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March 05, 2011 04:04 PM UTC

Weekend Open Thread

  • 56 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

Why should they know their fate,

Since sorrow never comes too late,

And happiness too swiftly flies?

Thought would destroy their paradise.

No more;–where ignorance is bliss,

‘Tis folly to be wise.

–Thomas Gray

Comments

56 thoughts on “Weekend Open Thread

  1. You may be surprised, or not, that one of the big issues in congress is whether you have a spoon that melts in your soup.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/

    When Democrats held the House, they introduced new cutlery made from corn. The good news: The utensils could be composted. The bad news: They cost more, did relatively little for the environment and warped when exposed to hot soup.

    According to the story the Dems didn’t like it so they waited for the Repubs to solve the problem.  The result:

    For now, they have introduced new utensils made – quite literally – out of oil and natural gas.

    Here I was thinking the debt, jobs, wars and rumors of wars had their attention.  Just goes to show what I know…

  2. PCG was complaining that there was no male eye candy videos (I of course pick these for the music). So today we have two videos. I’m hoping this fits the bill.

    From Slovenia – proper scruffy appearance

    And from Greece – pure testosterone

    1. Now if only the Greeks didn’t wear such embarrassing clothes… that was my problem with the “boy band” era, too. I just felt so badly for them in their silly outfits!

      1. He’s been on the opinion page for some time now and they did give the change a prominent announcement when it was first made. I love that the editorial page now has a regular Littwin presence that makes it less rightie heavy.  Quillen and Littwin at the same time some days is a treat.

  3. My wife & I went to the Jefferson/Jackson Dinner last night. It starts with a giant mass of people milling around in the lobby area waiting for the doors to open. They had a silent auction for people bad at math (saw a bid of $55.00 for a $50.00 iTunes gift certificate). And you could very slowly wander around.

    I’m guessing I walked by 10 or 20 Polsters but since none of us know what the other looks like…

    I talked to a couple of elected officials but I always try to keep that to under a minute because they’ve always got a ton of people who want to talk to them. (Met Rep Tyler for the first time – very nice guy.)

    So after 20 minutes we bailed and had a nice romantic dinner at Bauer’s. I don’t like the political speeches anyways (promising things they rarely deliver on) so all in all a fun evening.

      1. in another state.  We had Joe Biden (twice), George McGovern, Mike Mansfield (he was on the boring side I have to admit) and Tom McCall (Repub from Oregon who had the audacity to support some Democrats for reelection). There was always music, dancing and hospitality rooms galore.  

        I still have a few gowns from those days that somehow I can’t part with even though they are totally out of style, there is no place to wear them and of course,they are too small!

         

    1. Then again, 1) I always love these things and always have, and 2) I was seated at a very youthful table, so the speeches were punctuated by witty commentary.

      I got to meet Hickenlooper (then kicked myself for not saying anything about education) and the lovely first lady, Helen Thorpe. Deval Patrick delivered a fantastic keynote. I drank six cups of coffee before realizing it was all decaf. Then there was an afterparty, which surely would have been more fun were I of the drinking persuasion, but it was quite a good time even sober. Though a little tense, because about half the room worked for one or another mayoral campaign.

      Funniest moment of the night: I’m not a Denver voter, but I do like Mejia. I got stickered by the Hancock people walking by trying to get a Sprite at the afterparty, then immediately ran into Mejia himself. Asked him for a Mejia sticker, he didn’t have one, so his campaign guy (not Berrick, someone else) gave me the button off his own jacket and insisted I wear it. Then someone working for another mayoral campaign, having had a few, tried to talk me into giving him the Mejia button by spinning a most elaborate, and inappropriate, yarn. James is a popular guy, and did not bring enough buttons or stickers, clearly!

      Worst moment: Chris Romer bringing scantily clad high-school cheerleaders to LOUDLY campaign for him. No class and hardly showing his cred on women’s issues.

      1. Another thing that struck me – the crowd was almost entirely white. I found that strange. My wife says she thinks it’s because of the ticket price and so the crowd reflected the party activists who have money.

        1. The crowd that arrived early for silent auction and cocktail hour was very white, but at least on my side of the ballroom the same wasn’t true during dinner. My table had multiple Latin@s and two Asian attendees, and we were seated next to two tables that I believe were sponsored by the party’s African-American Initiative, which were both entirely non-white. Granted, we were toward the back and I suspect the front (VIP) tables were mostly white except for Rick Palacio and Deval Patrick and their families.

        2. David, the dinner was at 7 pm, you were at the reception before the dinner, which was held in the lobby (and spilled up the stairs into the whole convention center). You do realize the silent auction was a fundraiser, right, not an exercise in math? Your review is more childish than usual. But it’s nice to hear you had a good dinner elsewhere.

        1. I didn’t take my camera. Too much risk of someone borrowing it to take a photo of me and thereby preserving evidence that I can indeed be forced into a dress on occasion.

          1. You in a dress doesn’t sound so shocking.

            But I’ll reserve comment until I see the pic.  I saw a picture once of a really famous pop star in a dress – yikes!

            1. You’ll have to trust me on this–they had little black short-shorts on and were cheering and doing cheerleader moves standing on top of some sort of large black boxes across from a perplexed and silent group of Mejia sign wavers.

  4. And please take Arizona with you….

    AUSTIN – The Texas Nationalist Movement marked Texas Independence Day with a rally on Saturday at the Capitol urging Texans to save the state by seceding from the United States.

