President (To Win Colorado)
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(D) Kamala Harris
(R) Donald Trump
80%
20%
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
(R) V. Archuleta
98%
2%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
(R) Marshall Dawson
95%
5%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(D) Adam Frisch
(R) Jeff Hurd
50%
50%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert
(D) Trisha Calvarese
90%
10%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Jeff Crank
(D) River Gassen
80%
20%
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
(R) John Fabbricatore
90%
10%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) B. Pettersen
(R) Sergei Matveyuk
90%
10%
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(D) Yadira Caraveo
(R) Gabe Evans
70%↑
30%
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
December 27, 2011 04:33 PM UTC
80 Comments
I admit I admire a good hype. I’ve been involved in a few myself, even a couple of presidential ones. Iowa, however, wins hands down in political annals for generating interest far beyond their influence in selecting a candidate for president. You have to admire a small state, any state that finds a way to generate the kind frenetic expenditure of dollars that’s been spent by politicians and the media leading up to January 3rd.
Then there’s the Tebow vs Orton hype or is it the Orton vs Tebow-Elway hype. Sigh! If these two quarterbacks didn’t make so damn much money I could feel sorry for them.
There’s two side to every story but this is compelling – TSA Arrests Me for Using the Fourth Amendment as a Weapon (Tales from the Edge of a Revolution #2)
While Drafting SOPA, the U.S. House Harbors BitTorrent Pirates
http://www.ajpmonline.org/arti…
In related news, seatbelts don’t cause car accidents.
By the way, Repugs, whatever happened to that old “repeal and replace” mantra? Especially the “replace” part.
And, Texas Repugs, now what do you say about all those 16-year old “harlots” that mandatory HPV vaccination was going to create?
Repugs? Repugs? Anybody out there? ArapGOP? Anybody?
@daftpunk: Please re-post on Redstate. 🙂
They ban liberals and liberal viewpoints swiftly there.
My wife is very inventive about getting me great, completely out-of-the-blue Christmas gifts.
One morning a few weeks ago, I made us both omelets and reminisced a bit about my favorite breakfast back when I was going to school in Newark. There was this little diner down the street from the Geology building and every morning we used to meet there for Taylor Ham and eggs.
If you lived more than 50 miles from Trenton, you probably never heard of Taylor Ham, more properly called Taylor Pork Roll after the passage of the Pure Food and Drug act of 1906. Cheryl had never heard of it. Being from near Philly, her parents used to cook scrapple (another unmentionable mystery meat) instead.
Cheryl, bless her heart, got online and somehow found and ordered two three-pound rolls of Taylor Pork Roll, which was shipped frozen from some deli in New Jersey.
Christmas morning she went into the fridge and brought out a nicely wrapped six pound box which, when I opened it, completely blew me away. I hadn’t seen, let alone eaten, Taylor Pork Roll in 40 years (which might explain why I lived 40 more years.)
This morning, I made us a “Jersey Breakfast.” Three slices of Taylor Ham, two eggs over hard, and two slices of cheese on a hard roll (called “Kaiser rolls” out here, but we always called them “hard rolls” back in Jersey).
Those of you who are squeamish and watch what you eat can look away now. But if you’re curious, or remember the Jersey Breakfast that was available in every diner and luncheonette in North Jersey, click this link.
Mmmmm. Grease city!
Not sure what I’m gonna do with six pounds of the stuff, though. If I keep eating it, I won’t live long enough to use it up.
so be careful
n/t
Is your life insurance policy up to speed? I have to ask after reading this:
Not to question Cheryl’s motives or anything… 🙂
But thanks for the reminder to keep looking over my shoulder.
My wife found giant Reese’s PB cups somewhere. They weigh 8 oz each, with the diameter of a CD.
🙂
And freeze it.
When we get together to discuss that other matter, I’ll bring some.
Don’t go killing off our FPE, please. Make those thin slices, for the sake of Pols.
Trust me. She’s tough as nails.
But don’t push her luck. I need her.
Remember to eat things I love that are very, very bad for me once in while. Otherwise is it a longer life we’re going for or a life sentence to needless deprivation?
Just got through the holidays with the usual array of family and friends who absolutely, positively won’t eat this or that, sometimes for very arbitrary reasons with little scientific backing, just the favorite new “healthy” diet.
I’m not talking about diabetics or people with serious food allergies: Just the I never touch fill-in-the-blank, latest new diet fad enthusiasts. Not even for an old holiday favorite in moderation. What a royal pain. Thanks to Ralphie’s wife for this timely reminder. Enjoy!
I like it. (And cookies.)
Taylor Pork Roll is now distributed by Boar’s Head. I’ve been able to find it – both at the deli counter and in the specialty deli products case – at a few King Sooper’s markets around the Denver area that carry Boar’s Head meats (I usually head to the one in Golden). Not sure if that arrangement extends to City Markets or outside of a few stores here on the Front Range, but if you can find it, it’s a whole lot easier than shipping from NJ. (Also look for delis that use Boar’s Head.)
BTW, that was a wonderful gift from your wife.
… to keep me through the rest of the week.
My blood pressure and cholesterol do not like you. My taste buds, on the other hand, are glad you brought this up.
