President (To Win Colorado)
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(D) Kamala Harris
(R) Donald Trump
80%↑
20%
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
(R) V. Archuleta
98%
2%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
(R) Marshall Dawson
95%
5%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(R) Jeff Hurd
(D) Adam Frisch
50%
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(R) Lauren Boebert
(D) Trisha Calvarese
90%
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(R) Jeff Crank
(D) River Gassen
80%
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(D) Jason Crow*
(R) John Fabbricatore
90%
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(R) Sergei Matveyuk
90%
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(D) Yadira Caraveo
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52%↑
48%↓
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
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State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
June 06, 2011 03:52 PM UTC
45 Comments
Dozens of comments, two days of bickering, and during a lovely weekend when we should have been outside pulling weeds or planting beds. Of course, she was repeatedly egged on…but overall an immense waste of precious electrons.
(PS-I support unions, I think ellbee’s anti-union views are abhorrent… but he is ellbee…entitled to his wrong opinion. Its easy to flame–I am quite capable–but the on-and-on-and-on gets very old and looks very juvenile. IMO.)
Nancy did nothing wrong. MotR was the antogonist in that exchange, and MotR actually outed Ellbee.
the Pols penalty box is just a place for anyone who pisses off Ralphie.
Really, any regular commenter knows that while Nancy doesn’t always agree with everyone, she’s hardly involved in “continuous flamewars with other users,” and in fact I’m more than a little insulted that this phrase written for me gets applied to someone who IMO hasn’t really earned it.
It’s one thing to enforce the no-outing rule (which I have strongly supported), but asking about someone’s identity is not explicitly a rule violation: the violation is to answer the question. People here get asked very personal questions all the time about their identity or employment, and nobody has to answer. “Who are you? Why do you care about this? Are you a shill? Are you being paid by this campaign? Are you Steve Harvey? Are you blogging on state computers?” etc. etc.
If the standard for blog etiquette here is “Stay on Ralphie’s good side,” could we maybe just shorten the rule list? Because right now it’s kind of long and doesn’t seem to include the most important rule.
Nancy is not and never has been part of the problem here.
Agree or disagree with her views, Nancy is not out flaming people. She is a thoughtful member of the community.
Between the front page Hancock rumor diary and the high-sticking call for Nancy Cronk (of all people), I am concerned about ColPols in ways I haven’t been in the last two years.
(Disclaimers: 1. I have lurked at this site for over a year, but this is my first time posting. 2. I know Nance IRL and I think she is a lovely person.)
Ellbee was guilty of two crimes IMHO. The first was not doing the internet flounce properly. If you announce loudly that you’re leaving a website forever- – – – then, by golly you need to stay away. You don’t return a few short weeks later with a moniker that almost instantly identifies you with your previous incarnation. I realize he got “outed” by another site back then, but I honestly expected him to lurk, not to post. At the very least, pick a better sock puppet, er soubriquet, for the site. I knew who he was by his fifth or sixth comment. Lurker, here, not member of community. And I spotted Ellbee instantly.
Secondly (and what ticked Nancy off, I believe) was his lazy approach to the now deleted diary title. He needed a descriptor to go with the word union and because of the rhetoric of his political leanings, the word thug was probably the first thing that came to mind. It showed a lack of creativity at the very least.
Applying the word “thug” to teachers and the DCTA is just a bit much, again IMHO. For instance, in my political camp the term tinfoil teahadists is popular enough to spring readily to mind. But not for use as a title for a diary.
And now I realize why I lurk and don’t post, because this is way too long.
You will be returned to your regularly scheduled ranting and cage rattling–which I love by the way.
The worst wounds on this board are all self-inflicted.
“Censorship reflects a society’s lack of confidence in itself.”
— Potter Stewart
But you’re welcome to think that if you want.
I’d be permanently assigned to the penalty box.
just haven’t accepted it yet? Did you see Lost? It’s like that.
and we all just got banned from The Spot? It would explain so much…
Hmmm, who’s next? Scooter McExonerated?
One judge to another: “Be just. And if you can’t be just, be arbitrary.”
She had ample opportunities to let it go, but she kept it up. I think she wasn’t flaming so much as trying to get her side completely across, but she did a terrible, ham-handed job of it. There was no reason to keep doing it as many time as she did, especially the way she kept on phrasing it.
was redundancy and ham-handedness? An awfully low bar for this site …
is merely “redundant” …
Once or twice, sure, but she did it over and over and over and over and over… It was clear she had become obsessed. Say what you will about her antagonists, but they weren’t the ones keeping it alive.
The way this site treats new posters I would be willing to bet that the author of the fated diary would either have gotten zero responses or posters would have jumped on him/her immediately if their handle wasn’t a clear homage to a past poster.
