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August 30, 2019 09:54 PM UTC

Labor Day Weekend Open Thread

  • 84 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

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84 thoughts on “Labor Day Weekend Open Thread”

  1. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 82% of people over 15 years old with a single job work on weekdays.  31% work weekends. 

    Here is a grateful remembrance of the labor organizers who moved us toward "weekends."

  2. For those interested in trajectories, yesterday's Washington Post had their weekly horse race pundits Power Ranking.  For the first time since the beginning of February, Michael Bennet had NO votes, and thus did not appear in the ranking OR the "others receiving votes" list.  Interestingly, there is a coalescing 13 candidates that were ranked by one or more of participants, dropping below the usual 15. 

    His cohorts on the "Falls off ranking" status: Tulsi Gabbard, Kirsten Gillibrand, Marianne Williamson.  Others who continue to be ignored:  de Blasio, Delaney, Messam, Sestak.

    In 221 comments, Bennet is mentioned — once.  The comment:  "Biden is the big moderate.  If he falters, other moderates such as Bennett and Klobuchar will get more attention."

    1. Yes, Poddy mouth's blue dress came from China, sewn by patriotic Chinese Communists.  But the ejaculate he paid that extra $12,000 for came from prostitutes in Bangkok.

      1. Oh, he was definitely there — he did the shooting . . . 

        I mean, he was just another good guy with a gun, . . . right up until the moment he wasn’t . . .

        1. Speaking to reporters at Joint Base Andrews in suburban Maryland, Vice President Pence said “our hearts break” for the shooting victims.

          He said that he and Trump had spoken about the shooting and that the administration remains “absolutely determined to work with leaders in both parties and the Congress to take such steps so that we can address and confront this scourge of mass atrocities.”

          He offered no specifics.

          Sounds like "Thoughts and Prayers" oughta 'bout do it according to Pence

          1. You catch the new euphemism for it:  "The scourage of mass atrocities"? Not "mass shooting" (which implies gun violence) but mass atrocities (which simply implies people getting killed or injured somehow or another).

            2. "somehow or another" but not by lead in the water. Or being caged at the border. Or conversion therapy. Or flooding caused by climate change. Or relaxed FTC/CPSC/FDA safety rules.

              I agree- good catch

    2. Cars and bad drivers driving badly used to kill more people.
      Of course, they were mostly insured but there is no mention of cars in the Constitution.

      And self driving cars are on the way.

      Yep – you know where I'm going: Self operating guns.
      I defer to our AI overlord.

      1. thanks

        I'm also finding the math equation required to post anything is getting harder and harder.

        I mean – I can do square roots and infinite series but imaginary numbers?

        1. If you want to control the size of the image, click 'Image box',  paste url into first line. Adjust size to width (550 if it's top of the thread, 350-400-ish if you're way down in the bunny hole.  The height will auto-adjust.  Post. 

        2. Be glad . . . 

          . . . No doubt it’s that higher-level mathematica, beyond the number of his fingers, that’s the virtual border wall keeping Moddy Poddy Soggy Blue Bint, and the rest of his ABC his ilk, mostly outta’ here?

            1. Probably just dehydration . . .

              . , , I’m thinking today’s a good day for daiquiris (the proper ones, not those slushy blender abominations).

               

                1. Hmmmm . . . trick question, eh — as though their might be such a thing as an improper rum???   . . . 

                  Heretic that I am, Bacardí Ocho Años.  Purists would disagree, and opt for a superior white.

                  Life here is short.  Drink what you like . . . early and often. 

                  2. …and if a soul preferred a spiced rum, is that too far outside the box? Irish whiskey is my SOC (spirit of choice) but Rum has a significant place in the firmament of my spiritual favorites. 

                    I visited St. Kitts once upon a time and really enjoyed the local stuff. Grew attached to the spiced variety….with ginger beer and lime… a Suzie Taylor, as I recall.

                    Yum.

                    1. Well now, I didn't know Suzie Taylor, but she sounds swell.

                      We don't need no stupid box – the box is just the medieval mindset holding us back, making us defer to the king and his consort, even when she's a moistened bint.
                      Break free – by not even noting the box.

                      You want spiced rum, who doesn't?

                      Thar is hardly a finer choice than Irish wiskey, though when possible, I choose the single malts from a bit further north on the mainland.

                    2. Rum, ginger beer, and lime (. . . and a mint sprig garnish)? . . . 

                      . . . here in Merica, that’s a Dark and Stormy, definitely a favorite.

