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August 24, 2019 12:41 AM UTC

Weekend Open Thread

  • 26 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

“Expect trouble as an inevitable part of life and repeat to yourself, the most comforting words of all; this, too, shall pass.”

–Ann Landers

Comments

26 thoughts on “Weekend Open Thread

  1. Is it time yet for the 25th amendment?  Trump's delusional behavior (not to mention the threat his behavior poses to the world) is getting worse.

    TRUMP SAID DOCTORS LEFT O.R. TO GREET HIM; HOSPITALS SAY NO

    Speaking to reporters Wednesday, President Donald Trump claimed he was warmly welcomed at hospitals after recent mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, and intimated surgeons had even deserted their patients to meet him.

    “The doctors were coming out of the operating rooms,” he said. “There were hundreds and hundreds of people all over the floor. You couldn’t even walk on it.”

    But the hospitals he visited say that isn’t what happened — and that doctors would never pause surgery to greet the president.

    “At no time did, or would, physicians or staff leave active operating rooms during the presidential visit,” Ryan Mielke, a spokesman for University Medical Center of El Paso, said Thursday. “Our priority is always patient care.”

    Although two patients who had been discharged returned to the hospital to meet the president, none of the eight victims still being treated wanted to do so, Mielke said.

    The rejection apparently stung. When asked by reporters if he had spoken to the victims, Trump ignored the question and complained about news coverage of his visits to El Paso and Dayton.

    — The Washington Post

     

    1. Sadly, no, the 25th Amendment won't work. 

      First, the VP needs to gather the Cabinet (like that would happen.  Pence acting against Trump is a reach).

      Then, at least half the Cabinet would have to agree *resident Trump is "incapacitated."  Go ahead … name the Secretaries who would show some backbone.

      Then, the President can object and the issue goes to Congress.  BOTH House and Senate would need to agree with the VP and Cabinet by a 2/3rds super-majority in order to uphold Trump's (temporary) removal.  In the House, that would mean all Democrats, the Independent, and 59 Republicans would need to sign on.  In the Senate, all Democrats, the Independents, and 29 Republicans.

      Not gonna happen unless there is something overtly organically wrong — a Wilson-sized stroke, and Eisenhower-sized heart attack, or the equivalent.

      1. It would also take an America where we had dreams worthy of a Wilson or an Eisenhower, not the slobbering of a Hannity madly kissing the ass of a maniac.

        No, it won't happen.  And the same math rules out impeachment.

        Only the voters can save us now.

      2. I know, but I keep thinking the kleptocrats in the Cabinet looking at their portfolios might finally revolt, and then pay their congressional counterparts to ensure their support.  Besides, while Pence isn't exactly the brightest bulb, even he has got to be worried that Trump is going to proclaim he's the Second Coming of the Messiah, and “He’s the only one that can save us”, if the world descends further into chaos.

        I mean, what good is having a corrupt administration if you can't count on them to look out for themselves above all else?

      1. Truly.

        I spent a couple of years building stores in malls around the country a few years back. I told my employer at that time I thought hazardous duty pay was appropriate (they did not agree).

        Today…I just would not do it.

        BTW…Don’t recognize your username. Welcome to Pols.😊

        1. Thanks, Duke, but I’m just mj with a new username and avatar. This one is a bit closer to my real name. Feels more honest. ( inspired by the great Harry Doby). Baby steps.

  2. By the power vested in me by one of those 18-can cases of Pabst Blue Ribbon that Argonaut sells for $16, I hereby declare this Be Nice to MJ Weekend in Colorado.

    Yes, the schools are back in session, eager faces are again asking " "What's a gerund?" – – and MJ is adjusting to a new role as grandmother and PERA annuitant.

    It's hard for an old soldier not to march to the sounds of the guns.  There is a special section of the museum in Holyoke commemorating the career of my mother, master teacher Louise Ewegen.  And I remember how hard the then mandatory retirement hit her.  

    All those years making such a big difference in so many lives.  And suddenly, when the morning whistle sounds (Yeah, Holyoke still has one) you can go back to bed.

    Yes, our activist battles on, yes, a grandchild now absorbs the love and patience once dispensed by so many.

     But it is different.  The moving finger, having writ, has moved on.  And it is hard not to wonder if one still makes a difference.

    The answer is you made a difference for hundreds, a difference that will last all their lives.  

    And, though we sometimes get a bit exasperated with you, you make a difference for us, still.

    Take a bow, MJ.  Your career was well spent,  And though your venue may now be smaller, your charges need you more than ever.

     

    1. Thanks for the shoutout, V.

      Yes, it's weird not being at school. I miss the kids. I'll be subbing in Jeffco, probably teaching ESL to adults again online and in person, but not prepping a classroom or “aligning” curricula. I won't be sitting through unending professional development guaranteed to be the silver bullet that pops the ceiling on the platformed test scores, or lugging papers home to grade on weekends….and the mandatory school safety plans and active shooter drills, now. Those are things I won't miss.

