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August 16, 2016 07:06 AM UTC

Tuesday Open Thread

  • 30 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

“I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no respect.”

–Edward Gibbon

Comments

30 thoughts on “Tuesday Open Thread

          1. Johnson is surging??  I just checked three respected prediction blogs: 538, Political Wire, Center for Politics. No sign of a surge on any of those. 538 has Johnson at 8.3% of the popular vote, which is about where he has been for some time.

            I’m thinking that the “surge” is wishful thinking on Dave’s part.

    1. Here's why CoPols doesn't really need to add to Johnson or Stein:

      Tuesday, August 16

      Virginia: Trump vs. Clinton vs. Johnson vs. Stein Washington Post

      Clinton 46, Trump 39, Johnson 9, Stein 3
      Clinton +7

      Virginia: Trump vs. Clinton Washington Post

      Clinton 51, Trump 43
      Clinton +8

      Note the big difference in the Clinton margin adding Johnson and Stein into the mix makes? Pretty much the same story in other state and national polls whether for a Trump lead or a Clinton lead or adding both Johnson and Stein or just Johnson.

      Bernie Busters and those who won’t vote trump but hate Hils might just as well stay home. These two just aren’t making a difference.

    1. Not surprised. There has been little evidence of superior performance by charter schools all along, this despite the fact that charter schools should be enhanced by both their ability to be selective and the fact that parents who seek charter school admission contribute to a higher proportion of students with involved parents and supportive environments at home. There are individual high performing charter school exceptions but, over all, the movement doesn't have much to show for itself. 

    2. There's a version of the full paper available free.

      Charter Schools and Labor Market Outcomes

      At the very least, however, this paper cautions that charter schools may not have the large effects on earnings many predicted. It is plausible this is due to the growing pains of an early charter sector that was building the plane as they flew it.” This will be better known with the fullness of time. Much more troubling, it seems, is the possibility that what it takes to increase achievement among the poor in charter schools deprives them of other skills that are important for labor markets.

      1. Income, labor market and poverty issues aside, it's also interesting to note locally that in already high performing suburban districts there just doesn't seem to be much evidence for superior performance of charter schools. 

        1. The key thing to keep in mind,BC, is that to many parents,charter schools are the last stop before they give up on the public system entirely.   Both my grand kids have been in DPS charter schools, though my 15 year-old granddaughter is switching to East High this fall, where her mom went and which has a better athletic program (she's a good runner and hopes for a college scholarship as an athlete.)

          Like you, I've seen little evidence that charters are better, as a class than other public schools.  But my daughter and son-in-law felt the ones they picked had better disciplinary policies and more room for growth.

          In today's world, if you just let the teacher's union put a bayonet at parents' throats and force them into a one-size fits all mediocre system, they will just pull the kids and either send them to private schools or rent a house in Cherry Creek.

          Charter schools are public schools and parents who want their children to have school choice deserve to be listened to.   Denver's openness toward reform, including charter schools, is why I am willing to support it with my taxes and my vote.

           

          1. Actually, I'd have to go search but it's my understanding that more of the DPS charters are getting difference making results than the ones in suburban districts, especially in suburban districts that are pretty high performing to start with.

            We were lucky to have moved into the Littleton school district before our son started. It's been consistently as high performing or more so than Cherry Creek. Together we were at the top in all categories throughout our son's primary and secondary education.

            If they ever get tired of Denver you can't go wrong moving to Littleton proper. We have excellent schools, parks, rec centers and other amenities ( library/ museum, Art Depot, etc.) a real historic downtown, great shops and ethnically diverse restaurants. We also have charter schools but the plain old public schools are high quality.

            We also have a very good Community College, ACC, a great place for your kid who isn't sure about ultimate career goals to go and get those basic requirements out of the way without spending an arm and a leg before transferring to a more expensive U or to pursue a career that requires an associate degree or some other kind of training.

            Also very important, our school Board hasn't undergone the kind of nasty partisan drama common to DougCo and JeffCo.

              1. Lot's of students come from Englewood and Denver on Light Rail to attend ACC. We also have lot of free summer concerts.

                I still go to the WWW parade even though my kid is long past playing in the Heritage High Marching Band. It's a real old time extravaganza and all the pols will have floats and booths where you can sign up to support campaigns. Lots of marching bands from all over, vets, fire trucks, equestrian groups, antique cars, fair food and arts and crafts. Starts with a flyover. You'll think you're in Mayberry along historic Main Street. There is definitely a there here.

