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June 04, 2014 06:36 AM UTC

Wednesday Open Thread

  • 46 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

"You are remembered for the rules you break."

–Douglas MacArthur

Comments

46 thoughts on “Wednesday Open Thread

  1. Complete Colorado posted this video – and I have to say, it's funny, even if it is pro-fracking. https://vimeo.com/97285892

    And….Scott Tipton has a town hall in Montrose  Thursday June 5:

    Start: June 5, 2014 5:30 pm

    End: June 5, 2014 6:30 pm

    Location: 161 S. Townsend, Montrose, CO

    May 28, 2014

    During the meeting Tipton will answer questions from constituents and provide an update on the work that he’s doing to encourage economic growth and job creation in the 3rd District.

    .

    And…Doug Lamborn is going to debate Bentley Rayburn in the Springs June 16. From the Independent, http://www.csindy.com/IndyBlog/archives/2014/06/03/lamborn-rayburn-to-debate-june-16-in-downtown-colorado-springs

     

      1. I publicized Tipton's town hall to encourage y'all to go and to ask tough questions. Tipton's expert at sounding good while saying nothing meaningful. 

        As for Tapia, he is campaigning: 

        http://tapiaforcongress.com/3rd.html#.U48s7DpdVmo

        and has visited/campaigned in: 

        Just FYI, I don't work on Tapia's campaign – or anyone else's, so far – saving my summer activism for local control signatures.  So don't vent on me if Abel's not making nice with you in your hometown yet.  He hasn't answered my mild attempt at political journalism, either. Call his campaign office and let them know you want a visit. 

         

        campaign@tapiaforcongress.com 

        Phone: (719) 581-2159 P.O. Box 3428 Pueblo CO 81005

         

        1. Thanks for information – I appreciate having contact information. 

          P.S. I wasn't venting on you; sorry if you took my Tapia comment wrong.  I won't bother you again.

           

           

          1. Feel free to bother me, GG. Just, last time I posted here about Abel Tapia, I got a bunch of "Where is he and why won't he come to Mesa County and why are you insulting us by asking us what we would ask him if we ever saw him" comments.

            I have absolutely zero power over anything Tapia says or does or where he goes or doesn't go.  He did come into the CD3 race late, after Buffie Mcfadyen dropped out. 

            For what it's worth, I think Abel's a good, solid legislator, judging by his voting record: At that link, you can see who has endorsed him, and by how much.  He seems to be a less than stellar campaigner, being pretty much a low-key, down to earth guy. So, good at governance, not so hot on the political charisma. 

            I'll take that over Tipton's bogus charm and empty words any day. 

            1. Yeah, I'll take that too . . .

              . . . but, chrissakes, someone oughta' clue him in that he's still gonna' have to campaign a little.  

              What does he think he is, an imcumbent?

      1. Bill Plante (archival): The record shows that every time an American hostage was released there had been a major shipment of arms just before that. Are we all to believe that is just a coincidence?

         

        Arms for Hostages

         

         

         

         

          1. AC can't/won't answer….He's still in a euphoric haze after insulting a POW (for righteous reasons, of course); if there's one thing that chickenhawks can't resist, it's sitting in judgment and slandering others, with no repurcussions.

             As far as I'm concerned, if he's a deserter, let him face a Court Martial; but he was a POW, who needed to be brought home. 

            1. I'm leaning towards conscientous objector without  a clue. (for Bergdahl). He walked away – that's not in dispute.  Everything else needs to wait for his trial or court-martial. 

              I agree with all the points above – Reagan, Bush, etc, did prisoner swaps, "negotiated with terrorists", etc. 

              The right wing spin on this is mind-boggling. I feel like knocking on the door of the nearest home or car sporting this flag: 

               I want to ask them where is the asterisk **only if we like you, your politics, and your family". 

        1. Ronald Reagan sold guns to the Iranians in exchange for getting American prisoners back. He then gave the guns to the military dictatorship of Nicaragua. These actions were specifically illegal.

          Oliver North was just on Fox News… Remember, he lied to Congress about Reagan's guns-for-hostage policies.

          I wouldn't say that the CIA is out-of-control. More like, in-control and following the instructions from the extreme right-wing of US foreign policy like Ronald Reagan, Dick Cheney, George Bush & George Bush II.