        1. My French is worse than Ricky Bobby's in Talladega Nights, but as I understand it's a verb that might translate to "deceive." Just thought the spelling reminds me of someone near and dear to our hearts!

           

  8. Sadly, the producers of the US Farm Report felt it prudent to run a piece on suicide prevention. Suicide is a serious problem in the farm community, and things are not looking good out there.

    They were all looking for some reason for optimism…and not finding one. It is grim.

     

      1. What else are they gonna do, David?

        They cast their lot and their livelihoods with this charlatan. The problem is, they have no other harbor. They now believe that all Democrats are baby killing socialists who want brown and black people to move in with them. And the hate machine has convinced them the Republican party establishment is done. Look how many have already cut and run….just the first of the ship deserting rats.

        No…the farmers bought a bill of goods. They may have buyers remorse, but the return policy means they will have to vote for a 'Demoncrat". They will just stay home.

        1. Pretty much exactly this. To them, Demoncrats are not humans, or if they are, they are exhibit the worst attributes of all of human history combined. Their only options are Trump or don't vote, and Trump says he's doing things to help.

  9. I forget the protocol.  Is it too early to discuss solutions to mass murder because the families are still traumatized or too late because it's always either too early or too late?

    1. And in an unintentional irony (I'm sure), Texas celebrated September 1 by having 10 new gun laws go into effect.

      AUSTIN, Texas — As the debate over gun control continues, starting September 1, a series of new Texas gun laws will go into effect. 

      Lawmakers passed several gun-related laws last legislative session, several of those will loosen restrictions on carrying guns in public.

      • ​A measure passed clarifies that it's legal for licensed gun owners to carry in places of worship, unless there's a sign posted saying otherwise. It comes nearly two years after a gunman killed 26 people at a Sutherland Springs church.
      • ​A new law will allow licensed gun owners, including school employees, to store weapons and ammunition in locked vehicles on school campuses as long as it's out of plain view.  
      • Another school-related law removes the cap on how many school marshals can carry guns on public school campuses.
      • Another new law says landlords cannot prohibit their legally gun-owning tenets from having a weapon or ammo on the property. 
      • As a response to Hurricane Harvey, a new measure will allow handgun owners to carry their concealed firearms without a license for up to 48 hours when having to evacuate. 
      • Another measures says foster families can now store guns and ammunition together, rather than having to store them separately. 

      Also worth noting, beginning Sunday, there's a new law that provides a defense for licensed gun owners who unknowingly carry their weapon into a place where it's prohibited, but leave promptly when asked.

      2. Cue Negev to explain how this is fine, and that these lives are a small price to pay for the Liberty of Texas gun collectors. 

        Also, it’s Hillary and/or Obama’s fault. So if foster kids, white supremacist gun hoarding tenants, and Walmart shoppers kill another few dozen innocent people in the next month,  it might have to be kicked up a notch to be Ilhan Omar’s or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ faults.

        2. Dude are you off your meds? Obama was gun salesman of the year/decade.

          Please, kick it up a notch. If Omar/Cortez are the future of gun control, I welcome them to the fray. See if you can get that Hogg kid back in the mix while you're at it. 

          1. Not a dude. Meds are a non-issue.  

            So what is the numerical relationship between carnage of innocents and profits in your industry?

            is it like $5 profit per body per month? Does maiming count? How about for little kids? More, less?

             

             

            1. Good questions, tree.

              I have one…aren't there commissions? Can you get "body bonuses"?

              Negev you are the expert..what say you?

              I guess that's three questions technically, but for a guy like Negev, who likes to pull the wings off of flies, it is as easy to fill three buckets with bullshit as it is to fill one.

               

              1. CDC and FTC and others should be studying this.
                Actual information might be useful, no matter where it leads.

                But it's illegal for the feds to study it.
                This is weird.

                It would be like….if it was illegal to study mad cow. Or penicillin. Or AIDS.

                1. It should be possible to do a simple two trend line scatter plot graph, correlating mass shooting deaths in the US with, say, donations to the NRA, or profit lines from largest firearm manufacturers, or enrollment in concealed carry classes. 

                  The CDC collects data from firearms deaths, except from about a dozen states that refuse to track it. So it would be almost impossible to get a comprehensive overview of gun deaths, but Mother Jones has a decent database of just mass shootings (,> 4 deaths). Maybe one of the gun safety groups has already looked at this correlation. 

