President (To Win Colorado) See Full Big Line

(D) Kamala Harris

(R) Donald Trump

80%↑

20%

CO-01 (Denver) See Full Big Line

(D) Diana DeGette*

(R) V. Archuleta

98%

2%

CO-02 (Boulder-ish) See Full Big Line

(D) Joe Neguse*

(R) Marshall Dawson

95%

5%

CO-03 (West & Southern CO) See Full Big Line

(R) Jeff Hurd

(D) Adam Frisch

52%↑

48%

CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado) See Full Big Line

(R) Lauren Boebert

(D) Trisha Calvarese

90%

10%

CO-05 (Colorado Springs) See Full Big Line

(R) Jeff Crank

(D) River Gassen

80%

20%

CO-06 (Aurora) See Full Big Line

(D) Jason Crow*

(R) John Fabbricatore

90%

10%

CO-07 (Jefferson County) See Full Big Line

(D) B. Pettersen

(R) Sergei Matveyuk

90%

10%

CO-08 (Northern Colo.) See Full Big Line

(D) Yadira Caraveo

(R) Gabe Evans

52%↑

48%↓

State Senate Majority See Full Big Line

DEMOCRATS

REPUBLICANS

80%

20%

State House Majority See Full Big Line

DEMOCRATS

REPUBLICANS

95%

5%

Generic selectors
Exact matches only
Search in title
Search in content
Post Type Selectors
January 08, 2011 04:03 PM UTC

Weekend Open Thread

  • 46 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

“I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.”

–Frederick Douglass

Tweet
Share

Comments

46 thoughts on “Weekend Open Thread”

  2. from San Francisco Magazine

    The adventures of Marissa

    The serious power and glam passions of Marissa Mayer, the gorgeously geeky Googler who’s generating a new kind of Silicon Valley notoriety.

    A week before Christmas, Marissa Mayer, the most closely watched woman in the most closely watched company in the world, stands in the bedroom of her $5 million, 38th-floor penthouse at the Four Seasons, surrounded by Googlers who work for her. She is not what you expect.

  5. Gov. Bill Ritter, who leaves office next week, is being called “the best friend Colorado sportsmen have had” in years.

    The Colorado Wildlife Commission recognized Ritter’s work on the behalf of hunters and anglers with a plaque featuring a replica wildlife officer badge.

     

    http://www.kdvr.com/news/sns-b…  

  6. Interesting article in Forbes the other day:

    Obamacare might just be working to bring health care to working Americans precisely as promised.

    The major health insurance companies around the country are reporting a significant increase in small businesses offering health care benefits to their employees.

    Why?

    Because the tax cut created in the new health care reform law providing small businesses with an incentive to give health benefits to employees is working.

    Blue Cross in Kansas City has 58% increase in the number of small businesses who have signed up with them.  United Health Group added 75,000 new customers working in small businesses.

    If you still are saying that the new health care law is death to small businesses … or it’s a job killer … or it’s socialistic … read this article.  

     http://blogs.forbes.com/rickun…

  7. “I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.”

    Regarding the reading of the Constitution

    at the US House of Representatives, there was this exchange:

    “Will we be reading the entire original document without deletion?” inquired Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.).

    “Those portions superseded by amendment will not be read,” declared Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.).

    “We have not been able to review the exact language we will be reading,” Inslee persisted.

    This produced laughter on the GOP side.

    “I don’t take it very lightly,” Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) retorted, that “before we begin the reading of our sacred document, [colleagues] are raising questions about what we will specifically be reading, what specifically will be redacted.”

    “They are not deletions!” Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) countered.

    So what are they deleting? References to slavery, womens right to vote and prohibition. Can these Republicans incur their own abhorrence by being untrue to the facts?  Is their abhorrence reserved for the unpleasant truth?

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/…

    1. On the one hand, the teabaggers are het up about the sanctity of the Constitution and how we need to hew more closely to the intent of our sacred and infallible founding fathers.  On the other hand, they’re too embarrassed to read the parts of the Constitution that are clearly, flat-out, horribly wrong.