          It's been like that for a long time: Middle Eastern history isn't even history (as Falkner might put it). The 1956 CIA coup-d'etat against the democratic government of Iran set up a chain reaction reverberating today. This was the origin of Ward Churchill's observation about chickens coming home to roost.

    1. John McCain, before this deal was announced, stated his support for exactly this exchange of prisoners. Now, of course, he's against it.

      Like the strike that took out bin Laden, there's nothing that this President does that is above small-minded partisan criticism from Republicans.

  2. That's the beautiful thing about Obama Derangement Syndrome...it allows a lying, cowardly, libelous little old chickenhawk to talk shit about a POW and feel good about it.   

  3. If you are following along, Reagan was helping Saddam kill his own people and selling arms to his regime as well as the mullahs in Iran, probably trading the latter for hostages.  And definitely using the proceed to fund an illegal and unconstitutional (i.e. dictatorial) civil war wherein the US trained death squads pillaged not only across Nicaragua but El Salvador and Guatemala as well, raping nuns and murdering priests and massacring villages.  

  4. (That's Dana Rohrbacher – Stud Republican)

    Dick Cheney was in charge of President George Dubyah Bush's Anti-terrorism task force on 9/11/2001. They had done nothing.

    We now know that as CEO, Cheney got snookered into a disastrous merger that has since sent Halliburton's stock price plummeting, while signing off on dubious balance sheets that have sparked a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation. His mastery of the Beltway is similarly in question. Last year's Cheney-led energy task force produced an all-drilling-no-conservation energy bill that went nowhere. The task force's real legacy was to mire the administration in a thicket of congressional investigations and private lawsuits, all springing from Cheney's insistence on Nixonian secrecy. His major foreign policy gambit–last spring's shuttle-diplomacy mission to the Middle East to secure support for an invasion of Iraq–was a debacle. The tough-talking VP went to the region to line up the Arab states behind the United States against Saddam; days after Cheney's return they were lining up behind Saddam against the United States. Less well known, but no less embarrassing, was Cheney's leadership of the pre-9/11 anti-terrorism task force. In spring 2001, rather than back congressional efforts to implement the findings of the Hart-Rudman commission, Cheney opted to spearhead his own group, to put the administration's stamp on whatever reforms occurred. But the task force did almost nothing for four months until terrorists struck on September 11.

    But none of this matters to AC, because there's a Black Man in the White House.

  5. I publicized Tipton's town hall to encourage y'all to go and to ask tough questions. Tipton's expert at sounding good while saying nothing meaningful. 

    As for Tapia, he is campaigning: http://tapiaforcongress.com/3rd.html#.U48s7DpdVmo

    and has visited/campaigned in: 

    Aspen May 15  – Pitkin County Dems

    Durango May 10

    Telephone town hall on veterans issues May 28

    Pueblo as home base – June 5 dinner

    La Plata County June 21

    Endorsements: Colorado Association of Letter Carriers

    And a bunch of other places – see his Facebook page. 

    Just FYI, I don't work on Abel's campaign – or anyone else's, so far… so don't vent on me if Abel's not making nice with you in your hometown yet.  He hasn't answered my mild attempt at political journalism, either. Call his campaign office and let them know you want a visit. 

    Phone: (719) 581-2159 P.O. Box 3428 Pueblo CO 81005

    campaign@tapiaforcongress.com – Paid for by Committee to elect Abel J. Tapia

    1. If Republicans have to fight to keep the Senate seat in Mississippi of all places, I'll laugh until election day. That's twice as good as watching them lose the Indiana Senate seat in 2012.

      And then there's Iowa, where Republicans last night selected their most gaffe-prone and looney candidate to go up against Bruce Braley. This is one of the seats Republicans are counting on flipping in order to take the Senate, but unfortunately for them, Joni Earnst fares least well against Braley in the general election.

      1. Iowa is a bonus seat, not needed to reach 6, anymore than Colorado is.

        South Dakota, West Virginia and Montana are pretty much accounted for.

        Three of these four do the trick: Alaska, Askansas, Louisiana and North Carolina.

        Bonus seats are: Colorado, Iowa and Michigan.

         

        1. And failures would be: Kentucky, Georgia – and now Mississippi. In KY and GA, the Democratic candidate is within a point or two of the Republican. In Mississippi it's too early to tell, but the runoff election is the best scenario Democratic ex-Rep. Travis Childers could ask for, while Childers is himself probably the best candidate Democrats could recruit for the state.