      But I'm looking forward to reinvention 5 or 6 in my work life, publishing as a writer under my own name (or at least a pen name less silly than mamajama). Yes, I do have an ego big enough to believe I have something worthwhile to say, and women are not supposed to have those (big egos). However, I'm constantly encountering people who read 'my stuff" on Pols and kos and like it, encouraged enough to keep on writing, keep on getting better.

      Your constant nitpickery and attacks do help me to be a better writer, as I police my stuff enough to be satisfied with it myself, and don't usually take the lazy way out. So there's that. You’re still functioning as an editor, of sorts. I know that I can count on you and your minions to pick at whatever seems pickable, so I leave as few nits as possible.

      I will still call you out when you are gratuitously cruel to a polster, and I will call an ad hominem attack what it is,  but I accept a weekend detente. Again, thanks.

  3. Wisdom and life experience from my elder, Senator Joe Biden (via the Boston Globe):

    “My senior semester [Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy] were both shot and killed,” Biden said. “Imagine what would have happened if, God forbid, Barack Obama had been assassinated after becoming the de facto nominee. What would have happened in America?”

    “I think of where we are at the moment. You know, none of you men are old — women are old enough, but a couple of you guys are old enough to remember. I graduated in 1968. Everybody before me was, drop out, go to Haight-Ashbury, don’t trust anybody over 30, everybody not getting involved. I’m serious, I know no woman will shake their head and acknowledge it, but you guys know what I’m talking about. Right? But then what happened? Dr. Ki— I only have two political heroes. I have one hero who was my dad, but I have two political heroes were Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. My senior semester they were both shot and killed.”

    “Things changed,” he continued. “You had over 40 kids shot at Kent State on a beautiful lawn by the National Guard.” The shooting in question, in May 1970 during a Vietnam War protest, in fact ended with four students shot dead and nine wounded.

     

    1. Was he saying that the women in his audience were or were not old enough to remember Kent State? I certainly remember it well. I was a young anti-war activist, and  it was the first time I realized that I could be risking my life by protesting.

      And then he seems to be implying that if the women are old enough to remember Kent State, then they won't acknowledge it. That's worse, to my mind, than getting the Kent State casualty count wrong. Plus as a politician, trying to recover from gaffes on race, if you're going to bring up Kent State, then you have to mention Jackson State, as well.

      Oh, Joe.

       

      1. There's some question about WHAT Biden was saying.  It was (of course) impromptu and unscripted, so there was nothing prepared and distributed. 

        One person who claimed to be an observer said Biden was speaking to the actual people in the room, saying none of the women he (the observer) saw were chronologically old enough to remember 1968, but that some of the men were.  Another said he was attempting to be gallant and hint none of the women in the room LOOKED old.  And then there were a bunch of people who dismissed what Biden said as simply wrong.

        The more substantive criticism I read was

         * Biden is incapable of remembering what happened in 1968 — Kent State did not have 40 casualties.  (There may have been that many in ALL the riots after MLK's assassination — but that had nothing to do with Kent State).  and

         * Why would he want to talk about the presumptive nominee being shot?  Presumably, he wants to be this year's presumptive nominee.

  4. Greeley woman cleared of charges of transporting drugs over state lines, in a case of "cannabis confusion".

    I know Megan Meyer. She is a friend, a young mother, dedicated environmental activist, and writer. She was looking at 30 years in prison, a million dollar fine, for the "crime" of transporting a truckload of hemp for her employer, a Colorado hemp seller who shall remain nameless.

    Police locked Megan up when she was pulled over on I70 last May. They confiscated  the 160 pounds of hemp, and the media had a field day broadcasting her mug shot and name all over, as a big time "drug runner". She got hate mail, death threats, became unemployable. It was an ordeal that didn't need to happen.

    The "cannabis confusion" is due to the new regulations under the 2018 Farm Bill. Industrialized hemp is now legal to grow, process, sell, and transport, but it still looks and smells like its THC laden cousin, recreational cannabis, which is still a Schedule 1 drug, according to the DEA. . County police are not sure about what to do when they find large amounts of a marijuana-like plant.  There is no roadside field test for THC content. There is huge, unprecedented demand for CBD (an oil processed from the hemp plant), as well as for recreational cannabis, so the "confusion" is likely to keep happening.

    We as a state, and eventually the entire country, are going to have to figure this out. Too many idealistic young folks are getting caught in the cracks.

     

    1. This is why I have little tolerance for pols who are still stuck in the Reefer Madness mindset – or stall/thwart progress even after the people have spoken. Prohibition was a shitty idea in 1937; Nixon’s scheduling it as ‘the most dangerous drug’ in the 1970’s was based solely on his racism. We’ve devastated a couple generations of POC over this immoral policy – and kept American farmers from having more and better cropping options.  

      So glad this had a better ending than most. 

    2. Good news — it wasn't ICE, which is in the headlines today for detaining someone for 82 DAYS while they figured out the honey he kept talking about wasn't meth, but was actually honey.

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