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) J. Sonnenberg

(R) Ted Harvey

20%↑

15%↑

10%

CO-05 (Colorado Springs) See Full Big Line

(R) Dave Williams

(R) Jeff Crank

(R) Doug Bruce

20%

20%

20%

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%↑

40%↑

20%↑

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
August 29, 2016 06:24 AM UTC

Monday Open Thread

  • 32 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

“Bad things are very easy to get.”

–Confucius

Comments

32 thoughts on “Monday Open Thread

  1. Just occurred to me we haven't heard a peep out of Darth Vader Cheney in months. I googled and couldn't find anything more recent than back in spring when he endorsed Trump. Did find a hoax I'd missed entirely from earlier this month announcing that he was dead. Wonder why he's gone so silent. Could his health finally be catching up with him? Anybody got anything?

      1. I saw on Maddow's show tonight that the woman he sent the dirty pictures to this time is a member of Drumph's staff. I suppose Huma's used to his bad behavior, but (at least figuratively) sleeping with the enemy may have been the last straw.

  2. Sad news…..Mr. and Mrs. Anthony Weiner have separated

    According to the newspaper of record, the last straw occurred when the infamous Peter Tweeter got busted for having another on-going relationship with a woman over social media. Turns out the lady in question is a member of the NRA and a Drumpf supporter. I guess Huma was willing to tolerate her husband's dalliance with Cindy Leathers back in 2013 but this going too far.

    And the Donald weighed in on this, commending Huma for making the wise choice in ditching the perv but – you guessed it – trashing Hillary for placing national security in jeopardy for possibly sharing what might have been classified information with Huma who may have divulged stuff to the perv who in turn just might have spilled the beans to one of his social media lady friends.

    1. And so shortly for after congratulating himself over the latest high profile (only because of relation to an NBA star) gun death in Chicago.  

      If he's really lucky a nun will get raped and murdered by an illegal Mexican immigrant followed by a terrorist attack on American soil by a Syrian refugee so he can brag even more about how he's getting inundated with congrats from his fans on being right. To be followed hours later (after his campaign "manager" prods him) with a brief…. BTW , condolences to the victims.

      Now that would make it a great week for Trump.

  3. I keep telling you Dems not to get over-confident and complacent. Morning Consult poll released yesterday morning has Clinton up on Trump now by just three points; 43% – 40%.

    Real Clear Politics' average of many polls has Clinton still up by 6. As the late and great Yogi Berra once said: "it ain't over until it's over." 

    1. And we Dems keep telling you over-confidence isn't on the menu. We don't have visions of just coasting. We're out for total annihilation. No number of points ahead will satisfy our blood lust.

    2. @CHB

      I also read the RCP polls—one stands out as really odd.

      The L.A. Times poll has been giving numbers showing either Trump ahead or tied.

      Now does anyone have any idea of what is going on with their poll? (Or is that a far right GOP paper?)

        1. I wouldn't get too excited about ties and only tiny leads for an incumbent. Unless the polls show an out of the margin of error strong lead for the challenger ousters are rare.  But one can hope, especially if this turns into a tsunami.

  4. Here's the latest Donnie Downer insult to our intelligence.  Apparently, the new swing state ad from Trump (which inexplicably will be played in Colorado ad nauseum)  touts a tax plan that isn't even his own plan!   The ad references Paul Ryan's plan that Trump has rejected and also references Trump's own early plan that he has since abandoned.  Good Grief.

    From Daily Kos:

    So the Donald Trump campaign has this new ad in which the economy is the focus, with the narrator intoning that in "Hillary Clinton’s America, the middle class gets crushed," while in Trump's America "working families get tax relief. Millions of new jobs created. Wages go up. Small businesses thrive." All pretty typical for a Republican message, but Steve Benen see a problem in the fine print.

    To the Trump campaign’s credit, the commercial includes footnotes of sorts for many of its core claims. For example, at the 15-second mark, when the narrator says “working families get tax relief” in Trump’s America, there’s small text at the bottom that reads, “A Pro-Growth Tax Code For All Americans, GOP: A Better Way, 6/24/16.”
     
    Why does that matter? Because “A Pro-Growth Tax Code For All Americans, GOP: A Better Way, 6/24/16” is House Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) tax plan, not Donald Trump’s. They’re actually pretty different, and include their own marginal rates, which makes it odd for Trump to cite the House GOP’s plan as if it were his own.

    A couple of seconds later, the same ad includes fine print that reads, “ ‘Details and analysis of the 2016 House Republican Tax Reform Plan,’ Tax Foundation, 7/15/16.” And while I’d take issue with the center-right Tax Foundation’s analysis of Ryan’s plan, the point is, again, that Trump has a different plan.

