joe Neguse*

90%

CO-03 (West & Southern CO) See Full Big Line

(D) Adam Frisch

(R) Jeff Hurd

(R) Ron Hanks

40%

30%

20%

CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado) See Full Big Line

(R) Lauren Boebert

(R) Deborah Flora

(R) J. Sonnenberg

30%↑

15%↑

10%↓

CO-05 (Colorado Springs) See Full Big Line

(R) Dave Williams

(R) Jeff Crank

50%↓

50%↑

CO-06 (Aurora) See Full Big Line

(D) Jason Crow*

90%

CO-07 (Jefferson County) See Full Big Line

(D) Brittany Pettersen

85%↑

 

CO-08 (Northern Colo.) See Full Big Line

(D) Yadira Caraveo

(R) Gabe Evans

(R) Janak Joshi

60%↑

35%↓

30%↑

State Senate Majority See Full Big Line

DEMOCRATS

REPUBLICANS

80%

20%

State House Majority See Full Big Line

DEMOCRATS

REPUBLICANS

95%

5%

Generic selectors
Exact matches only
Search in title
Search in content
Post Type Selectors
April 04, 2014 10:10 PM UTC

Weekend Open Thread

  • 102 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

You have to be trusted
By the people that you lie to
So that when they turn their backs on you
You'll get the chance to put the knife in

–Pink Floyd, from Dogs

Tweet
Share

Comments

102 thoughts on “Weekend Open Thread”

  2. Obama Request for Network Prime Time for bogus announcement turned down.

    Apparently, all three of the major networks turned down fearless leaders request for Prime Time airtime to make his "enrollment announcement.  Instead Fallon made the announcement for him on his show:

     That’s right, the White House said that it surpassed its goal for people enrolled in ObamaCare. It’s amazing what you can achieve when you make something mandatory and fine people if they don't do it. And then keep extending the deadline for months. It’s like a Cinderella story. It’s just a beautiful thing. You make everyone do it. Isn’t it great how many people do it? But if you still haven't enrolled, you might have to pay a penalty called the individual shared responsibility payment, which is 1% of your salary. Then Americans said, ‘Man, good thing I don't have a job.

      1. Fallon might have said that. He's not shy about making some good jokes about Obamacare.   Granted, it's not the level of a poop joke cartoon…..because it actually makes sense. 

              1. Web monkey, maybe more than one. The tone changes so much. Or, perhaps on and off his meds, whatever they may be. The poor dear definitely has mood swings.

    1. That's unfair, Dave;  How can you expect Obama to properly build a Communist/Socialist/Fascist utopia, when he has to deal with the Republicans, and their endless, laser-like focus on creating jobs?  I mean, they've had like 50 votes to repeal Obamacare!  Talk about job creation!!!

    2. Good to know that local and state government jobs have gone down under Obama. With the federal government taking more and more from us, there is very little left over.

      1. State and local jobs are mostly: Firefighters, Police, Teachers. Maybe road repair crews. Which ones do you want to cut?

        The Federal Budget is mostly an army and insurance. Which do you want to cut?

      2. Very thin gruel you are serving up, there, loser.

        The McCutcheon decision has awaked the press and the public to the real motives behind the Republican party…capture of our government by a super-rich aristocracy made up of robber barons. The Greedy Old Poops want to take our country back 90 years to the days when wealth was worshipped and work was worthless.

        Maybe, in exchange for your support, the Koch bros. will let you be the Sheriff of Nottingham…I mean Somalia Springs.

         

          1. You mean like his "facts", or racist stories about certain groups of people (that he's still to chickenshit to identify) trying to force Obamaphones on him? 

            Nah……

              1. To be fair it's not just AC and Moddy. They but represent well the group they're attached to.I'm stillwaiting for one of the"small(er)" government folks to tell us all just what size government is appropriate for a nation of 300+ million souls and nearly 3 million square miles land area. I've never gotten any answer to that question.

          1. You are right, DAvid.  The cut in federal and other government jobs may well be offset by the contracting out to the private sector those very jobs.

        3. Dave,  What caused the drop in these federal jobs?  Was it Obama?  The answer is found immediately above your graph:

          The federal government lost 10,000 jobs last month, and that is just the latest in a series of losses over the past two years. Sequestration and other budget cuts have forced civilian agencies to scale back — or in some cases freeze — their hiring. 

          Congress and the budget deal caused the decrease, not fearless leader.

          1. Exactly. But the fact remains anyone who says government jobs, federal or other, have been growing under Obama while private sector jobs have suffered is completely, through the looking glass wrong. All the job growth has been in the private sector.  Public sector jobs have been cut at every level.

