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June 07, 2018 06:38 AM UTC

Thursday Open Thread

  • 35 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

“Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six.”

–Leo Tolstoy

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35 thoughts on “Thursday Open Thread”

  1. Seven O'clock and naught's well.

    The problem is our president.

    He stinks!

    Even his wife tries to stay upwind.

    Do thou likewise, America.

    1. At least Canada 🇨🇦 has the benefit of being (mostly) upwind. 

      Perhaps ignorance isn’t bliss??

      According to the sources, Trudeau pressed Trump on how he could justify the tariffs as a "national security" issue. In response, Trump quipped to Trudeau, "Didn't you guys burn down the White House?" referring to the War of 1812.

      1. It is a historical fact, known by few Americans, that America invaded Canada in the war of 1812 and captured the provincial capital of York, then the capital of Upper Canada. — which we then burned.  When the Brits– who, yes, ruled Canada — later burned Washington it was retaliation for our atrocity in Canada.

        2. Makes me feel better about my dad's Tory ancestors, who weren't having any of that American Independence nonsense. Why it should make me feel better that there were atrocities on both sides I don't know.

          1. Well, this was the War of 1812, not the War of Independence.  We invaded Canada in the War of Independence led by one of our greatest generals — Benedict Arnold!

            The War of 1812 to me is the stupidist war we ever fought, though Iraq is a close second.

            1. Maybe it's my New Mexican education, but I think the 1846-1848 hostilities between the US and Mexico have got to rank in there, too. Consider the incongruities:

              • Winning most of set of scattered fights,
              • forcing a treaty acknowledging of what was already a fairly clear territorial status,
              • poisoning national relations that had been and would be (much later) quite positive, and
              • paying millions for the damages we caused

              Upon investigation, the Congress passed a resolution criticizing  "a war unnecessarily and unconstitutionally begun by the President of the United States."

              US Grant described one of its outcomes as " The Southern rebellion [US Civil War] was largely the outgrowth of the Mexican war. Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions. We got our punishment in the most sanguinary and expensive war of modern times."

              1. The war against Mexico was immoral, but it did yield a vast amount of territory,incluing most of Colorado.  All we got out of the war of 1812 was a third rate drinking song that is now our national anthem.

          2. I'm just shocked to learn you have Tory blood running through your veins. The party that gave us Benjamin Disraeli, Neville Chamberlain, Margaret Thatcher and Brexit. 

            2. I also have five rabbis, an exotic dancer,  the Kaiser's personal physician, some southern sharecroppers, and an award-winning journalist. So I'm okay with my heritage, all in all.

  2. Want some cheese with that whine?

    Polis, Kennedy complain to state Democrats about dirty campaigning

    Polis’ complaint Wednesday evening came after Kennedy filed one that morning — and just a few hours after Kennedy’s camp sent an email trying to raise money off of a Polis ad attacking Kennedy.

    “It’s a shame that Jared would take the campaign in this direction, instead of focusing on the issues that matter to Colorado families,” Kennedy’s campaign said in a mass fundraising email Wednesday afternoon.

    “Cary said she would run a clean campaign,” says an unidentified Polis supporter in a TV ad his campaign began airing Wednesday. “But she broke her word,” added another.

    "Mom…mom.  Jared's hitting me!"

    "I did not!  She hit me first."

    I'm starting to wish I'd just skipped the gubernatorial line on my ballot.  The pledge is stupid.  You're acting like petulant children.  Grow the fuck up and run a campaign.

      1. Hey, Mama.  Would you care to let us know who you voted for?  I'm torn between Kennedy and Polis. 

        Channel 9's Next program demolished Kennedy last night in a fact check segment.  They first analyzed the Kennedy commercials from the independent teachers' organization and found that the attacks on Polis and Johnston were lies and smears.  Then, they attacked Kennedy for failing to disassociate herself from these commercials.  She claimed that CO law prohibited her from asking that the ads be taken down., or even denouncing the content.  Channel 9 called that a lie.

