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August 04, 2012 03:02 PM UTC

Weekend Open Thread

  • 74 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

“The progress of rivers to the ocean is not so rapid as that of man to error.”

–Voltaire

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74 thoughts on “Weekend Open Thread”

  1. because I am about to leave for a project in Texas this morning. I will be posting from a small town just north of Dallas for a while.

    Probably will be super busy for the next couple of days, but I will certainly check in when I can.

  3. near* you this weekend:

    * 345 million miles, give or take

    http://www.cio.com/article/712…

    When NASA’s newest and largest robotic rover lands on Mars on Sunday morning, it will use a supersonic parachute, a tether and rockets to safely alight 350 million miles from home.

    Seven minutes will elapse between the time the spacecraft enters the Martian atmosphere and the time it touches down on the planet’s surface. NASA engineers say this will be the seven scariest minutes of the mission.

    “Entry, descent and landing is referred to as the ‘seven minutes of terror’ because we’ve got literally seven minutes to get from the top of the atmosphere to the surface of Mars, going from 13,000 miles an hour to zero in perfect sequence, perfect choreography and perfect timing, and the computer has to do it all by itself with no help from the ground,” said Adam Steltzner, a NASA engineer, in a video interview. “If any one thing doesn’t work just right, it’s game-over.”

    Of course, this will all happen remotely and robotically since it takes roughly 14 minutes for light (or telemetry signals) to reach Earth from Mars. Scientists on the ground won’t know how this landing actually went until seven minutes after the entire complicated process began.

    1. …the entire production (editing, green screen, CGI and compositing) all done by the JPL’s own Public Affairs Office.

      No outside contractors were enriched to make this production….

  4. no pressing need for massive campaign finance reform?

    Ponder this:

    According to Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig, only 0.26 percent of Americans give more than $200 to congressional campaigns. Only 0.05 percent give the maximum amount to any congressional candidate.  Only 0.01 percent – 1 percent of 1 percent – give more than $10,000 in an election cycle.  And in the current presidential election, 0.000063 percent of Americans – fewer than 200 of the country’s 310 million residents – have contributed 80 percent of all super-PAC donations.

    “This, senators, is corruption,” Lessig said Tuesday, in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.  “Not ‘corruption’ in the criminal sense.  I am not talking about bribery or quid pro quo influence peddling . It is instead ‘corruption’ in a sense that our Framers would certainly and easily have recognized: They architected a government that in this branch at least was to be, as Federalist 52 puts it, ‘dependent upon the People alone.’  You have evolved a government that is not dependent upon the People alone, but that is also dependent upon the Funders.  That different and conflicting dependence is a corruption of our Framers’ design, now made radically worse by the errors of Citizens United.”

    . . .

    The power of super-PACs is not restricted to their ability to buy airtime for television ads.  That’s what attracts all the news coverage, but the more insidious function of super-PACs may be influencing legislation before a single dollar is spent – by threatening to buy future airtime.

    Imagine the oil industry wants a small, technical change in a law setting environmental standards.  It’s an issue few voters are following, or will even hear about.  But it’s worth billions of dollars to the industry.  So oil companies establish a super-PAC and send lobbyists to every congressional office with a simple message:  Legislators who support the change will receive a donation, and each legislator who votes against it will be subject to $1 million in super-PAC attack ads in their district in the last week of the campaign.

    The most likely outcome is that compliant lawmakers will guarantee that the super-PAC money never has to be spent.  Without spending, there is nothing to disclose.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/…

    Lessig was, of course, far too kind in his testimony — 80% of all Super Pac donations coming from only 200 [billionaires] and no quid pro quo or corruption in what ought to be considered a  criminal sense?  Come on, professor!?!  Let’s at least tell our bought-and-paid for congress that they’ve been bought and paid for . . . those smirks among the Senators on the committee must have been a small tip off that they all know this very well, already.

    1. .

      Someone with a PayPal account in another country can make numerous anonymous contributions, so long as they are all under $10.  

      What impact does that have ?  

      1. We know that 80% of all super-PAC money is  supplied by a tiny American oligarchy so my guess would be…. a drop in the bucket’s worth. But then Rs are also so concerned about the mere possibility of a couple of so far unproven fraudulent votes getting through that “solutions” to this dire “problem” that could block hundreds of thousands from exercising their right to vote seem perfectly reasonable to them.

        Gee if I didn’t know how much more patriotic than everyone else these conservatives are(I know because they keep telling me and giving their a groups patriotic names) I’d think the concentration of all wealth and political power in the hands of a tiny  elite that knows best what’s good for the majority (that would be what’s good for themselves)was their goal.  Of course that  can’t be true because that would be so antithetical to patriotism and the American way. Right?  

