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April 12, 2018 06:15 AM UTC

Thursday Open Thread

  • 32 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”

–James Madison

Comments

32 thoughts on “Thursday Open Thread

      1. The bigger risk is that perhaps the gold is just gone – I can see #TrumpsterFire and Putin counting it out – "One for you, one for me, one for you . . ."

        1. It's more likely that Trump's shit stinks, but he says it doesn't, and that it's the best, purest, 24 carat gold bricks. Tremendous, believe him.

  1. WWDD?

    Mike Pompeo Could Go Down If Senate Democrats Decide to Fight

    Pompeo, who previously represented Kansas in Congress, will appear before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday, where Republicans hold a one-member advantage. But with Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., having already announced his opposition, that means a united Democratic front could reject Pompeo in committee.

    A nominee can still be brought to the floor for a vote despite having been shot down in committee, but nobody has been successfully confirmed that way in at least 40 years. The last to try, coincidentally, was John Bolton in 2005, when the committee recommended against his appointment as U.N. ambassador. He was filibustered on the floor and ultimately snuck through as a brief recess appointment.

    A loss in committee could make it easier for moderate Democrats to vote against Pompeo, argued Elizabeth Beavers, who handles national security and foreign policy for Indivisible, a syndicate of grassroots chapters that came together after the 2016 election to resist the Trump agenda. “It would change the calculus for senators on the floor,” said Beavers. Republicans would need every vote, including the ailing Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., merely to get to a place where Vice President Mike Pence could break a 50-50 tie, if Democrats unite against Pompeo. (The National Interest has reported that not only will McCain vote, he will vote no.)

    1. Dems will not be united on this.  He got 14 dems (and Angus King I-ME) to vote for him to head the CIA and while he may shed a few of them this go round, he will not lose Donnelly (IN), McCaskill (MO), Heitkamp (ND), or Manchin (WV) as they are all facing reelections in their very red states. 

      1. Sadly, it's true. Most, if not, all of those 4 will vote for his confirmation.

        Perhaps Rand Paul can pull Mike Lee and Ron Johnson over to his side. And if McCain shows and does his "thumbs down" gesture, they might have a chance to defeat this guy.

        1. I’m just not sure it matters all that much in today’s climate . . .

          . . . up or down, in another three or four months the Senate will likely have the next SOS candidate, better or worse, who needs confirming.

  2. Secret rightwing strategy to discredit teacher strikes revealed

    SPN’s talking points advise rightwing activists to emphasise the damage done to “good” teachers by the strikes instead of trying to justify low pay for all teachers. Similarly, attacking teachers for asking for more funding for schools would not be a winning argument, so SPN urges its followers to emphasise instead “red tape and bureaucracy”.

    “In most states, administrators and other non-teaching staff vastly outnumber teachers,” the guide says. Then it adds, in capital letters and within parentheses: “[INSERT STAT ON ADMINISTRATIVE BLOAT FROM YOUR STATE].”

    1. SPN gets an F for plagiarism –   we've seen it all before. I think that tax paying parents believe what they see with their own eyes at their child's schools. They've talked with their kid's teachers through the good, the bad, and the ugly. They have a good idea what schools are about, and the demonization of teacher's unions won't get that far. They know that their kids' teachers buy kleenex and pencils and bandaids and treats, etc with their own money – they know that grading assignments for 150-200 kids weekly means a 50-60 hour week. And they do appreciate the effort.

      With the childless, and with some who have kids but feel that they could do a better job of running schools or don't like the curriculum for one reason or another, this right wing coordinated propaganda will take root and spread.

      It would, of course, help A LOT if there weren't administrative bloat. I don't feel like digging up the exact figures right now, but after voters passed Amendment 23 to fund schools, DPS went and bought a new admin building under the guise of re-housing the old Emily Griffith Opportunity school.

      So that looked pretty fricking sketchy after voters specifically said that they wanted A23 funds to go into classrooms and into teacher pay raises, not into downtown real estate.

      But the teacher’s union had nothing to do with any of those decisions – no input, did not benefit, would not choose to topload school districts with consultants and deputy deputy administrators and ……yeah, we don’t get to decide any of that.

       

    1. Poo on "progressive."  This looks like a woman who is super qualified for the AG job, not just a professional politician taking another step up the career ladder.

      I'm not easily impressed, but she impressed me big time.  Go Amy!

      1. Not wanting to argue here, but how does anyone make that kind of determination on the basis of viewing one 90-second Youtube video? . . . 

        1. Fair I guess… I also looked at her website, facebook, and twitter… I like what I am seeing. Not a politician just a person who is qualified. 

          1. Thanks Amy (or Mr. Amy, or Amy’s relative . . . ) wink.  I’m sure you’ve done all the thorough homework necessary to have a well-informed opinion . . . 

            . . . I was more interested in V’s decision processes, which led to his comments, however.

            BTW, welcome to Pols!

            1. I wrote more than 2,000 endorsements for the Denver Post in more than 30 years on the editorial page.  Given that many local races had multiple candidates, that's probably 5,000 people interviewed.

              The ability to make a first impression as strong as Amy did in that ad is rare.   First impressions don't always hold up, but for down the ballot candidates, they're vital.

              Oh, yeah, it's mostly a visceral response.  Do a few thousand interviews of your own and you'll probably develop the same instincts.

              It has very little to do with canned "I'll vote x way on issue Y." Which is why I say " poo on progressive. " It's more a sense of how someone approaches life, and politics.

  3. Anyone confused about those Vic Mitchell ads? As a deaf person, you want visuals, and on one of his commercials, he was talking about California when he is running for Governor for Colorado (can you imagine seeing the visuals without the provided captioning?)

    I daresay that he's wasting his millions on a losing effort, and that just means less money towards actual Republicans not that they have any more realistic shots after Trumpiana.

     

     

    1. Mitchell is on the ballot. He's trying to amplify his name recognition, perhaps hoping that notoriously fickle Republican voters who like "outsiders" will go for him. I've seen Mitchell's ads, too, but only since I relented and got live TV again. It's not on any social media I've seen.

      He's running an "old fashioned campaign" FWIW.

      Here's another take on it: you can look at the two petition gathering firms, and see a microcosm of the division in the GOP in Colorado.

      Stapleton took the sleazoid, gunzo route. The dark money, god-guns-no-gays  rules-flouting Kennedy Enterprises gathered his signatures.

      Mitchell, on the other hand, went the corporate GOP route. His petition gathering firm was supervised by the election law firm of Hackstaff and Snow, which is where Scott Gessler originally worked and wanted to moonlight because he couldn't make it on his paltry public servant's salary. (Gessler does election and political law for . Kendra, Gessler, Blue now

      So it's the gun money vs the wall street money, if you like.

      1. I saw the same commercial Sunday and thought to myself, wtf? That is one of the oddest commercials yet in this cycle.  I know. It's early. 

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