Taking it to other threads accomplishes that even more.
And although the diary’s authorship shaped the conversation, it didn’t control it.
At least, MoTR and Ralphie did.
So, what point are you trying to make?
Yes, habitual replies were what fanned the flames. And while Nancy certainly was stupid in claiming that she didn’t know the author’s past, repeatedly, she had valid claims to object to the title.
The problem for me is everybody white knighting for conservative posters who intentionally post inflammatory comments to get a rise then act indignant or say shit like “I was just kidding around” or “I’m just being snarky, why are you so serious” It blows my mind that BJ hasn’t utilized the same tactic.
Just think, for a second, if BJ or libertad had authored that same diary. It would have the same number of comments, everyone would have been attacking them and commiserating with Nancy’s loss. Or imagine if the poster was a new, no name.
I don’t know nancy and if I were to be completely honest with you I don’t particularly care for her posts. Maybe both her and the author are great people, I don’t care. What I do care about is how this site is so dominated with dems of various stripes (myself included) that people bend over backwards to accomodate Bj-lite whose only credentials are that they buy people beers and have been around a long time.
The repeated “outing” was just a side note. Isn’t the more general rule that you keep your flame wars confined to one thread?
Anyway, the anonymous=automatic idiot shtick is usually code for “I don’t have an argument”, which is always going to be jumped on. Especially if you’re, in this case, two of the harassed.
Am I saying that you’re completely wrong? God no. Just that nc crossed a number of lines that became unavoidable for other posters to avoid. The diary was stupid, so I stopped clicking on it. I like the Weekend Thread. The Eurotrash video was even good! Who would have her now? Such a shame.
Don’t piss off Ralphie.
Any questions?
Class dismissed.
by simply refusing to care about the mayoral election.
Yes, ellbee’s diary title and many other things about it sucked. Yes, ellbee posted some opinions I disagree with. Yes, ellbee and others said things that egged Nancy on.
But the truth is that Nancy’s comments went from not-very-measured to way-over-the-top to I-think-you-might-need-some-help-Nancy. Seriously, having read them, stuff just went way too far.
Generally speaking, I find Nancy to be a very reasonable and respectable voice. I think that taking 2 days for her to cool down is the right answer to this, and I think it’s something that frankly – when she looks back on it – she’ll probably appreciate having happened.
For what it’s worth, I think she’ll also appreciate having that diary gone. The tenor, tone and content of her comments are neither worthy of her nor reflective of her general contributions to the dialogue on this site.
My thoughts too. Although I know I am an offender at times in the flame wars, I try to remind myself–it’s just a blog Twitty, it’s just a blog.
Ellbee is usually wrong, IMO, but not objectionable–flame-worthy titles aside. I mean union ‘thugs’ it’s like so beyond cliche its almost a creative vacuum–a place where all intelligent thought goes to die…yeah, guilty ellbee–I mean, in my esteemed opinion. BORING. It’s like reading the comments at Fox News or The Hill. No originality there. But take personal offense? No. It’s. Just. A. Blog.
In any case, I thought two days of progressively crazier banter was a bit excessive., And it was a lovely weekend, at least out here. So, on my occasional check ins, which I am somewhat ashamed to admit I do between say–pulling the damn bind weed and mowing the back .25–I would think…”JFC, this again?”
But to that end, Nancy isn’t the only one who could probably have used the cooling off, just as I myself, Club Twitty, have deserved it. (That BJ guy gets my goat sometimes, but usually I can successfully ignore him, the ‘gnat strategy’–but I do hate it when they get in my ears).
I’ll be glad to welcome Nancy back, just as I am glad (and hope to see) ellbee post here, either as a newbie or as a ‘reincarnation’ of someone erstwhile referred to as LB. It seems pretty circumstantial to me.
I’ll admit that I have not seen the “offending” thread. But cooling off is now the standard? Are we in preschool now and must be sent to timeout?
I know Nancy is passionate which I love about her and I don’t doubt that she may have become extremely passionate. But if we are now to be treated like children, I can think of a whole list of kids who are going to be sent to the “thinking chair” to contemplate what a bad boy or girl they have been. And that penalty box is going to get awfully full. For now, I have a hard time imagining that Nancy should be in there by herself.
If I get tired of someone’s inability to disengage from the flame wars, I just stop reading that poster for a while. That seems far more appropriate than this.
Especially the part about Nancy being singled out for cooling off. I didn’t get to read the diary, but based on other commentary, I think egging on a poster — or ganging up, if that’s the case — isn’t any better and might be worse, in a cruel schoolyard bully sort of way.
Ralphie would be incarcerated there permanently, and MotR and several others would be frequent inmates.