      2. a serious question, but I’m honestly not sure that it is — more likely some droll humor.

        Anyway, given the situation as it exists now, why go to all that work?  Give your $100,000,000 and be done with it.  You want people to know that you’ve got that power..

        In fact, I’m now certain you’re joking — why give a couple of million in $10 increments anonymously?  How’s that going to buy you any . . . er, “access” . . . if you can’t actually show that you’re the Daddy Warbucks who deserves some fealty?  

        Silly Barron, completely anonymous donations, like taxes, are for the little people.  

    2. Put aside the people that write giant checks. Because they take up very little of the candidate’s time. What does take up half or more of their waking hours is calling person after person who can write a check for $2,300.00. Those are the voters they talk to. 5 minutes here, 10 minutes there.

      So at the end of the day what they’ve heard, from person after person after person, are the concerns facing someone who can donate $2,300.00. There’s a number of concerns they hear from that group – but they tend to mostly be 5 – 10 issues. And they’re not the issues most people face.

      They don’t hear about unemployment or lack of access to healthcare or the prohibitive cost of education. They don’t hear about people’s kids, or kids of friends, being killed or wounded in AfPak. What they do hear is 250K is middle class so don’t raise taxes below that wage. What they hear is various government regulations are a royal PITA.

      There’s no way around the fact that listening to the same concerns from person after person for 6 hours does heavily influence what you think are the serious issues facing people.

      1. (that politicians spend more than half their time on fundraising,)

        to Jared Polis at WLJ’s restaurant 4 years ago,

        everyone who heard me said it just wasn’t so.

        Of course, Congressman Polis can self-fund if he wants, like Joe Coors, so a few in Congress don’t even have to talk to these top donors,

        but what you say applies to most in Congress.  

        And they don’t bother making calls for a measly $2,300 anymore.  

        http://www.fec.gov/press/20110…

        A couple can write a check for $10K – 5 for the Primary and 5 for the General.

        1. I guess nobody there had ever been anywhere near a campaign or involved in HD, county or state political activity?

          All two year elected office holders are in perpetual, intense campaign fund raising mode and the 4 year term office holders not all that much less so. If they have any spare time some two year termer will rope them into supporting them at a fund raiser. Golly, indeed.  

    3. Just got a Romney campaign mailer with an 8×10 glossy photo enclosed.  Being a lifelong registered Democrat, I’m not sure why.  According the the enclosed letter, I’m “one of [the Republican] Party’s most loyal supporters”.

      Glad to know that this siphoned off several dollars of a billionaire’s money to pay for this, but now I’m worried that they might have gotten my name from Scott Gessler.  I better double check that he hasn’t changed my registration to the GOP.

    2. I’ll send it to my relatives. The Italians also stood out with an exceptional record of saving their Jews but the Albanians are apparently the most consistently heroic humanitarians nobody, including American Jews, has heard much about.  

  7. Romney tax plan on table. Debt collapses table.

    I can describe Mitt Romney’s tax policy promises in two words: mathematically impossible.

    Those aren’t my words. They’re the words of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, which has conducted the most comprehensive analysis to date of Romney’s tax plan and which bent over backward to make his promises add up. They’re perhaps the two most important words that have been written during this U.S. presidential election.

    If you were to distill the presumptive Republican nominee’s campaign to a few sentences, you could hardly do better than this statement of purpose from the speech Romney delivered in Detroit, outlining his plan for the economy: “I believe the American people are ready for real leadership. I believe they deserve a bold, conservative plan for reform and economic growth. Unlike President Obama, I actually have one – and I’m not afraid to put it on the table.”

    The truth is that Romney is afraid to put his plan on the table. He has promised to reduce the deficit, but refused to identify the spending he would cut. He has promised to reform the tax code, but refused to identify the deductions and loopholes he would eliminate. The only thing he has put on the table is dessert: a promise to cut marginal tax rates by 20 percent across the board and to do so without raising the deficit or reducing the taxes paid by the top 1 percent.

    The Tax Policy Center took Romney at his word. They also did what he hasn’t done: They put his plan on the table.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/…

      1. This issue WILL bring him down.

        So, why are you backing a man who wants to raise your taxes, Barron?  While his will go down?

        I’m presuming you aren’t a 1 percenter.

        1. .

          I believe in the values stated in the Declaration of Independence, and Mitt simply does not.  

          He is already promising to attack Iran, a country that only poses a threat to our military if we attack first.  

          ps: we already have committed acts of war against Iran.  