                  1. I prefer Savory Spice and In-Tea, but, yes, there's that. And Merle's, a stand alone locally owned neighborhood restaurant with roof top dining and great burgers and real fries, fish and chips, Reubens, etc., a decent pho joint, good sushi restaurant, wine bar, brew pub, bars with music on weekends, coffee houses, chocolate shop, La Vaca Beef, a great rec center with state of the art fitness equipment, easy access to our network of trails and Light Rail. And more.smiley

  1. For the reading pleasure of our newly arrived trolls. Enjoy.

    Advisers to Donald J. Trump keep reassuring Republicans that there is still plenty of time to rescue his candidacy — nearly three months to counterHillary Clinton’s vast operation in swing states and get Mr. Trump on message.

    The Trump team had better check the calendar.

    Voting actually starts in less than six weeks, on Sept. 23 in Minnesota and South Dakota, the first of some 35 states and the District of Columbia that allow people to cast ballots at polling sites or by email before Nov. 8. Iowa is expected to have ballots ready by the end of September, as are Illinois and two other states.

    The electoral battlegrounds of Arizona and Ohio are to begin voting on Oct. 12, nearly four weeks before Election Day. And North Carolina and Florida will be underway before Halloween.

    Early voting has become a critical, even decisive factor in presidential elections: President Obama was sufficiently ahead in the early vote in Iowa and Nevada in 2012 that his campaign shifted resources from those states to others, according to former advisers, who also credited enthusiastic early voting in 2008 for his victory in North Carolina and elsewhere.

    Nearly 32 percent of voters cast their ballots before Election Day in 2012, according to census data, compared with 29.7 percent in 2008 and 20 percent in 2004.

    With Mrs. Clinton spending aggressively to try to dominate the early vote, Mr. Trump, who has repeatedly created distractions for himself in the past two weeks, is in jeopardy not just of being outmaneuvered but also of running out of chances to improve perceptions of him enough to win over undecided voters.

    “When you have something as catastrophic as the Trump campaign is becoming, there aren’t enough weeks left to turn things around, and little ability to organize effectively and capture a strong share of the early vote,” said Mike Murphy, a veteran Republican strategist who worked on behalf of Jeb Bush during the primaries.

    Continue reading the main story

     

    1. Oops. Meant to include this paragraph too. It's kind of the kicker.

      If Mrs. Clinton swamps Mr. Trump in the early vote in some swing states, she can move staff and money to the most competitive places (my emphasis)— like Florida, North Carolina and Ohio, judging from recent polls — while he scrambles to battle on multiple fronts.

       

  2. To add to the pleasure of newly-arrived trolls, who ever they may be, how come Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort is lying about his connections to Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs?  Trump and Manafort are in denial mode with attacks on the New York Times, which broke the story. Yet the Wall Street Journal's sources basically support the conclusions of the Times' writers.

    1. (a) The Russia connections are really troubling. I image we'd have a better idea of the Drumpf's involvement if he released his tax returns.

      (b) Despite all the yammering about the NYT, the Drumpf's speechwriters still depend on the paper of record. I checked out his convention speech. I would guess that more than half the footnotes come from either the NYT or WaPo.

  3. I found this Michael Moore piece interesting.  Obviously, there are always concerns around someone with a social agenda and unnamed sources, but…

    Trump Is Self-Sabotaging His Campaign Because He Never Really Wanted the Job in the First Place

    Of course he wouldn’t really have to run for president—just make the announcement, hold a few mega-rallies that would be packed with tens of thousands of fans, and wait for the first opinion polls to come in showing him—what else?—in first place! Then he would get whatever deal he wanted, worth millions more than what he was currently being paid.

    1. I'm generally not a fan of Michael Moore; he's too far left for my taste. But I did see an interesting piece by him several weeks ago where he strongly encouraged the Dems not to get complacent regarding Hillary's chances. I agree, as a bona-fide RAT (Republican Against Trump). The time for complacency is the days after election day.

      1. I'm a former fan who doesn't find him too liberal but has been disappointed too often by his sometimes distant relationship to accuracy. I felt the same about liberal talk radio's Randi Rhodes back in the day. I'd tell someone something I heard from her, assuming she fact checked,and then find out it was based on little more than a grain of truth and I was passing along bad info.

        Thank goodness liberals can rely on Rachel Maddow to be meticulous with her research and on the rare occasions when she gets something wrong she corrects very publicly and apologetically at the earliest opportunity.  

  4. Newsporn site Gawker has been sold to Univision for $135 million. Let's hope Univision brings these predatory papparazzi back to responsible journalism.  The old gawker will not be missed.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    1. Isn't that the site that lost a big lawsuit filed by Terry Bollea (a.k.a. Hulk Hogan)?  Just googled it and I'm correct. Gawker sold for less than it owes Mr. Bollea. 

      1. Yes.  The verdict may be scaled down, bit it forced Gawker into bankruptcy.  Good riddance.  Without going into detail, this is a victory for privacy.  This suit was invasion of privacy, not libel.  Gawker wanted the right to run private sex tapes, without consent of subjects and without ccompensation purely to make a profit.  If they had won, no Americans private acts would have been safe from greedy websites.

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