            It's just like those Joe Six packs who swore they were paying higher federal income taxes under Obama and who were also through the looking glass wrong  with the opposite true. Their  federal taxes went up only when the GOTP forced the end to the payroll tax cut.

            Almost nothing the right says about ACA or any other tax related issue is anywhere close to the truth. They don't "spin". They lie.

  4. The quotes from Jimmy Fallon are real.  Every right wing website is carrying them, as well, probably the first time that theyve promoted a Fallon bit.

    Apparently, the White House also asked for evening prime time, and was denied, so went for an afternoon Rose Garden announcement. 

    Obama and Biden took a well-earned victory lap. All of the major news networks did carry or cover the announcement; however, they didn't interrupt their evening shows for it, making the call that it wasn't on the "breaking news" level.  That's all there is to this story. 

     

    1. The other part of this is the media story: what was covered by which outlet when. None of the right wing sites covered the actual Rose Garden press conference by our President, celebrating the historic ending of the first open enrollment period for the first national health care plan since Medicaid and Medicare. The mainstream outlets covered it, but not as  a breaking news story. 

      Instead, the right wing outlets opted to put in less than a minute of a comedian mocking the law. The mainstream outlets opted to run it as a human interest story, right up there with the Chobani Greek yogurt scandal. 

  6. I know some of you have been following SB93, the oil pipeline/eminent domain bill. As it turns out, it might not yet be over, but not in the way you'd normally think. I've been covering this bill and its previous iterations for the last two years, and I don't think the oil pipeline people are going to give up. However, they may have another problem to deal with:

    http://bit.ly/1hgknnx

    1. Very interesting.  I got an email urging me to call my Rep., who I know personally, which left me with the impression it was about fracking.  I'll have to go back to see who it was from for future reference.  I'm glad I didn't call.  But I would have been against it anyway, so why the need for subterfuge?  Many senate dems had to have voted for it.  That's not good.

        1. The gender-neutral pronoun thing may be too weird and complicated for now, but we can all have the courtesy to call transgender people by the pronoun they prefer, i.e., he, she, him, or her. That's a small thing.

          As an English teacher, I know that this bizarro, hybrid, inconsistent language has changed many times over its history, marked by the footprints of Latin, Greek, French, and German invaders, American progeny, as well as all of the subcultures incorporated into it. English can survive a gender-neutral pronoun, if it comes to that.

          1. only seems "weird" because is a new phenomenon in language. Only a couple of decades ago "gay" was so considered. A few decades before that, or less, it was "Ms." 

          2. Sorry. I'm completely on board with everyone learning to be grown ups about the fact that sexuality and gender identity are complicated things but do we really need new gender neutral pronouns?  I'm happy to call a person he or she according to their preference but I'm not about to stop using he and she altogether. I also hope that in the future we're not going to be expected to ask everyone we meet what their orientation is so we can be sure to say the right thing. 

            Now it's very helpful to have celebrities and such come out in a public way because it's important that people know they don't have to hide who they are. In the near future I hope that it will be such a non-issue that we'll just naturally discover that kind of personal information in the course of getting to know someone well and won't care about having that information about people we don't know or only know slightly because who cares?

            1. Nobody's advocating for that particular slippery slope. I'm sure that "he" and "she" will be with us for quite awhile, as long as the majority of the human race is heterosexual, which is a safe bet.

              And, nobody's advocating that, upon meeting a new person, one ask, "What is your preferred gender pronoun?" That would be weird.

              As far as I'm aware, asking about preferred pronouns or using neutral gender pronouns is pretty much etiquette for dealing with people of obviously ambivalent genders.

              Basic assumption is: "Don't assume – ask (politely)"

            1. Make sure you use the you-all with the hyphen. If you shorten it to ya'll, it will create a tear in the space-time continuum. Ya'll is plural…always…every time. Ask any southerner.

            2. I'm with y'all on that one, David T8. English needs a 2nd person plural pronoun, and Southerners were gracious enough to give us one. Then there's Jersey with "Youse guys", and common in Colorado, "you guys". Pols can weigh in with "folks".  Gen TXT can type in "ppl".

              Turns out we have all kinds of gender neutral plural pronouns in common use, just need a singular one. "Dude" was angling for that spot, but it just became annoying. Right, dude?

              Those of you who are multilingual, what are the gender neutral terms in languages you know? Spanish has "vosotros", but nobody ever says it informally.

