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October 09, 2014 06:34 AM UTC

Thursday Open Thread

  • 62 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

"It is better to remain silent than to mislead."

–James E. Faust

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62 thoughts on “Thursday Open Thread”

  2. Don Quick is piling up the endorsements.  Yesterday he added the Denver Post to the endorsements he already had from the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel and the Durango Herald.  Is there any chance endorsements can make up for the millions of dollars RAGA has shoved into his opponent's campaign?  Disclosure — I've known Don for 30+ years, have worked for the AG, and think Don will be an outstanding AG … if he can get elected in spite of the billionaires' contributions to his opponent.

    2. Both the Grand Junction and Aurora Sentinels endorsed Joe Neguse for Secretary of State. Good on them.

      Pueblo Chieftain endorsed Wayne Williams. So did the Gazette.  No surprises there.

      1. I'll have to eat my hat, or something. Gazette endorsed Gardner. And Bernie Herpin. Although they seem to be avoiding the issues of their resident nutbags Lamborn and Klingenschmitt.

  3. Energy East: As America Dawdles On Keystone XL, Canada Ponders Another Route For Oil

    Keystone XL oil pipeline energy east 

    The Keystone XL pipeline has been a source of controversy and debate since it was announced but it looks like Canada’s oil industry might be willing to ditch Keystone entirely, as they might have found a different route that doesn’t even have to go through America.

     

    The project is called Energy East and, according to a new Bloomberg report, it does exactly that: it takes Canada’s oil sands crude east instead of south. Right now, the project is still in the planning and approval stages, but if it gets the green light, it could let Canada’s oil industry end-run around the difficulties it has faced in getting Keystone built.

    http://www.inquisitr.com/1527159/energy-east-as-america-dawdles-on-keystone-xl-canada-ponders-another-route-for-oil/

        1. I saw that.  I've been wondering why Alberta hasn't done that earlier.  The New Brunswick and the Alberta people must be realizing they are in the same country.  Go figure.  Canadians may be a lot like us.

    2. So then we'd be shipping oil east through the Atlantic, instead of piping it southeast through the US? And its ultimate destination will still be those Gulf refineries?

      What could possibly go wrong?

       

      2. The oil goes to a refinery. Apparently, it ships to Asia faster than from Huston.  I believe, I read that from a link here yesterday.  I have no idea how that happens.  There seem to be closely held family oil interests in New Brunswick.  Still, not good, but it may cut out the Keystone line through the American heartland's prime ranching and agricultural regions.  We have a shorter term need for O&G, it won't be going away soon.  

        We live in interesting times.  I think all times are interesting, some are just more critical, or at least they seem that way.

        1. I support this eastern pipeline – let them deal with it in their own country with their own people.  Ultimately they'll find out they have the same problems there, too – but at least it will be their problem. 

          The short of it is that we don't need that oil.  China needs that oil – and PetroChina owns a big chunk of the Alberta Tar Sands.  What we need is a rapid expansion of our advanced biofuel industry right here in the United States.  We can lead.  Just like we led the race to the moon. 

          In Colorado today we employ 100x more people in the wind industry than the 22 permanent jobs promised by KeystoneXL.  Our biofuels industry employs almost 200,000 people nationwide. 

          Our future doesn't lie at the tip of a drill bit …

           

  4. Hey, mama… and other Polster junior sleuths.

    I need your help uncovering a cover up that is happening ..as I type.

    Early this morning I saw a story on Yahoo from CNBC, I think, I intended to post it on the Thursday open thread, but when I went back to find it, it is gone. It was titled something about a "Scary Chart", predicting that oil would hit $80 per barrel before bottoming out.

     I just went back to find it …and all I can find is a story about Shells' CEO predicting $100 per barrel oil and another rosy forecast from some other industry group..this stinks of fish….

    Everybody can see that this is where the O&G investors lose their asses… someone at the top pulled that story…

    Did anyone else see it?

     

      1. It will make it a little harder for ISIL to raise money, but I don't think it is a game changer…

        but investors will feel like they have been attacked when this plays out.

      2. Actually, ISIS/ISIL sells its "oil" on the black market where it gets about $50 per barrel. So, I don't think it will be much affected by legal market price changes.

    1. I'm waiting for the RWNJs to give President Obama full credit for this decline in oil prices, since they always blame him so ferociously when oil prices increase.

      Think we'll hear so much as a peep from the dissembling right-wing hypocrite bastards? Me either.

    2. Global Energy Markets Reach Tipping Point Giving Renewables An Edge

      Fossil fuels are thus no longer the lowest cost energy source in enough of the world’s energy markets to enable disruptive clean energy technologies to scale at a rate which would give them overwhelming market-wide competitive advantages in a relatively short time frame—if markets responded competitively to price signals. But incumbent energy markets may not in fact harvest much of this renewable edge, because they are not price driven.

      And to my point in today's story in the Colorado Independent, the protection Congressional reps ala Coffman and Gardner have nothing to do with market forces and everything to do about protecting monopoly markets. 