      To me, reading the entire Constitution helps illuminate some important principles: That our founding fathers had to compromise in order to form this union; that our nation had the ability to recognize and right the wrongs that are in the Constitution; that times have changed and we have changed the Constitution to adapt to those changes; and that our nation cannot survive without readily available liquor.

      In short, our Constitution is a living, breathing, changing document and its genius is that it can change with the times.  That is why the Scalia-educated teabagger party wouldn’t allow it to be read in its entirety.  

      1. The more likely explanation is that no one in the majority wanted a 2-minute YouTube clip circulating of a Republican member reading one of the deleted passages.

  8. The radio audience of about 30 million nationwide is mobilized to support the destruction of the 14th amendment because they have been indoctrinated.  

    Sputtering now has no impact.  

  9. Interesting column in the Washington Post by Steven Pearlstein:

    By poisoning the political well and making it difficult for our political system to respond effectively to economic challenges, Republicans may turn out to be the biggest job killers of all.

  10. WTF!?!


    U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona was shot in the head outside a grocery store in Tucson while holding a public event, Arizona Public Media reported Saturday.

    The 40-year-old Democrat, who was re-elected to her third term in November, was hosting a “Congress on Your Corner” event at a Safeway in northwest Tucson when a gunman ran up and started shooting, according to Peter Michaels, news director of Arizona Public Media.

    Could we please hold off on blaming anyone until we know what happened?  Lots of prayers down to AZ.

      1. So do all the best who make themselves easily accessible to constituents Hard to see how they can stop and we can still have representative government.

      2. at grocery stores.

        We do not have a gun problem in this country (just ask the NRA).  We do not have a problem with untreated mental illness in this country (just ask those who have been so willing to slash mental health treatment funding).  

        And it’s okay for a political PAC to use an image of gunsights to mark places on a map where there are Congress members whom that PAC “targeted” in 2010.

        1. I’m really glad you brought it up.

          Insurance companies cutting mental health, and employers accepting it for their employees, was one of the first really draconian measures that were taken so that the insuror could “rein in health care costs”. They limited numbers of counseling sessions, degraded the quality of those they would pay, minimized and eliminated inpatient treatment and so much more. I remember that when Reagan was shot and Hinckley’s illness came to light I really thought things might get better. Nope. Hinckley, fortunately for him, has been confined and treated at an inpatient facility since his trial. Prior to that his parents, from Evergreen, had almost impoverished themselves paying out of pocket because he was not insured. Family had made efforts.

          Mark David Chapman. I am not aware that this poor soul ever received treatment. It should be obvious to all that he is 90% gnuts and 10% criminal (give or take). I would much prefer that he be in a proper facility though I loved John Lennon.

          Governments offer little to nothing, the same is offered by insurors. The mentally ill get little in the way of empathy. They are usually referred to in other terms. Lazy. Homeless. (Obviously, all homeless are NOT mentally ill. But, many are.)

          Our “treatment” of the mentally ill is one step better than 19th century asylums. I am perpetually ashamed of our country in this regard.  

          1. of buying insurance across state lines.

            States can mandate that certain things are covered, which can make insurance more expensive (if the treatment costs more than the consequences of the condition going untreated.)  Buying insurance across state lines allows you to buy the cheapest crappiest insurance you can find, while begging the question of who you appeal to when you have to fight with your crappy out of state insurer; Your state’s insurance commissioner who has no leverage, or the that of the state where you are not a citizen and don’t have standing.

        1. .

          not a lot of Christians that I know of have taken any risks for Muslim neighbors.

          2 of my neighbors have told me that a Muslim can’t be a good American.

          .

  12. http://www.economist.com/node/…

    BP bears the brunt of the report’s stinging criticism, but not all of it. The report says that tests by Halliburton, contracted to do the cementing, showed the cement being used was unlikely to set stably and effectively in the well; but Halliburton did not communicate that conclusion, or, it seems, all of the results, to BP. Transocean, which owned and ran the rig, failed to give anything like enough weight to the lessons of an “eerily similar” accident on one of its rigs in the North Sea the year before, which was only just kept under control.