    In fact, Trump has so far explicitly not endorsed the Paul Ryan tax plan, offering his own, albeit similar, plan a few weeks ago. And that's what makes the next bit highlighted by Benen even more bizarre. The ad flashes up another footnote, "Details and analysis of Donald Trump’s Tax Plan, Tax Foundation, 9/29/15." But that was last year's plan, the one Trump abandoned—wiped from his website, even.

    Does Trump have a plan? Does his campaign know if he has a plan? Is anyone in that whole operating paying any attention to these kinds of details? NBC asked the Trump campaign. "A spokesman for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment."

     

        1. I'm glad he recognizes that Jill Stein is not qualified to be president.

          Gardner actually has been decent on Western public lands issues. Among other items, the article references the Murkowski Senate amendment, to turn public lands over to the states, from March, 2015. Gardner was the only Western Republican senator to vote against that. He’s also been a big supporter of re-authorization of the Land & Water Conservation Fund (LWCF).

          1. You can be sure that Cory has an ulterior motive or is being paid by someone for his vote. If there is not some tangible benefit to Cory, no legislation will get his support.

            Cory is wholly owned by industry, with Koch Industries holding the majority position.

            As always, disputes welcomed. Perhaps I have misjudged the good Senator.

             

             

          2. He's also good on the industrial hemp issues.  I'd make a bet that if that was his election cycle he'd have a slightly different message.  I realize this is 'money talking' and as the old saying goes, "God doesn't give with both hands".  

            I didn't post his equally-as-useless rant on coal at the Steamboat Summit.  Yes, these jobs are going away, Senator.  The industry's 'Darth Vader' has been (cheap) natural gas.  Then, in order, it's geology, then economics, then politics.  Retraining the coal workforce (an inevitability) seems like a legitimate function for the Senator and his colleagues?

            To the extent he wants to blame Obama for overseeing the largest expansion of gas exploration in our nation's history, then let him blame politics – but not for the reason he purports. 

            He might make special note of the thousands of Colorado energy workers employed at Vestas.  Yes – if you build wind towers, you're an energy worker. 

            This country doesn't need to extract from our public lands to be energy or economically secure.  Next generation technology and our vast renewable resources can do that. The ones who are becoming more and more secure are his monied interests who have watched their net worth grow exponentially under this very same POTUS he deplores. 

             

          3. Imagine what coal-dependent areas might look like today had the Senate Majority not focused all their energy on making Obama a one-term President and the House hadn't blown those same years on 60+ Repeal & Replace votes, along with a helping of Green Eggs and Ham, instead having the necessary grown-up discussions about the inevitable energy transition? 

            http://wvmetronews.com/2016/08/29/wvu-economist-tells-senators-capito-and-manchin-that-six-counties-are-now-in-great-depression-at-senate-field-hearing/

            But yes, 'Trump Digs Coal'….and Manchin (father of the now infamous EpiPen CEO) says (with a straight face):

            Manchin expressed his frustration with the Obama Administration’s failure to develop a long-term solution in Appalachia–which has been hit particularly hard due to the rising costs and inefficiency of mining thinner seams of coal deeper under the ground.

            “[The EPA] was asking us to do things that the technology wasn’t their for us to do,” Manchin said. “They had no plan at all except they wanted to move away from fossil. Well, if that’s the direction they were going, don’t you think you ought to have a plan for the people you are leaving behind?”

             

            1. What has amused me are the comments from Stuart Sanderson, outgoing president of the Colorado Mining Association, and incoming president Stan Dempsey, that blame the Obama Administration for the demise of coal. The gents ignore the free market causes of coal's demise; gas is cheaper and cleaner. And for all the talk of "clean coal," industry has done very little to develop such technologies. 

              1. Cheap gas killed king coal.  Blame fracking, it prodiuced a torrent of cheap gas.  As Adam Smith foresaw, capitalism is a bitch for the capitalists.

              2. One word: FutureGen  – the Fossilonian's Solyndara, except that our government's investments in solar have yielded significant public benefit. In the case of FutureGen, all it did was prolong the death of an 18th-century fuel-source that market forces knew was dead. 

                A little closer to home you might recall the project by the Arkansas River Power Authority that has nearly bankrupted Lamar.  That was a push in the opposite direction: converting their natural gas power plant back to coal as a way to outfox the market place and give the middle finger to climate activists. All wrapped in the irony that Colorado's first commercial wind farm, Colorado Green, casts a physical shadow on the region.  

                Just down the road a bit, a repeat by the Colorado Springs Utilities.  There ratepayers, too, are now saddled with millions in sunk costs.  Unfortunately the Einsteins that, in theory, have fiduciary duty to someone will never be held accountable. 

                But indeed, Senator, let's keep pretending the coal industry is viable…

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

102 readers online now

Newsletter

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