            3. Y'all are missing the point.  Our first person pronouns (I, me, we, us), second person pronouns (you, y'all), and third-person plural pronouns (they, them) are gender-neutral.  The problem arises with third person singular (he, she, him her).  Y'all or you all would be second person plural and can't be used for the third-person singular.  People are using the plural form of third-person pronouns to serve as a gender-neutral pronoun, which causes those of us who are devout believers in subject-verb agreement to get palpitations.  That may be the solution we end up with, though; most everybody is doing it anyway and everybody seems to know what it means.

              2. Thank god, PERA hopeful, for so clearly stating what I think but could never get it written wrong.  I can't spell, but I believe, with all my heart, in subject verb agreement.

                Everyone one should your explanation on his or her computer. 

                 

                1. Multiple Corrections: Where is the white out???

                  …what I think but could never write it  correctly.

                  "Everyone  should read your explanation on his or her computer."

        1. "It" has a negative connotation. "It" is a machine, an animal, a thing – not how you want to refer to a transgender person.

          Marge Piercy, a pioneering revolutionary utopian writer, in her novel, "Woman on the Edge of Time,"used the pronoun "per" as a 3rd person gender-neutral pronoun.

          It was natural within the context of her novel, still too awkward for everyday English use.

          As a teacher, I often encounter students who are "gender nonconforming". My solution is to call them by their names, and, if I have a chance, either find out what their friends call them, or take them aside and discreetly ask them what they prefer to be called. They have all been grateful for my discretion, as these kids tend to be outrageously bullied, are at risk for suicide and dropping out of school.

          1. Mama, read top to bottom the highlighted letters.  As an English teacher you'll know the name of a message where the first letter(s) of each line spell out the true message.  I thought I could find the name in my copy of Have His Carcase by Sayers where she uses one, but she doesn't name it.

            Dave, that was funny.   Thanks.

              1. I don't think he meant it like that, MJ; I think it's just Dave's brand of humor.

                Next, he'll tell you how to make a calculator show the word "BOOBS". 

            1. Here's a question I don't ask new friends: What do your genitals look like? Unsurprisingly, this question is not appropriate for your trans pals either. Here's a good rule: If you wouldn't ask a non-trans person, don't ask a trans person, either.

              Seriously? Are there people who say "Hi. My name is Steve. Nice to meet you. What do your genitals look like"? Is this a real problem we need to a solve? A social etiquette question we need to be advised on? I mean anyone who's that much of an ass isn't going to take any advice on social niceties anyway. 

              I'm sorry but I'm going to have to come down on the lighten up side of this issue. There's a point where over-earnestness and humorlessness on the left loses me.

              1. No worries, BC. I seem to have stepped into the role of trans etiquette adviser – but you don't have to subscribe.

                I wouldn't know if there are people who ask rude questions of trans people, as I'm comfortably female, but apparently that happens often, or it wouldn't be mentioned in the article.

                As with anything on here, take what you want, leave the rest.

                  1. Transgender kids I knew in the GSAs I sponsored reported questions like these and worse – imagine whatever naive, inquisitive hormonal crap teens ask, magnified by the power of almost 24-7 internet access, and there ya go. Then you have politicians running for office , capitalizing on the pain and alienation of children.  It's not surprising so many become suicidal. Then there's this:

                    http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/02/26/personal_questions_trans_people_get_asked.html

                    Unless you think that these people are just lying to…what, get sympathy? Force you to be guilt-tripped by "humorless and over-earnest" activists? 

                    Most people are uncomfortable with the idea of transgender identity, because it's an uncomfortable idea. I'm very comfortable being a woman. So, I would assume, are you.

                    But imagine being uncomfortable in your own skin. Imagine getting up every morning knowing that who you are in your soul, in your innermost being, doesn't match with the equipment you've been given. How would that feel?

                    I'll stop this conversation here. You already know trans folk. Or you will. You'll treat them with courtesy because that's who you are. Good enough.

                    1. Not questioning the validity of what you say.  Just not impressed with the quality of the article you chose to reference. Too much like those magazine articles listing x number of things you should or shouldn't say, do eat,  add to your wardrobe this year, etc. 

            2. Thanks, cook…I -sponsored or co-sponsored a gay-straight alliance at two high schools I worked at. Those teens are now adults, and I keep in touch with them on facebook. They say now that it was important to them to have an accepting space to hang out in. Some of them got thrown out of their houses. Most of them had "issues" at school.

              In Pueblo, very few schools have gay-straight alliances, although they do have Christian clubs that get their share of the student club funds. It's still a conservative, parochial little town, in many ways.