                  Negev will have some pretty graphs from industry-approved sites showing that there is no correlation.

                  1. sure
                    Like the Super Bowl host city correlated to sex trafficing and domestic violence.

                    Yes, there is data.
                    But federal funding can study sex trafficing that no one will care much about, but the same federal funding cannot study gun deaths

                    1. Looks like sensible gun owners are finally getting fed up with the con men running the NRA.

                      The retired airline pilot has been shooting guns since he was a child. The Vietnam veteran got more serious about firearms as a civilian after one of his sisters was fatally shot during a mugging in Chicago. After the 9/11 terror attacks, he became qualified to carry a gun in the cockpit.

                      But Mokos has grown so disillusioned with the NRA over the years that he has joined forces with a rival organization — the gun control group founded by former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

                      “The more gun owners I contacted, the more I found out that everybody is thinking the same thing: The NRA does not speak for us,” said Mokos, who was a founder of the Minnesota Gun Owners for Safety.

                      Giffords’ group formed coalitions this year with gun owners in Colorado, Minnesota and Texas in outreach that managing director Robin Lloyd said was done expressly to show that not all gun owners believe in the NRA.

                      “The fallacy that the NRA has perpetuated for so long is that you’re either for the Second Amendment or you’re for taking away people’s guns,” Lloyd told the AP.

                       

      3. I don’t know how much any of those are gonna’ help anything . . . 

        . . . maybe what they really need is a law allowing for high-capacity “thoughts and prayers”???

        1. Republican could take the multi-computer bill speed reader that Colorado Democrats used this session and repurpose them for high-speed thoughts and prayers. Just sayin'.

          Of course, this begins to sound like some Eastern mythological creatures with prayers (or blasphemies) coming out of multiple mouths simultaneously. My guess is, they'll take the chance.

    2. I've seen a few posts on social media where folks say something like "if I'm slaughtered, please politicize the f$%& out of my murder." This is a legally defensible waiver, I think. If you want to discuss solutions to mass murder, check first to see if any of the victims wanted the f$%& politicized out of the given "atrocity."

          1. I lean to Gertie's view.  But the fact remains Warren is pouring cash and people into Iowa, where she has 50 full time people.  If she wins there and in her neighboring state of New Hampshire she will be very hard to stop.

  11. I was pleasantly surprised to see in today's Denver Post Perspective Section this Op-Ed tailored to Colorado by Kamala Harris on the topic of better pay for teachers.

    At the most fundamental level, our children are being raised by two groups of people: families and teachers. Yet the truth is that we fail to pay teachers their value. The average salary for teachers in Colorado ranks 46th out of 50 in the country, and across the country, public school teachers earn over 11% less than similar professionals. Teachers are more likely than non-teachers to work a second job, and the average teacher makes $1,000 less than 30 years ago.

    Colorado families are acutely aware of our national teacher crisis. The majority of school districts in Colorado have gone to four day school weeks to save money. Others are coping with overcrowded classrooms and high turnover. Rural Colorado, in particular, has been hit hard — in some areas, teachers are paid 36% below the cost of living. This is having a profound impact on our children, our schools and our communities. That’s exactly why thousands of Denver teachers went on strike to demand better pay.

    1. But why?

      She's not old enough or white enough or librul enough.
      Haven't you heard?  The list is down to three and she ain't onit.

      🙂
       

      Meet your nominee.

      IA, NH, SC, NV she does ok.
      Super Tuesday she's the front runner. By April 1 she's prohibitive.
      June on the lake front.

       

    2. I was appalled to see that Harris was right – most Colorado school districts (103/181 in 2018) , and ~ 74% of small rural districts- are moving to 4 day workweeks. 

      This doesn’t even save that much money – people still get their usual salaries or hourly pay. 

      The 4 day school week saves small amounts on maintenance and energy. Extra curricular activities and elective classes are scheduled at the end of the 4 days. It may actually make it easier for parents of young kids to schedule childcare – since those two hours between 3:30 and 530- the end of a traditional 9-5 workday- have historically been difficult to cover.

      Its not a real solution to being 46th in teacher pay in the country. 

      1. Well, then.
        Why not a 3-day week?

        Football causes brain damage. We can save more than the 4 day week thing by just eliminating football which causes brain damage.