           I’ve never been in combat, but spent lots of time in uniform.  

          I’ve heard about numerous killings of innocents in Iraq and Afghanistan, none of which made us any safer.  

          Romney promises to greatly increase troop levels in Afghanistan, and to repudiate the 2014 withdrawal.  

          He wants to send uniformed troops back into Iraq.  

          I suspect Romney would expand Obama’s covert war in Syria.  

          I say that there were two Afghanistan Wars that overlapped a little.  The first one was from October 2001 to late 2002, and was fought to go after al-Qaeda.  The second one started around mid-2002, and is being fought to impose Karzai as President.  Considering that most Afghans will always reject him as a puppet of a foreign government, that war will never end, unless somehow American politicians decide to stop depending on bribes and kickbacks from Defense contractors.  Or until Karzai steps down.  

          The first Afghan War looks like it might be a just war.  None of the others are even close to being just.  

          I’d rather have Ron Paul as President than either Mitt Obama or Barak Romney.  I keep mixing those 2 up.  

          Which one told us to hope for change in our leaders ?  

          But I’m going to check out my party’s candidate, Virgil Goode, before writing him off.  

            1. He probably aligns with my values on the hot-button issues of abortion, homosexual marriage and such,

              but probably not because of any core beliefs he holds; rather, it’s an expedient pander, like most of the GOP.  

              His real underlying values are revealed in statements he has made in support of the overall culture of death that pervades this country.  

              Hate the Other!

              Regardless of where he stood yesterday,

              I think he now supports al-Qaeda in their effort to destroy Syrian society.  

              I know he supports initiating an unjust war against Iran, continuing the unjust war against Afghanistan, and restarting the unjust war against Iraq.

              Wouldn’t surprise me at all if he tried to get a war going with Vietnam to prove something about his manhood.  

              …………..

              Duke,

              I will vote for a third party candidate, as I have always done since 1984.  Carter is the last major party candidate for Prez to get my vote.  I have voted for Perot, Buchanan and Keyes.  

              Why not vote for Republicans ?

              I’m a conservative, not an idiot.  

              Plus, I’m a fairly religious, hypocritical semi-Christian hopeful agnostic, so I think I’ll be held to account for my actions after I die.  

              Even though I believe that I’ll be forgiven for all my sins, in fact I’m already forgiven, why push my luck ?  

              I might vote for the Constitution Party candidate, Virgil Goode, but I don’t know enough about him yet.  There are some kooks in my party, Christian Taliban, and some really good people.  I’m not sure which he is.  If not him, there will be someone who better represents my values.  

              see

              http://www.sos.state.co.us/pub…

              Maybe Randall Terry.  I didn’t agree with him on Terry Schiavo, but none of them are a 100% fit.  

      2. Now, I was a wee bit too young for the dad.

        But apparently he set the standard   – “one year could be a fluke” and all. Good enough for mom and dad, but not for jr?

        I guess dad never impersonated a cop. So maybe they aren’t that similar.

    2. Is that there is an easy response for Romney – to release his tax returns. And that easy response is also expected of all candidates. It truly will build that he paid no taxes and that’s why he’s taking the non-standard response of not releasing his returns.

  11. You know the God Hatz Fagz tour created by leftist liberals?

    I’ve heard that sales are exploding.

    I also heard that one of your friends spray painted the GHF logo on a building and some CFO from AZ was fired for harassing a teenage employee on a YouTube video he posted. The CFO apparently reassured the teen girl that he was a breeder and didn’t have any gay in him.

    3. the spray painted graffito and the bullying interview.

      (And both, by the way, were denounced on MSNBC programs.)

      Again, both were utterly contemptible acts.

      Also: the term “breeder”. Stay classy, Lib.

  12. I can play Libertad’s “Guess what I heard” game, too. Watch.

    How’s defending the Chic-Fil-A going for you? I heard their brand approval rating is now the lowest it’s ever been and that a major corporate partner has pulled their agreements with them.

    Wanna know the difference between Libertad’s “I heard sales are exploding” statement and mine?

    I have evidence.

    Brand Approval Plummets

    Corporate partner drop CFA

    This is hurting CFA. And if you think otherwise, you are lying to yourself. I hope other companies (and politicians) are paying attention.  

    1. .

      They can call it “polling” or whatever they like,

      but they only track the feedback they get from folks who have actively signed up to participate in their data collection activities, and who subsequently went to the YouGov site to share their opinions.  