    The criticism of Transocean and Halliburton is not just a problem for those American companies; it is the foundation of the report’s assertion that the oil industry has a systemic problem. As the commission’s co-chair, William Reilly, has pointed out, there are oil companies with exemplary safety records. BP might just have been a bad egg. But the fact that all three of the companies working on the Deepwater Horizon made fatal errors in their management and communications indicates that there is much to be fixed in the attitudes and practices of the [oil] industry as a whole. These broader issues, and what the government might now do about them, are sure to make up much of the meat of the rest of the report, due for release next week.

  13. I’ve mostly been watching the news on the shooting and the discussion about removing violence from our political rhetoric. But this caught my eye and I think it’s really important.

    Call Time

    Candidates are extremely isolated political creatures.  The ticker-tape parades and townhall meetings that make the evening news represent a tiny sliver of a candidate’s time.  In modern politics, the “campaign trail” is a phone line, and the reality tethered to that phone line does not necessarily represent the actual reality lived by the majority of Americans.

    As Senator Al Franken described, a candidate’s time isn’t spent “kissing babies or shaking hands or having serious policy debates.” It’s spent on the phone, raising money.

  15. Which either arbits poorly for Democrats, or rehashes the obvious.  Republicans favor the government maintaining the status quo, and Democrats favor government helping those who have not benefited from the American Dream.

    http://www.theatlantic.com/pol…

    By any standard, white voters’ rejection of Democrats in November’s elections was daunting and even historic.

    Fully 60 percent of whites nationwide backed Republican candidates for the House of Representatives; only 37 percent supported Democrats, according to the National Election Poll exit poll conducted by Edison Research. Not even in Republicans’ 1994 congressional landslide did they win that high a percentage of the white vote.

    Moreover, those results may understate the extent of the white flight from the Democratic Party, according to a National Journal analysis of previously unpublished exit-poll data provided by Edison Research.

    The new data show that white voters not only strongly preferred Republican House and Senate candidates but also registered deep disappointment with President Obama’s performance, hostility toward the cornerstones of the current Democratic agenda, and widespread skepticism about the expansive role for Washington embedded in the party’s priorities. On each of those questions, minority voters expressed almost exactly the opposite view from whites.

  17. Glenn Reynolds has nailed it. Emphasis mine.

    To be clear, if you’re using this event to criticize the “rhetoric” of Mrs. Palin or others with whom you disagree, then you’re either: (a) asserting a connection between the “rhetoric” and the shooting, which based on evidence to date would be what we call a vicious lie; or (b) you’re not, in which case you’re just seizing on a tragedy to try to score unrelated political points, which is contemptible. Which is it?

    I understand the desperation that Democrats must feel after taking a historic beating in the midterm elections and seeing the popularity of ObamaCare plummet while voters flee the party in droves. But those who purport to care about the health of our political community demonstrate precious little actual concern for America’s political well-being when they seize on any pretext, however flimsy, to call their political opponents accomplices to murder.



    Where is the decency in that?

    1. to be concerned about, or critical of, inflammatory rhetoric (on either or both sides of the political spectrum) — on the contrary it would be indecent not to.

      You are free to question the timing or the motives, just as you are free to be wrong.

        2. I understand the desperation that Democrats must feel after taking a historic beating in the midterm elections and seeing the popularity of ObamaCare plummet while voters flee the party in droves.

          How come you didn’t bold that part?

  18. I’ve exhausted my energy for the evening.  Reading some of the posts about this horrible, horrible tragedy has been the most depressing thing I’ve ever seen here at Pols.  Oh, well.

    Now.

    This was a man I was lucky enough to meet.  The book was beautiful and the miniseries that Hanks and Spielberg put together was a work of art.  I recommend it.  Sweet journey, Dick Winters.

    Dick Winters, the former World War II commander whose war story was told in the book and miniseries “Band of Brothers,” has died.

    Dick Winters led a quiet life on his Fredericksburg farm and in his Hershey home until the book and miniseries “Band of Brothers” threw him into the international spotlight.

Leave a Comment

Recent Comments


Posts about

Donald Trump
SEE MORE

Posts about

Rep. Lauren Boebert
SEE MORE

Posts about

Rep. Yadira Caraveo
SEE MORE

Posts about

Colorado House
SEE MORE

Posts about

Colorado Senate
SEE MORE

1,313 readers online now

Newsletter

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter to stay in the loop with regular updates!