        I'm leaning toward Polis but am afraid that a "Boulder gay liberal" will have a hard time winning statewide.

        Help!  Anyone?

        1. I ended up voting for Polis. After seeing both frontrunner candidates within 2 days, Jared came up to Fort Morgan and met with a couple of dozen locals. Honestly, he was impressive as hell. Cary spoke at our Big Ten(t) dinner and Town Hall, along with Donna Lynne. I have a diary in the works about it. She also is formidable as a candidate, and I will absolutely be OK with it if she wins the nomination.

          I found Polis'  grasp of issues to be comprehensive and detailed. He "gets it" on childcare issues, education and workplace issues. He's also got a history of creating public/private partnerships to fund programs like his universal pre/K full day kindergarten initiative. 

          He understands why we need a statewide policy on oil and gas setbacks in order to prioritize public health over oil & gas profits; Cary is content to let that be under "local control", which in practical terms means that the industry gets to set the standards, as they have hundreds of astroturf groups nominating friendly candidates in municipalities across the state.

          Cary Kennedy is undoubtedly more well schooled in the intricacies of state finance, as several have pointed out. She also has a more open and cheery public persona. At Assembly, she showed that she knew how to work a crowd better than Jared did. She roused, he cajoled. My union endorsed her. She may be better at generating that elusive quality of "enthusiasm".

          As I've written before, there isn't much daylight between Kennedy and Polis on school finance and education, negative ads notwithstanding. Both want to raise teacher pay. Both have plans to end TABOR restrictions. Both support and have historically supported public charter schools, teacher evaluations tied to test scores, and other bugaboos that hard core unionists might not like.

          Cary is solid on K-12 ed. Polis is OK on K-12, but better on pre-K and post-12 . His legislative record shows several bills he introduced to create relief from school debt and to keep costs down.

          Polis has been a strong supporter of Colorado's cannabis industries. Kennedy voted against amendment 64 initially, but as deputy mayor, she promoted programs that got youth out of the prison system for nonviolent drug offenses.

          So, itlduso, I don't know how helpful my opinion will be. If energy and enthusiasm and personality is what you're voting for, probably Kennedy is your candidate. If real depth of knowledge and experience and being able to find innovative solutions to pressing problems is your criterion, then probably Polis gets your vote.

           

           

          1. Thanks for the comprehensive assessment, MJ.

            itlduso — I'm only "anyone" — not as much passion and time invested as mamajama55, not nearly as much history as Voyageur, and an idiosyncratic skew on politics informed more by my background in debate and American public address than by focus on a particular issue or set of issues.

            Any and all of the Dems are ahead of any of the Republicans. If you focus on issues, you can find nuances sufficient to guide voting.

            I haven't found a great deal of appeal in the Johnston campaign, seemingly focused on urging me to vote for him because he was a teacher and education advisor. He seems bright and enthusiastic. He doesn't have support from people I know — even the couple of people who have worked directly with him when he was in the Legislature.

            On process issues, Lynne is a well-positioned newcomer who seems likely to continue the Hickenlooper shuffle, though it would be hard to be quite as wishy-washy or trying to appease everyone as Hick has been on some key issues.

            Polis has a huge money advantage and Kennedy has come close (or is ahead — pick your poll or prognosticator) on perceptions of "state-wide electability," budget wonkery, and energy. I have friends who are passionate supporters of each of them; none of them have anything bad to say about the person they aren't supporting. I haven't made up my mind yet between these two.

            1. Thanks, mama and John.  I forgot to mention that Kennedy did not attend or send a surrogate to our HD 37 candidate forum a couple of weeks ago.  Jared was in DC, but sent a surrogate.  (Actually, the surrogate for Johnston was a Stanford college student who was outstanding — emphasizing his bipartisan work in the legislature which plays well in politics these days, IMHO.)

              And, thank goodness we Dems aren't in a vicious fight against each other this time (see: Clinton/Obama; Sanders/Clinton; Romanoff/Bennet; etc.).  I'll be fine with any of our candidates.