              1. MamaJ 

                I started a gay straight alliance at my high school way back in the early '80's. Back then we had to meet outside the building (though on campus). Only "approved" clubs could use school space and none of us were keen to be identified as members. We didn't even consider B or T. Met my first T after high school, then darned if I didn't fall inlove with just such a person a few years later. As I mentioned on another post, we're close to 30 years now. 

    1. @Davie,

      Thanks for the link.  I don't know if it means a damm thing, but the Post website "customer care" has been undergoing a "new" platform and it was totally f**ked up for two days….almost as bad as Coloradopols……

      You couldn't get digital access without inadvertingly signing up for multiple subscriptions.  They may have it worked out by now.  But it was really crazy.

      1. Yes, I had the same problem with my account.  The timing of the change in platform and the announcement of the layoffs wasn't likely a coincidence.

        but the link in my daily email was working the next day.

        i was getting database errors with the ColPols site yesterday morning, and it ate two attempts at commenting on Saturday.

  10. Democratic State Convention this next weekend. I am a delegate. Any others here? DavidThi, are you intending to live blog this again?

      1. I think you'll enjoy it. I always do. Little advice, don't just hang out with your county folks. There is time to walk about and meet others. You really just have to be with the Pueblo County folks to vote. I'll try to look you up though if you're taking my advice it will be harder.

      1. I don't know of any Dem primaries, so it should be pretty much a love fest. I might raise a stink about the platform as it pertains to "carbon-based " energy development. The Mesa County platform is a spineless piece of supplication to O&G. I protested it at the county assembly, and while the rank and file applauded my position, the candidates all live in fear of pissing off Club 20 and the GJ Chamber of Commerce.

        1. Duke, What's the platform piece title or number?

          I don't plan to vote for Hick, will cast a symbolic "no" vote. (because of his suing the communities that voted to outlaw fracking within their boundaries.) Being a newbie at this, I don't know if I'll even have that opportunity. 

          Don't know if others will, but probably some will.

          1. Yes, you should have the opportunity to NOT vote for Hick at the assembly, unless someone moves for a acceptance by acclaimation. At that point I will move for a vote by show of hands.

            I don't recall the particular plank number, but it will be different from the county platform. Ours involved a statement that read, (paraphrasing) " the Mesa County Democratic party supports the responsible development of both carbon-based and renewable energy systems."

            They made no differentiation between the two. I submit we should state a preference for renewables over carbon-based energy, which I think reflects the ACTUAL position of most Democrats.

      2. None that I know of, statewide.   But we do have a contest for board of education (state) in the first CD.   As a delegate, I'm getting called on that one.

    3. I'll be there.

      If we all wear the Pols logo we can spot each other. The tilted gold dome? Or do we need to know the secret handshake?

       

       

      1. How the heck would we wear a logo? There's no Pols T shirt, right? I think a meetup at an eatery or bar at a time when not much is going on at the assembly might work.

         

        1. OK, so the meetup idea went over like a lead balloon. I changed my pic on here to my real face, and will print "Pols" on my nametag at the assembly, so hopefully we can at least say "Hi".

            1. I don't think so, as I don't see it on the official invite from the Dem HQ. But I'm new to this, as I said. I take it not every delegate does the Senate district thing?

              1. Delegates are chosen at county level for several different things. I am both a CD3 and state delegate. Others are chosen for Rules committee and Credentials. Again, Since Tapia has no oppositions, unless one pops up at convention, it ought be pro forma but I've never met him nor heard him speak

                1. The xcel sheet I was sent says state/congressional delegate, so I think that must include CD3.

                  Tapia is a good, moderate, old-time Dem. I've seen more dynamic speakers (Joe Neguse was on fire!), but maybe Tapia'll be pounding the podium at the assembly.

      1. I tried to watch….made it about 90 seconds and, not wanting to throw up on my keyboard, I bailed. David is right, the average viewer won't make it 30 seconds into this piece of idiocy.

        1. …and the average Coloradan will never cast a vote that would put him anywhere near the Governor's chair.  Like AC, they've been reduced to activities that magnify their arrested development.

Leave a Comment

Recent Comments


Posts about

Donald Trump
SEE MORE

Posts about

Rep. Lauren Boebert
SEE MORE

Posts about

Rep. Yadira Caraveo
SEE MORE

Posts about

Colorado House
SEE MORE

Posts about

Colorado Senate
SEE MORE

272 readers online now

Newsletter

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter to stay in the loop with regular updates!