    A small but enthusiastic group of Texans gathered on the steps of the Capitol, as an assortment of massive Texas flags blew above them in the chilly afternoon breeze.

    Outrage was spread evenly toward Democrats and Republicans as leaders of the movement expressed their disgust for the growing national debt and the federal government’s treatment of Texas

    http://www.chron.com/disp/stor

    1. .

      About half the Defense Department budget goes to Texas (that’s just an estimate.)

      Not that I want to keep Texas in the union, but are they lobbying for that unneeded second engine for the F-35,

      or for a 17th major military base in their state ?

      .  

      1. And after hiding the truth for more than a year, Texas state government now admits to a two-year budget deficit of $25.5 billion, similar to California’s shortfall on a per-capita basis.

        The Texas budget gap comes to about 30 percent of the state budget; California’s to less than one-fourth of recent yearly spending.

        Things are so tough that ever-lax Texas has begun cracking down on Internet retailers, demanding they pay sales tax if they have a physical presence in the state. This caused Amazon.com to close its lone Texas warehouse, the retail giant griping about an “unfavorable business climate” – the same words Texans use while trying to lure California businesses.

        The Texas troubles are largely driven by Perry’s “supply side” economic belief that government would thrive with the third-lowest combined tax rates in the nation, Lower taxes would lead to more business growth, more jobs, producing more actual tax dollars for the state budget more revenue than higher rates. Sound familiar? Well, that didn’t happen in Texas either.

        Also, while the unemployment rate in Texas is somewhat lower than in California…

        Texas, with real estate values far below California’s, had virtually no price bubble to burst and was, therefore, not afflicted with as great a foreclosure crisis or as much of a dropoff in housing construction jobs. Take away housing factors and Texas unemployment is about the same as California’s.

        Texans can  blame Governor Perry for  steering them off the cliff.  The feds, not so much.  But please go anyway and God bless.

        http://www.vcstar.com/news/201

        1. I like making fun of Texas as much as anyone.

          And while I can think of several Texans I would love to see become residents of another country, they’ll have to leave the real estate behind.

          Secession is not an option.  (If anything, we should be adding states, not losing one.)

          1) Texas v. White, 74 U.S. 700 (1869)

          ( No, the Texas Constitution does not reserve the right

          http://www.constitution.legis….

          2) We fought a painful and destructive war over the question of when and whether states may elect to secede.  (Never and no.)

          3) Separating Texas from the federal assets there would be impossible:

          – 7 Air Force bases, 4 Army bases and 4 Navy bases

          – at least a dozen major National Park properties

          – hundreds or thousands of oil,gas and mineral leases on federal lands

          – millions of acres of land

          So, if Americans now in Texas want to depart the USA, they are welcome to go anytime.  But Texas stays.

          1. My point is, secession talking Gov Perry (who, unlike the crackpots he panders to, knows that) and friends have done a lot more damage to Texas than the Feds have. While Tea Party style righties love to go on about the mess in California, under Perry’s watch Texas has become a pretty comparable basket case.

  5. Huckabee just played guitar with Def Leppard. Does he know that they share key qualities he hates about Obama — they weren’t raised in America and weren’t in all-American activities like the Boy Scouts of the 1950s South?

    The 1950s American south, of course, is universally regarded as a place of awesome American values, like equality, respectful policing, and law-abiding gov’t officials.

  6. from Why Silicon Valley Immigrant Entrepreneurs Are Returning Home

    NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw visited Silicon Valley last month to meet immigrant entrepreneurs. At Microsoft’s Mountain View campus, he met with a dozen of them. More than half said that they might be forced to return to their home countries. That’s because they have the same visa issues that Kunal Bahl had. Unable to get a visa that would allow him to start a company after he graduated from Wharton in 2007, Kunal returned home to India. In February 2010, he started SnapDeal-India’s Groupon. Instead of creating hundreds of jobs in the U.S., Kunal ended up creating them in New Delhi.

    At a time when our economy is stagnating, some American political leaders are working to keep the world’s best and brightest out. They mistakenly believe that skilled immigrants take American jobs away. The opposite is true: skilled immigrants start the majority of Silicon Valley startups; they create jobs.

    Now I’m sure Tom Tancredo and a large chunk of the Republican party here in Colorado are thrilled to hear that the U.S. is successfully making it almost impossible for people to immigrate. But me, I’d rather we had these people create companies and the new jobs that go with them here.

  7. Limbaugh/Hannity Parent Company Admits Hiring Actors to Call Radio Shows

    But according to an online account, Premiere is hiring actors to fake on-air calls to radio shows who do not divulge the scam. Before being abruptly removed, their website read:  

    “Premiere On Call is our new custom caller service… We supply voice talent to take/make your on-air calls, improvise your scenes or deliver your scripts. Using our simple online booking tool, specify the kind of voice you need, and we’ll get your the right person fast. Unless you request it, you won’t hear that same voice again for at least two months, ensuring the authenticity of your programming for avid listeners”.

    As reported, once the actor “passed the audition, he would be invited periodically to call in to various talk shows and recite various scenarios that made for interesting radio.” In addition, the source was specifically told there would be no on-air disclosure of the fabricated nature of the call. He subsequently landed the job, at $40 per hour and a minimum one hour of work per day.

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