      While a decade ago this was an environmental argument that needed the same kind of gov't support the oil industry has enjoyed for decades.  Today it has become an economic argument with environmental benefits.  That of course is completely lost on our free market champions Gardner and Coffman. 

      The quicker we can rid Congressman of these billionaire pawns, the quicker we can make the transition to more abundant, job-creating, clean – and cheaper – energy resources.

      1. True, but it is till highly speculative, human nature being what it is.  But I think we are heading in the right direction, generally speaking, thanks to people like you.  We will win this.

  7. Mark Udall​- the War on Women single issue candidate just lost.

    Mark Udall's campaign has been the war on women, abortion, personhood 24 X 7.  Dem polling must have concluded that would be the key to his success.

    Being anti-Personhood polls well.  About the only abortion-related issue that polls worse than being pro-Personhood is being pro-late term abortions.  So all Udall had to do was be somewhere in between, right?

    This is from the Denver Post debate:

    Q.  With all our technological advances and society’s greater understanding of fetal development do you still support late-term abortions on demand?

    Udall replied: “To demand that that woman carry that child to term would be a form of government intervention that none of us want to see happen. We ought to respect the women of Colorado and their point of view.”

    Mary Landrieu, who is also tanking, just fired her campaign manager.  Mark Udall's campaign which has lost ground in the last month will be making a move shortly.  That is what losing candidates do.

      1. Instead of stupidly advocating for that "Grand Bargain" to cut Social Security and the absolutely idiotic and impossible balanced budget amendment Udall should have pushed for increasing Social Security benefits and fairly taxing income to pay for that meager investment in the health and welfare of Colorado's elderly and retired citizens.

        His loss he didn't listen to me………now he's just a one note harpy just as AC has described. And if Udall goes down, so should Bennet.

        1. Actually, Udall's messaging has broadened, as evidenced from the Pueblo debate last night. While he does say he wants a balanced budget, he repeated several times that it should not be balanced on the backs of the middle class.

          So he's talking tax revenue from corporations, and higher taxes in general. Not a good note to ping in an election year, though. But that is how Clinton balanced the budget, so we do know it works.

      2. In truth this is from the Denver Post website:
         

        sometimes a candidate doesn’t answer a question and that also tells you something about the candidate the voters should know,

        It also tells you something about a candidate when his supporters have to lie about what he was asked and what he said.

        This is what Udall was actually asked:

        would you support a ban on late-term abortions? And if so, at what week?

        You'll note the absence of the term "on demand" which was created out of thin air to make it seem like women are skipping down to Planned Parenthood in the third trimester on a whim.  As opposed to what?  By request?  Pretty please Mr. Gardner can I decide with my doctor what's best for me and my family?  The corollary question which Con-man Cory has never been asked is "In what circumstances would you allow abortion?"  "None!" is the obvious answer from his previous policy positions that he's tried to squirm his way out of.  

        Removed from Udall's answer is the reasoning for his response:

        Politicians and judges and businessmen ought to butt out and trust the women of Colorado. There are situations in which late-term abortions are found to be necessary. I've heard the story of a couple who waited many years to have a child.  They found tragically in the eighth month that that child’s brain was growing outside of the skull of that fetus. To demand that that woman carry that child to term would be a form of government intervention that none of us want to see happen.  We ought to respect the women of Colorado, and their point of view.

        It requires lying about a candidate's position, from a movement that pretends to be about small government and not having congressmen make medical decisions for citizens, to support this kind of intrusion into the doctor/patient relationship.

        Honest people can disagree about these issues in good faith. Cory Gardner and his supporters are not honest people.

  8. Kansas Teabagger Governor, about to be defeated, disingenuously whines: "My failures are all the fault of liberals!" (LMFAO!):

    Brownback: 'Desperate' Left Trying To 'Get Me' Before Tax Cuts Work

    Pathological liar Con Man Cory Gardner pummeled yet again for his never-ending evasions on global warming:

    GOP Senate candidate Cory Gardner has held 3 positions on climate change this week – Salon.com

    Yet another lie from chinless wonder Mitch "Yertle" McConnell involving President Obama and the female candidate who's about to defeat Yertle, blown to bits:

    The repeated claim that Obama ‘vowed’ to bankrupt coal plants – The Washington Post

    And a long but fascinating read from not-always-a-fan-of-Obama, economist Paul Krugman:

    In Defense of Obama | Rolling Stone

      1. I am originally from southeast Kansas.  I am not unique. I was raised by Roosevelt democrats.  People like me are still there, they are supporting Orman, and the dem did drop out. Hopefully Kansas is waking up.  What they really hate is upheaval and public display. There are a whole lot of Methodists, and quiet, self sufficient, mind their own business kind of people.  Eventually, they will do the right thing.  Let's hope sooner rather than later.  They need remember trickle down doesn't work.

        1. I'm also from Kansas and have tons of aunts, uncles, and cousins still there.  Every one of them, on both sides of my family, is sick of Brownback and Roberts and they are all doing everything they can to dump them.  They are in the eastern part of the state (KC and Topeka) and quite a few of them have gone to protest against the Westboro Baptist people.  They all think the Kansas hard-line Republicans have lost their ever-lovin' minds, even though they mostly used to be Kansas hard-line Republicans themselves.