        1. Many middle schools have eliminated tackle football for just that reason.  Older kids can be taught to be careful about head positioning, and budgets at high schools have more room for better helmets. 

          But it’s a two-edged sword- football carries the weight of much of a schools culture, ( how many still remember your football team name and some of the cheers or the “fight song”? Anyone remember that, for, say, girls tennis or varsity soccer?)  Football also generally pays its own way better than less violent sports, and contributes to the school’s bottom line. What’s a bit of brain damage if it brings in the donations?

          1. Tackle football in middle school: WTF?!
            Ya know… what we should do is give them free cigarettes in the middle school cafeteria. Then lower the age to 15 so they can be experienced smokers (nicotine consumers) by the time they learn to drive.

            Head positioning is pointless. And "better" helmets make it worse.
            Picture a brain sized balloon inside a steel sphere two inches in radius larger than the balloon.. The balloon connected by the balloon knot attached at one place on the sphere. The steel protects the balloon.

            Put them in motion – and than stop suddenly. The steel stops the balloon from hitting the outside world. But the balloon hits the inside of the steel sphere. If it hits hard enough, we call this a concussion. If it doesn't hit the steel hard enough to be a concussion – it's nothing.
            But start causing repeated brain (balloon) – steel (skull) contact and never have a concussion – and you will still be causing chronic traumatic encephalapthay (CTE) which is brain damage.

            "Better helmets" cause players who wear them to hit more things harder with their head. Which causes the balloon to hit the steel more often, not less.
            You know who gets fewer concussions and less CTE? Sports players who don't wear helmets, especially those who don't hit their skull in way that makes their balloon hit the inside of their skull.

            I am sure before there was football, something else carried the burden of school gang mentality tribalism spirit and culture. But what better way to create a focal point than to speculate which 15-20% of the participants will end up as punch drunk cognitively or neurologically impaired adults.

            Football does not pay its way at any level – though it could at some colleges and in the NFL. But even the colleges that could, only because most of the labor is unpaid. (Happy Labor Day). 

            Hell- at a more than one regionally well known high school program I could name, the salaries of the football coaching staff could fund several robotics or competitive programming teams. And swim teams. And baseball teams. Even rugby has less CTE and fewer concussions.

        2. Why don't they go to 3 days? The savings would be 35% instead of 17.5%

          Or why do they even need a building at all? They can do the lower grades in my cousin's barn and the upper grades can help teach the kids. Hell – why do they even need the upper grades?

          I'll believe in the 4 day week when corporate America adopts it.

  12. Wrapping up day 2 of the long weekend and decided to brave this week’s guest editorial, the outrage du jour, in The Wray Gazette..  This week we get about 32 column-inches-equivalent on Impossible Burger, one that comes to the conclusion our governor is corrupt and un-American, using his bully pulpit to pick winners, then veering off into this translating to the destruction of vast swaths of Colorado prairie to grow the crops needed to make this (what Jerry Sonnenberg calls it) cheap dog food.  

    Other functioning adults might call it the fastest-growing segment of new foods on grocers shelves. 

    I can’t vouch for the taste of Sonnenberg’s dog food, I grew up on a cattle ranch and I do like a good hamburger  I also like the Impossible Burger. – which I can assure everyone doesn’t taste like Fido’s lunch. Just sprinkle some ObamaTears on that abomination Jerry and I’m sure it will taste like a New York Strip. 

    To quote MADCO from earlier today, I’m dizzy (from reading these tortured, non-sensical ramblings in the local rag). 

    1. Yeah…. but I said it about math or alcoholic beverages or something

      "impossible" beef is good.
      But if I was their marketing guy – it would be 'freedom burgers' made from Peace and Liberty beef.

      Sure- to actually eat the cow, for those so inclined, is fine once in awhile. But you could eat P&L every day, every meal if you wanted.

      I would show a bunch of early-middle aged guys at a poolside bbq, ignoring the beautiful people around them in swimsuits because they got the high blood pressure and the bowel issues.

      The slogan would be something like
      Peace and Liberty beef, because beef should be like bacon – something you can eat at every meal.

      mmm… bacon

      1. I'm with you on the bacon thing.

        My family is instructed that the following words be placed at my final resting place.

        " Here lies Duke. He had an inordinate fondness for pork bellies."

    1. just until their exemption kicks in.

      'member when clever anti living wage restaurant types created a separate line item to show the cost of health insurance for the staff?
      There outta be a line item for the Chinese Victory tariff.

       

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