          Meanwhile, Alaska and Arkansas are stubbornly refusing to trend in ways Republicans want to see, and North Carolina's Kay Hagan remains within the MOE of polls and has traditionally been under-polled by a few points in the state.

          I agree SD, WV, and MT are probably GOP pickups – though we might be surprised by any of them (SD and MT more than WV).

          But there's no sign any of Colorado, Iowa, or Michigan are heading to Republicans in November. Colorado is the closest of the three, and Udall has maintained a small (generally within the MOE) but consistent lead across many polls now.

            1. There was no chance we'd take Indiana (Mourdock), or keep Delaware (McDonnell). And we had a 10% chance on the Missouri seat (Aikin).

              All of the above races are difficult slogs, sure – but we're counting on Republicans to show their election prowess once again!

      1. Yup, AC is roadkill today (I know, what else is new?)

        I still think he's just a ignorant office intern for the GOP, swallowing whatever slop they feed him to regurgitate here.

        When not playing video games, he probably thinks of history as just knowing the "first" Batman movie came out when he was in grade school back in 2005 😉

          1. Or the AFP twitter feed.

            He's a decent writer, when he takes the time to do it, rather than just posting a graphic or a link, a provocative statement, and move on.

            I don't go with the mom's basement theory, either. He's a professional, who probably doesn't need the chump change he gets for being a provocateur here.

            1. He doesn't do this for money. If he did, he'd be a lot better at it. He does this because it makes him happy, in a sick, sad way. 

              1. Of course it's all (mildly amusing) speculation.  My point is that unlike long departed "Beej" — an obsessive-compulsive amateur — AC strikes me that he's doing this not for himself, but at the behest of his party bosses.  Not a civilian at all, but not as savvy as an experienced operative.  Thus my speculation that he's a wet-behind-the-ears eager intern, licking boots by his constant presence here.

                Just my humble opinion.

                1. AC is, I believe, a "web monkey". Use der Google…

                  a largely unskilled Web worker one with a passable understanding of HTML but little else.
                  It is often supposed that, in the New Media food chain, there is nothing lower than a webmonkey. Alas, there is: people who barely have the skills to use FrontPage; these people are called "typists".

                   

  6. Let's remember: George Bush left 2 wars for the next president to deal with. Bush and Cheney didn't win them, they cut and ran from them both.

    All this was to the great benefit of both Bush and Cheney: they couldn't be called losers (technically, anyway), and they could continue harping on the next Administration, D or R, on how they coulda really won those wars with infinite time and resources. This is exactly what Cheney did and is still doing.

  7. OK. I'm really confused about Rasmussen. It used to be an outlier to the right. Now it is so outrageously tilted left, outlier would be an under statement. I always follow the main polls on realclear and Rassie is the only one that ever has Obama's approval in positive territory and regularly has him much closer to that than any other poll, left, right or center. 

    Today the disparity is the biggest I've ever seen in Obama's favor compared to the poll average.  Obviously there's been a big change. I've heard about the founder leaving. I can understand some differences when people leave and others are in charge but this is nuts. It's almost as if they're pulling our legs. I'd l like to believe their rosy Obama polls, mainly because they would bode well for Dems in general, but I couldn't possibly. WTF?

      1. They do seem more out there on Obama's approval than on other races. And PPP, BTW, was among the most accurate in 2012, regardless of where their sympathies may have been. Rasmussen isn't so much more lefty than PPP nowadays as it is simply inexplicable. 

        PPP was never more than a few points off the poll averages and the poll averages, dragged to the right by biggies like Gallup and Rasmussen that clearly used outmoded models, turned out to be a little less, not more, accurate than PPP which was one of those that helped drag the averages back in the right direction. Rasmussen was less accurate than PPP when it was considered a rightie poll and you guys loved it and is apparently even worse now. Guess it's just sucked for a long time either way.

    1. The Kos elections team is mostly dismissive of Rassmussen these days. Before, they were reliably Republican – i.e. they had a consistent house bias. Nowadays they're all over the map, and the official DK elections number crunchers report Rassy numbers with a "take it with a grain of salt (the size of the Great Salt Lake)" approach.

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