Look at what happened in this instance: MotR was bullying Nancy without cause and without a hint of human compassion. Nancy did nothing wrong. Pols decided they wanted to “punish” someone in response to the conflict, for appearance’s sake, so they chose Nancy, because for some bizarre reason, MotR and her co-bullies enjoy some sort of privileged “cool kid” status in this pathological sandbox.
Again: Nancy did not “out” Ellbee in the exchange, but MotR did.
I had the same take on it, and for the life of me, cannot understand why the rules are applied to some, but not to the worst. Go figure. G’night.
OH NO, I’M EXTREMELY CONCERNED ABOUT THIS!!! YOU CAN TELL FROM MY CAPITALIZATION AND NUMBER OF EXCLAMATION MARKS!!!!
THATS LIKE A WHOLE WEEKEND.
But atleast someone here is still sane.
that Nancy returns. In the past some have dropped out after the penalty box and I always found Nancy to be additive though I missed the thread that seemed to be objectionable to some.
Only three penalty box sentences, and the other two are still regular posters.
She was victimized twice in this incident: The first time by MotR’s sadistic bullying, and the second time by Pols wrongly blaming Nancy for the nastiness.
What makes this even worse is that Nancy is courageously posting here under her real name, so when she is ganged up on by MotR, Ralphie-boy, and Pols, it’s happening in full public view. And Pols is thus publicly sullying Nancy’s real-world reputation without just cause.
I hope that she is taking this time to cool down and get a much-deserved rest from thinking about the deeply upsetting memories she shared in the thread that caused the penalty boxing.
I’m not going to get into whether I feel that was fair or unfair–this is a privately owned website and the owners can moderate fairly or unfairly as they see fit. But I know Nancy, not closely, but well enough to know that she cares too much about political issues to leave entirely. She knows that many welcome her strong progressive voice here.
Is rambling against the rules?
Bigger questions:
Why wasn’t MotR “disciplined” for outing Ellbee in that same exchange? The “rules” say that she should be banned for that. Moreover, why don’t MotR and Ralphie-boy ever receive any kind of “discipline” for their habitual vicious bullying and instigating one flame war after another?
(But of course, this whole “penalty box” thing is just as stupid and juvenile as the conduct of MotR, Ralphie, and the rest of the usual suspects.)
Not MOTR. Let’s be real. She knew what she was doing. Feigning ignorance doesn’t make it ok. But the whole thing just got out of hand. Nancy got carried away.
Cool off, carry on, continue to be a part of great discussions. I think this has been well resolved. I don’t see Nancy’s real life reputation as tarnished at all by this. I think this helped protect her.
Nancy obviously didn’t even know who Ellbee was until MotR gratuitously outed Ellbee in the thread, so how could anyone in their right mind try to blame Nancy for the outing?
In fact, MotR actually taunted Nancy for not knowing who Ellbee was from the overt hints MotR had been dropping. Here’s an excerpt:
I haven’t always seen eye to eye with Nancy, but what’s happening to her here is just flat-out wrong.
I spent hours working on a funny post for today, and then threw it away, opting for complete honesty. I’ve always been one to jump to the defense of the persecuted, and for the first time, that person is me. Thank you to those who know my character, and know I have been unjustly accused of trying to “out” another blogger. It’s impossible to out someone when you have no idea who they are in the first place, and couldn’t care less to boot.
I have been tried and convicted of being “redundant” and “hamhanded” (still looking that one up.) I guess I do get a little redundant when my integrity has been falsely impuned publicly. My bad. (“Continuous flamewars?” Seriously?)
I ask Pols to reconsider having the names of the people in the penalty box for perpetuity. It is the scarlet letter of this blog, and serves to defame those of us who are proud to express our opinions under our real names (shouldn’t every blogger have the right to choose?). Even more importantly, it was undeserved. Keeping the names up do not help heal conflicts, nor help people to move on. It encourages people to create new sockpuppets — something I won’t do — or simply leave. I’m proud of my political views and I feel no need to hide them (that’s why I came out on the blogs one year ago). People should not be punished for their honesty. Clearly, this was the wrong place to be honest.
To sxp151 — Mortimer, Mr. Jingles, and triguardian say hello.
To Steve Harvey — thank you for leaving the poetry books in the cell with Ralphie’s coloring books.
Pols — The food here is worse than Casa Bonita, and your stupid television only plays Russian music videos with no captions.
Again, thank you to those who know me and can attest to my integrity.
~ Redundant
Thanks Mom!
And I never did read it to the very end and find out who “ellbee” really is. Or read the frying pan reference.
I like it when people are passionate about a subject: pro and con.
Trainwrecks, be damned.
Now there are two of us.