      Would you mind if I restated that as:

      I heard their brand approval rating among the most connected / wired people in the country is now the lowest it’s ever been …

      We both know that the self-selected people who were polled are among the most “progressive” in the nation.  

      Golly, YouGov comes right out and says that CFA’a brand jumped to a record high in the Midwest in that same period.  

  13. Other GOP members questioned why environmentalists and others raise concerns about the planet warming during hot spells, but the opposite doesn’t occur during bouts of severe winter weather.

    “Those same people don’t say that when we have cold weather, like if there’s a cold snap, so they’re not being consistent,” said Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.), whose Colorado Springs-based district saw the most destructive wildfire in state history earlier this summer. “I don’t think we can say which direction the planet is going based on a few events one way or the other.”

    In a floor speech last Monday, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) said, “Look at the patterns. It gets cold, it gets warmer, it gets colder, gets warmer. God is still up there, and I think it’ll continue in the future.”

    http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wi…

    1. It’s ongoing circus with these See/Hear No Evil morons, isn’t it?

      There intelligence is so low that they still can’t differentiate between weather and climate.

      And let’s weave that mythological, never seen God into it.  

    2. . . . ah, hell . . . I’m just speechless . . .

      Well, like Ptolemy (R-Okla) once said:

      Look at the patterns.  It gets dark, it gets light, it gets colder, gets warmer.  Ra is still up there, and I think it’ll continue in the future.

      I heard that scientists are developing a concept of an earth that rotates on a tilted axis —  might explain some of this stuff . . . it’s just a theory, mind you . . . probably even considered a tenant of some future state religion  (everybody say “humanism,” and make Barron quiver) . . .  

  14. Tuition and fees at CU Boulder

    1999-2000: $3118

    2011-2012: $9152

    percent increase: 194%

    Total revenues

    1999-2000: $1,218,131,700

    2011-2012: $1,220,300,000

    percent increase: 0.18%

    Tuition and fees as a percentage of revenues

    1999: 22%

    2011: 43%

    The cost of higher education isn’t so much going up as being shifted to those least able to pay.

    1. We’ve continued to pay for expanded and bloated government growth, but left behind Bruce Benson to struggle with pounding into our states college students.

      Anyone know if CSU, CC’s, DU, CC, UNC, MSU, Regis have had similar hikes?

      1. have had similar tuition increases. Since most started out serving more in-state students, the reduction in state funding has hit them harder.

        I have no idea what’s going on with CC, DU, or Regis.

        Weirdly, since per student funding is now provided through the College Opportunity Fund, some of the private colleges may have seen an increased state subsidy since I don’t believe that private schools qualified for tuition subsidies prior to the COF stipend.

        1. in the last 2 decades targetting the escalating costs. It’s good to know we’ve made some accountable effects with responsible policies to bend the cost curve for Colorado families.

          I know there was a lot of chat about making CU private. Of course they’d owe the sate a billion of two in lieu of the facilities CU possesses. I’ve always tout that potential CU liability could fund for decades a much healthier COF for Colorado families.

          1. accelerated costs to students. Funding higher ed at a flat rate per credit hour was never really a good idea and it made out-of-state recruitment a much more lucrative option for larger universities.

            Once funding started being cut, COF made it much harder for the state to exert any leverage over universities on limiting tuition increases since they lost the argument that it would impact the General Fund. At this point, the only real limitation on tuition is students’ ability to pay. Revenues are stagnant because state funding is shrinking so rapidly– expect to see high tuition increases continue even as funding stabilizes.

      2. you’re going to . . .

        . . . but left behind Bruce Benson to struggle with pounding into our states college students.

        . . . also blame this one on “auto-correct,” huh?

      3. * “percent increase: 0.18%” over TWELVE YEARS — not even 0.18% a year, it’s 0.18% over 12 years total, i.e., barely one hundredth of a percentage point increase annually.

        * CU is “using roughly the same amount of money as they did in 2000. The costs to students have risen, but the revenues of the school have barely budged.”

        So, no — whatever fantasized gripes you have about “expanded” gov’t, the facts 100% undercut that claim here.

      1. is apparently educating students using roughly the same amount of money as they did in 2000. The costs to students have risen, but the revenues of the school have barely budged. I’m sure they achieved some efficiencies a while ago, but it’s likely that education has suffered.

  15. Gallup has just released Barack Obama’s job approval rating for the first half of 2012, broken down by state, and the news is not encouraging for the president.

    Obama’s approval rating is below 50 percent in 37 states, ranging from a 26 percent rating in Utah to a 49 percent rating in Michigan. Obama is at 50 percent or higher in just 13 states, from a 50 percent rating in Minnesota to a 63 percent rating in Hawaii. The president is most popular in Washington DC, where his job approval rating is an astonishing 83 percent.



