Fourth of July Weekend Open Thread

45
  by: Colorado Pols July 2, 2021 at 6:28 AM MDT

It’s a four-day weekend now. We’re exercising constitutional sanctuary powers.

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45 Community Comments, Facebook Comments

  1. davebarnes says:
    July 2, 2021 at 7:36 AM MDT

    Today (Friday) is World UFO Day.

  2. 2Jung2Die says:
    July 2, 2021 at 8:40 AM MDT

    Pols: if you have the power to declare a four-day weekend, why not try for summer vacation?

  3. DavidThi808 says:
    July 2, 2021 at 10:52 AM MDT

    Thought for the day. We need a constitutional amendment that says:

    Every citizen has a right and obligation to vote.

    That's it, nothing more. Just pure and simple that the country needs to make it easy to vote and the citizens shall then exercise that vote (Australia does this).

    • Early Worm says:
      July 2, 2021 at 11:26 AM MDT

      That's a nice thought, but it will never happen. Amendments require supermajorities. Right now we have a significant part of the electorate, and 6-3 majority of the US Supreme Court, that believe that voting is not a right or an obligation. To them, it is a privilege that may only be exercised as permitted by the state legislature or by the (secret) donors who control the legislatures. 

      • Meiner49er says:
        July 3, 2021 at 11:36 AM MDT

        and, really, who's going to make non-voters vote? You can add penalties, as some states do, but are you really going to fill jails with 40% of the population the first few years?

        The franchise is a right that must include the right not to vote if the citizen so chooses. Faced with Republican Right and Republican Light, I would so choose. We may see that before the end of the decade (some will tell us we're there now).

    • Sparky says:
      July 2, 2021 at 11:51 AM MDT

      How about “The right of all adult citizens to vote shall not be infringed”?

      • ajb says:
        July 2, 2021 at 12:38 PM MDT

        Maybe add a preamble:

        A well regulated Militia representative democracy, being necessary to the security function of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms vote shall not be infringed.

        • Sparky says:
          July 2, 2021 at 4:01 PM MDT

          I think if we've learned anything in the last couple decades, it's that if any constitutional amendment has even the slightest complex grammatical structure or verbiage, the right wing Supreme Court will use those to drive a truck through people's rights.

      • MattC says:
        July 3, 2021 at 5:22 PM MDT

        Voting age should be lowered to equal driver license, employment and gun ownership.

         

    • Blackie says:
      July 2, 2021 at 2:52 PM MDT

      And in Australia, you can be sent to jail for NOT voting.

      That should be required in the U.S.

  4. DavidThi808 says:
    July 2, 2021 at 11:01 AM MDT

    How can I embed a YouTube video here? Everything I tried failed 🙁 

    • kwtree says:
      July 2, 2021 at 12:49 PM MDT

      What are you trying to embed, David? Also embed code appears on some devices and not others.

      • Diogenesdemar says:
        July 2, 2021 at 1:12 PM MDT

        It’s been a very long time since we’ve had to endure any scantily clad Slavic teeny-bopper throat-yodeling techno-disco-rap here . . .

        . . . just maybe, sometimes, ignorance really is a kind of bliss???

        (I’m personally as amused by that question as I would be from seeing Barnes wondering some morning, “Does anybody out there know what day of the week this is?” It’s not often anymore we see such sweet irony — let’s just enjoy it while it lasts, huh?)

  5. Sparky says:
    July 2, 2021 at 11:48 AM MDT

    Heads up: Our favorite Qongresswoman is still palling around with Capitol insurrectionists.

    https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/07/02/politics/kfile-anthony-aguero-accompanied-members-of-congress-to-border/index.html

  6. davebarnes says:
    July 3, 2021 at 3:03 AM MDT

    Today (Saturday) is International Cherry Pit Spitting Day

  7. kwtree says:
    July 3, 2021 at 6:57 PM MDT

    Yell in a War ( some know her from Pols days gone by) says it for me:

     

  8. davebarnes says:
    July 3, 2021 at 7:13 PM MDT

    Today (Sunday) is Sidewalk Egg Frying Day

  9. JohnInDenver says:
    July 4, 2021 at 6:09 AM MDT

    Interesting article in The Atlantic:  The Only Thing Integrating America

    According to their new report, 81 percent of metropolitan regions in the United States with more than 200,000 residents were more segregated in 2019 than they were in 1990. Rust Belt cities—Detroit, Cleveland, Milwaukee—made up a majority of the top 10 most segregated cities. And of the communities that were systematically redlined in the 1930s through federal housing policy, 83 percent remain highly segregated. Housing segregation continues to influence school segregation, disparities in policing, health care, and the racial wealth gap. “Racial residential segregation is the glue that holds all these forms of systemic racism together,” Menendian told me. “You can’t solve extreme racial inequality in a segregated society.”

    The report in full is at The Roots of Structural Racism Project Twenty-First Century Racial Residential Segregation in the United States

    The surprise: [surprising to me, anyway] …

    Out of the 113 largest cities examined, only Colorado Springs, CO and Port St. Lucie, FL qualify as “integrated” under our rubric. Similarly, out of the 221 largest metropolitan regions, only San Luis Obispo-Paso Robles, CA and Colorado Springs, CO qualify as “integrated.” Overall, the United States remains very racially segregated. 