              But, mark me down for Polis.

        2.  and found that the attacks on Polis and Johnston were lies and smears

          That goes with the territory. As Bismarck said, "The biggest lies are told immediately before the wedding, right after the hunt, and in the middle of the political campaign."

  3. What passes for a poll is out from Magellan (via the unmentionable).  They're not revealing who commissioned it, so that's questionable, but…

    Polis: 31
    Kennedy: 18
    Johnston: 9
    Lynne: 3 (percent, not people, surprisingly)
    Undecided: 39

    Also…

    Salazar: 27
    Weiser: 8
    Undecided: 65

  4. Says the tres (or is it quattro?) married esquire of our (thrice-married) p-grabber-in-chief:

    Giuliani on Stormy Daniels: Melania Trump 'believes her husband'

    So yes, I respect all human beings. I even have to respect, you know, criminals. But I'm sorry I don't respect a porn star the way I respect a career woman or a woman of substance or a woman who has great respect for herself as a woman and as a person and isn't going to sell her body for sexual exploitation."

    Rule of holes, Rudy  Rule of holes.  If you believe a sex worker sells her body but a coal miner doesn’t, your view of labor is clouded by your sexual morality (in this case, utter immorality)

    #MAGAt (NSFW)

  5. House Dems seethe over superdelegates plan

    The first proposal — a product of the “Unity Reform Commission” established at the 2016 convention to “revise and reduce” the role of superdelegates — would create three categories of superdelegates. Some superdelegates would be allowed to vote in the first roll-call vote for the presidential nominee, while others would not.

    However, Perez warned members that this proposal wouldn’t win enough backing to be adopted at the August DNC session.

    The second option, which Perez supports and which appears far more likely to be enacted, would allow superdelegates to continue to exist, but they couldn’t vote during the first round of the presidential roll-call vote. They could, however, vote during the second round or any subsequent roll call, and they would still be permitted to support any candidate they wanted.

    Perez believes this approach ensures that “we have an inclusive party, transparent process, democratic principles, and empowers the grassroots,” a DNC official said.

    And that’s what set the House members off, because none of them believe there will be any more than one roll-call vote for the nominee.

      1. The "reforms" are attempts to satisfy very different approaches to politics.

        Perhaps instead of the present mess, we should have a bi-cameral convention, with "superdelegates" serving as the Senate and "delegates" as the House. To win on the first ballot, a candidate needs a super-majority of 60% from the Super side, and a majority from the primary/caucus side. Second and subsequent ballots need only a majority from each.

  6. seen referenced two or three times in the last day …

    Middle America Reboots Democracy

    We spent months talking with anti-Trump forces—and they’re not who pundits say they are.

    https://democracyjournal.org/arguments/middle-america-reboots-democracy/

    Content is on a study of the new activism, concluding the post-2016 activities and activists are creating an "inflection point" … or in other words, that "The foundation rebuilders in many communities across most states are newly mobilized and interconnected grassroots groups, led for the most part by Middle America’s mothers and grandmothers."
     

  7. WTF -OTD: "Rudy Giuliani Trying to Start a War with N. Korea?"

    It’s a whole other issue that the President’s private criminal defense attorney shouldn’t be opining, seemingly on his behalf, about high-stakes national security issues. But this comment … Rudy told a conference in Tel Aviv that “Kim Jong Un got back on his hands and knees and begged for it, which is exactly the position you want to put him in.”

    So Rudy Giuliani is playing Dominance Games with the N. Korean leader using the extremely culturally loaded phrase: "on his knees". 

    I think Trump is trying to get N. Korea to cancel the summit as a prefix to going to war. Watch for some of the same behavior wrt Iran. The purpose of a war is to rally the Republican voters in the November elections.

    We have to get safely through the next five months. 

    1. He's auditioning for Secretary of State for when Trump gives Pom Pom the boot. Rudy has always coveted the State Department.

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