    ….snip….

    Finally, a note on Washington DC. Some readers might attribute Obama’s rating there solely to his enduring popularity among black voters, but Washington is no longer a majority-black city. (The black population dipped below 50 percent last year.) Obama is popular with nearly everyone in the capital. Among those who work for the government and for government-related businesses – the permanent bureaucracy centered in Washington DC, northern Virginia and southern Maryland – approval of the president remains very high.

    http://www.washingtonexaminer.com

    1. I find minute by minute polling of no use until PERHAPS right near election time.  Too many variables, etc.

      But running out of money?  That could be a problem.

      http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08…

      Where are those deep pocket unions when you need them? (Snark).  Not even close to Adelman and the uber-billionares, Libby.  

  16. Citing the unfortunate Citizen’s United decision she had this to say…

    Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said in an interview aired Sunday that the American public’s diminishing approval of the nation’s highest court is a “a great disappointment to me.”

    “In the past, when the public is asked about three branches of government, the judicial branch has had the highest respect,” O’Connor told Bob Schieffer on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “Now it’s the same for all, it’s all down. It’s a great disappointment to me.”

    I know she was most Dem’s fave (never mine considering which way she swung when it counted most) swing voting Supreme but if she hadn’t lent her vote to the outrageous and ultimately not so bloodless partisan coup that gave us George Bush and the Cheney/Bush years, probably including 9/11, certainly including two disastrous unfunded wars, a pathetic economy for the middle class and the majority far right Supreme Court that gave us the Citizen’s United Decision and is the reason why so much respect for the third branch has been lost, most of the entire nightmare of the post Clinton years, including but hardly limited to the triumph of the oligarchy and the decimation of the middle class, probably never would have happened.  

    Plenty of blame to go around but Sandra deserves as much as anyone seeing as it was her swing vote that saddled us with one of, if not the, worst President in US history and his poisonous mentor who apparently is mysteriously immortal despite having suffered miltiple heart attacks for decades, in the absence of a silver bullet or stake or something.  

    A lot of nerve complaining about the results of her contemptible decision, one so unjustified they felt the need to proclaim it should not be seen as a precedent, at this late date, especially since she has never expressed an iota of regret for her pivotal role in it.

    So I’d just like to say…screw you Sandra.  Screw you very much. Take your pious complaints and shove them where the moon don’t shine.  

      1. Not that we can ever say for sure, but one of the items – was it Richardson? – wrote about is that during the Clinton to Bush transfer, the Clintonistas tried to hammer home the possibility of an act of terrorism, especially involving a domestic plane.  They had already nabbed that guy in Seattle.  They understood what was going on, but frat boy Bush’s team didn’t pay attention.

        The Boosh team shrugged it off, they had no interest in the matter.

        Tick tock, tick tock………

      2. Had Gore been elected, the urgency of the the Clinton administration’s concern would have kept the developing situation on the front burner. No one can say for sure but it certainly is possible that if there had been continuation via a Gore administration  giving what they clearly considered a dire threat instead of a new administration sneering at everything the Clinton administration tried to convey to them, 9/11 might have been prevented.

        It’s fair to say that, with plenty of blame to go around for all the disasters of the Cheney/Bush years, a fair share goes to O’Connor for her pivotal role. Incidentally Gore also must share some of the blame for being so quick to decide not to aggressively pursue all options and asking for a targeted recount instead of state wide, the one that then Florida SOS has said would have revealed a Gore win, was a stupid move, as well.

        It’s a moment in US history that left nobody looking good, including the congressional Dems and Colin Powell who were too cowed to stop the totally unjustified invasion of Iraq, and one for which we are all still paying and will continue to pay for a long time to come.

        What I find so offensive is that woman having the nerve to bitch about the consequences of her own deplorable decision without ever once admitting it was a terrible mistake on her part.

  17. I kid you not.


    As I sat in line last Monday, waiting to enter the Chick-fil-A parking lot, I was reminded of how history records various movements initiated by the single action of an individual.

    Last year we witnessed how the Arab Spring was given birth by a lone fruit merchant in Tunisia who set himself on fire in the town square.

    Letters to the Editor, Grand Junction Daily Sentinel

    2. I mean, I always knew their food was crap, but who knew just entering their damn parking lot was so freakin’ dangerous?  

      “Would you like try some self-immolation with that bigotry?”   “Uhhh, no thanks — on second thought, cancel that whole order — I think I’ll go have a ‘Good Times’ instead.”

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