    How about specifics of where the three large Colorado cities are on the list?

    Most to Least Segregated Cities in the US, 2019.

    Rank….City…………….Divergence….Segregation Category

    56….Denver city, CO….0.242….High Segregation

    64….Aurora city, CO….0.2153….High Segregation

    109….Colorado Springs city, CO….0.079….Integrated

    • The realist says:
      July 4, 2021 at 7:38 AM MDT

      I have no idea if this is a significant factor in Colorado Springs or not, but because there are a number of military and retired military folks living there, perhaps the increased integration comes from the integrated model set by the military. Would be interesting to get an expert's opinion on that.

      • Duke Cox says:
        July 4, 2021 at 8:52 AM MDT

        I think that is exactly right. The military is a powerful integrator of society…and has been for a long time. 

        In a post on fb, someone made the point that blaming college professors for "liberalizing" students is wrong. It is the student body itself that, left alone, will naturally and automatically explore, experiment, and integrate itself.

        My father used to tell me about how, in the army, he learned so much about a world a farm boy from central Kentucky would not have otherwise learned. It made a better man of him, and with the steadfast support of my mother, our family did not succumb to the pervasive pressure from our community to the join the ranks of the  racists.

        Racists are made…not born.

    • DavidThi808 says:
      July 4, 2021 at 2:00 PM MDT

      That list is bullshit. Honolulu is highly integrated, and is not on the list. Not Anywhere.

      • Old Time Dem says:
        July 4, 2021 at 4:04 PM MDT

        Look harder–Honolulu is 61 (out of 193) in the table of Most to Least Segregated Metro Regions.

        • JohnInDenver says:
          July 4, 2021 at 8:04 PM MDT

          Old Time Dem … different lists.  You are looking at “Metro Regions”

          DavidThi808 … I dunno why the listings are so confusing, as Honolulu is clearly large enough to be included.  I read further in and tried to use their map … and didn’t get anything helpful to explain how they split out cities & regions in Hawaii.  The study’s cities list has 112 cities — and the list of cities over 200,000 from US Census bureau lists has 125.

          Not a great deal more clarity about my particular neighborhood in Denver, either. 

           

          • Old Time Dem says:
            July 4, 2021 at 10:00 PM MDT

            The report includes two tables, cities and metro areas. Honolulu is in the metro area table.

            The inclusion in the metro area listing but not the city list may be due to the unusual governmental structure of Hawaii, which does not have any incorporated cities. The "City and County of Honolulu" is actually the entire island of Oahu and not, as one might suspect, the area generally referred to as Honolulu.

            • DavidThi808 says:
              July 7, 2021 at 12:16 PM MDT

              It still makes no sense. I think you would struggle to find a city block in the metro area that is racially homogenous. The rural areas maybe, but even there it's mixed.

              And yes, the legal entity City and County of Honolulu is the island of Oahu. I've walked door to door for my mom in Kailua and it's very mixed.

              It makes me question their numbers.

  10. davebarnes says:
    July 4, 2021 at 8:12 PM MDT

    Today (Monday) is Earth at Aphelion

    • JohnInDenver says:
      July 5, 2021 at 11:43 AM MDT

      Made me look

      In 2021, Earth is at perihelion on January 2 at 8:50 a.m. Eastern Time and at aphelion on July 5 at 6:27 p.m. Eastern Time. At perihelion, Earth was 91,399,454 miles away from the Sun; at aphelion, it will be 94,510,886 miles away from the Sun.

      just think how much hotter it would be if we were 3 million miles closer to the source of heat….

  11. MichaelBowman says:
    July 5, 2021 at 9:42 AM MDT

    Happy (observed) 4th everyone! 

  12. ParkHill says:
    July 5, 2021 at 2:56 PM MDT

    Thus spake the orange one

    Josh Marshall runs the smartest muckraking news magazin on the internet. I apologize for quoting his observation almost in its entirety.

    But he seems to be now moving into what I guess we might call his Evita phase. Who talks like this? Who has this kind of messiah complex and who has supporters who don’t laugh when they hear this kind of faux biblical melodrama?

    "Seeing the record crowds of over 45,000 people in Ohio and Florida, waiting for days, standing in the pouring rain, they come from near and far. All they want is HOPE for their Great Country again. Their arms are outstretched, they cry over the Rigged Election—and the RINOs have no idea what this movement is all about. In fact, they are perhaps our biggest problem. We will never save our Country or be great again unless Republicans get TOUGH and get SMART!"

    • MichaelBowman says:
      July 5, 2021 at 3:02 PM MDT

      In a mostly-unplanned series of events I ended up in Sarasota on Saturday night about the time the sh#t show kicked off.  Lots of *rump2024 flags flying high over the weekend. I ran into a young man who couldn’t stop talking about Ttumpy Jr.  #floriduh 

    • Dano says:
      July 5, 2021 at 3:34 PM MDT

      I agree 100%, this country has no hope unless the GOP gets tough and smart and extricate themselves from the Cult of Trump. As long as the Party and the Cult are one and the same, they are doomed, and the country is set to spiral out of control without an effective counterbalance to the Left. A bicyle only works with two functional wheels.

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