  10. Today, from http://electoral-vote.com/ (emphasis mine):

    News from the Votemaster

    Could Colorado in 2014 Be the Prototype for America in 2016?

    The Colorado Senate race this year features two strong career politicians, Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO) and Rep. Cory Gardner (R-CO), fighting over national issues while billionaires on the left (Tom Steyer) and right (Koch brothers) flood the airwaves with vicious attack ads. This could be a preview of the 2016 presidential race. Like America, Colorado has a complex economy and a large and growing Latino population. It has also become something of a bellwether. In 2008, Obama won nationally by 8 points and in Colorado by 7. In 2012, Obama won nationally by 3 points and in Colorado by 4. So everyone is watching Colorado very carefully.

    Abortion and birth control have played a large role in the campaign, to the point that Udall ran an ad saying he thought these issues were settled a generation ago. Nevertheless, there are some things in the campaign that are specific to this race. Gardner comes across as a nice young man, even though the National Journal rated him as more conservative than Rep. Michele Bachman (R-MN). Gardner does not support the Colorado ballot initiative that would declare a fertilized egg to be a person–even though he sponsored federal legislation that says precisely the same thing–leaving him open to charges of hypocrisy. Polls show this to be one of the closest races in the country.

      1. I sure do, His kind are nothing if not false, fickle and totally mercenary.

        And remember, today's more-than-decent 56% probability of Dems retaining the Senate was knocked down from somewhere in the mid-60s yesterday, due almost exclusively to the introduction of those crap Fox polls!

    1.  an eleventh-hour deal Hickenlooper brokered between anti-fracking Representative Jared Polis and fracking proponents, preventing dueling referenda from being on the ballot this fall.

      I have said repeatedly, the impetus for this compromise did not come from Hickenloopers' office. Hickenlooper was inactive on the issue until the environmental community made a move. As is often the case, Hick gets credit for something he didn't do…the new methane rules are a good case in point.

      If someone with Hicks' office will reveal to us the phone call Hick made or the e-mail he sent that brought the parties together, I will gladly stand corrected. My information indicates otherwise. Giving Hick credit for brokering a deal here is misplaced credit.

       

  14. The ongoing failure of idealistic "Centrism":

    Centrism: how does it work?  The common-sense rationale for a politician to pursue centrism would be that if you take the most broadly supported Democratic policies and the most broadly supported Republican policies and forge a broadly supported cross-party platform, you will achieve electoral success. Such a platform might be devoid of any consistent ideological thread between the positions, but oh well: you’ve taken all the positions that the vast middle supports, and for the opportunist, that’s a solid campaign strategy.

    And yet there’s one issue where those who define themselves as “centrists” — the No Labels crowd, conservative Democrats, politicians running as independents to distance themselves from the taint of the “Democratic” or “Republican” party labels — gravitate towards the exact opposite of what the vast middle supports: Social Security.

    Social Security is the most popular government program in history. And yet when politicians decide to move to the “center,” where the great majorities presumably are, they do so by talking about the need to cut the deficit. Cutting the deficit is superficially popular, because (a) big numbers look scary and (b) too many people falsely believe (and are enabled by those who know better) that items like foreign aid are the largest parts of the federal budget. When you poll specifically about support for cutting Medicare or Social Security, though, the numbers are grim.

    A couple of Democratic Senators from red/purple states who are up for reelection this year, Kay Hagan of North Carolina and Mark Pryor of Arkansas (and MARK UDALL), who find it politically rewarding to position themselves as centrists. They hugged the Simpsons-Bowles deficit reduction plan, which recommended both raising the Social Security retirement age and linking Social Security COLA increases to “chained CPI,” i.e. cutting Social Security benefits. In order to appeal to the “center,” Hagan and Pryor — who honestly probably hadn’t read the thing, but were told by stupid advisers that it was something they should align themselves with — ran arms-outstretched to a plan to cut Social Security benefits, an extraordinarily unpopular political position. Karl Rove’s outside groups pounced.Who could’ve predicted?

    Mark Udall pledging his desire to cut Social Security as part of the Grand Bargain.

  16. Romanoff in the news:

    Fading stars

    Many of this year’s most hyped candidates may not be coming to Congress after all.

    Colorado Democrat Andrew Romanoff, the former state House speaker-turned-2010 U.S. Senate candidate, was once regarded as his party’s biggest recruiting coup. Now he’s widely seen as the underdog in his quest for a suburban Denver-based seat.

    Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/10/house-elections-2014-dynamics-111709.html#ixzz3FgHF2Qkp

    Oh no, time to find some more chalk.

  17. AC–Politico is lazy. It doesn't even bother to parachute a reporter in to a spot. It just has one reporter make a call to some strategist they know, perhaps Dickie Wadhams, and then go to the bank on the result.

     

    1. "Now widely seen" by who?  According to what metric?  Total bullshit. A Romanoff win is the only certainty (besides No on 67) I see in this cycle.

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