I pretty sure the one in Cortez carries Boar’s Head because I had to find a ham for a picnic down there a couple of years ago. I was pleasantly surprised at their selection – lots of quality stuff.
If Cortez rates that kind of deli, Grand Junction surely does as well.
If your wife ever happens upon a source for Greening Apples, let me know. I only ever knew them growing up in NJ – they’re the best pie apples, but they’re impossible to find. Only source I know of is a small batch growing in Capitol Reef National Park (they maintain a number of orchards of historical varietal fruits…).
You can buy a tree from here:
http://www.treesofantiquity.co…
But you might have to wait a bit for the apples…
Maybe too long if you’re going to eat Taylor Pork Roll this week.
That’s cool. I might need to get a tree or two.
Very cool on the find, Richie. If I didn’t live in a wooded area I’d buy some to plant.
…please spend the last few days of 2011 shooting down THIS list:
http://pleasecutthecrap.typepa…
Your off-topic crap is probably what you’ll post, but at least I gave you the opportunity to comment thoughtfully…
of all the previous “Pesky Cons of Colorado Pols” (Dobby, Newsman and others) and left the site. (I see him lurking every once in a while, but even the stubborn and stupid can handle only so many butt whuppin’s.)
Sen. Nelson isn’t running for re-election! Oh noes! Now a (gasp and sob <–no small feat) Republican might win the seat!
http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/27/…
Seriously, here’s hoping poor Nebraska can find someone, you know, doesn’t suck.
Nebraska is a weird political state.
dust off Chuck Hagel.
Nelson realized his pretending to be a Republican while caucusing as a Democrat was endearing him to no-one, rendering his odds of winning re-election vanishingly small, and handicapping his nominal party from recruiting a quality candidate with adequate lead time for vetting, fundraising, etc.
The story is at >Just Wow! and the discussion is at Reddit/gaming.
This guy should go in textbooks as to why 1. Anything you say or do can end being read by everyone, and 2. When you find yourself in a hole – stop digging! And reading the emails from this bozo – it’s like a combination of tourettes combined with poor grammer.
It’s a lot like putting ME in charge of customer service.
You at least would be grammatically correct and make clear sense 🙂
I could easily equal that.
Grammar aside, of course.
It shows how an email exchange with an individual customer for two controllers has ended the career of the person involved, has definitely destroyed his marketing company, and has severely hurt, and may have killed the company making the controller.
It’s a very different world from even 10 years ago. And it holds for politics as well as business. What’s bizarre is how this guy kept making it worse and the company making the controller has kept quiet letting the damage impact them too.
http://penny-arcade.com/resour…
the guy at Ocean Marketting (sp) was just a total douchebag and got what he deserved. His arrogance, coupled with his complete ignorance, was his downfall, and the guy at Penny Arcade was absolutely superb.
Fun to read. Very fun !
But it shows the power of the Internet where before a company could treat a customer like shit and there was no blow-back. It’s flipped the power structure where each individual consumer potentially has more influence than a corporation.
Something similar is occurring with GoDaddy right now. They are one of the backers of SOPA and apparently are now losing several hundred thousand domain names a day because of it. They’ve since switched to “neutral” on the bill and continue to hemorrhage customers.
The 1% may own the government and the financial system, but the 99% has some power too.
google “Ocean Marketting” and peruse the first forty or fifty hits. Tee hee.
Favorite comment so far, the dead on “Paul”/Eric Cartmann comparison.
it still took someone with actual internet power to do that. The guys at Penny Arcade could have ignored it (as some of the other people the customer emailed seemed to have done), and nothing would have happened.
I agree that the Ocean Marketing guy is an asshole and is getting what he deserves – he had the chance to back down and didn’t take it, trying to bluster and bully “Gabe” like he did the customer – but it’s kind of scary how swift and severe his punishment is. It shows that the internet can be a lynch mob, and lynch mobs don’t always go after the right person.
“Internet justice” is not a good thing. People not buying this guy’s marketing services: Good thing. But I guarantee you that people are doing worse than not hiring him. Chances are, they’re harassing his family for having had the temerity to be related to an asshole. They’re probably writing him a nice nasty entry on Encyclopedia Dramatica. Shit, this dude could get some excellent therapy, learn grammar, and come out of this as the nicest man and best writer in his industry, and he’d still probably have to change his legal name in a court of law and pray to God the Internet isn’t paying attention in order to ever work in any Internet-related field again.
Internet mob justice occasionally does some good, but rest assured, even if every individual in the mob is a good person, the mobs don’t form to do good. They form because humans are aggressive, gregarious primates and they want to see some blood.
I’m a little disappointed to see people laughing and having fun with this here.
if anyone does deserve this treatment, it is this guy. It’s clear that he’s a bully and a phony, and if he’s unemployable for the rest of his life, it really is justice. Hell, this wasn’t even his first brush with internet blowback. He had his chance to play nice with Penny Arcade and he blew that, too. The likelihood that he confronts himself, tackles his personality issues head on and becomes a new, nicer and considerate person is extremely slim, almost non-existent.
My concern isn’t for this guy. It’s that the powerful and popular people on the internet aren’t always going to be fair, or find targets truly deserving, when they become party to stories like this. I follow SLOG, the blog of The Stranger which is edited by Dan Savage, and he’s let the internet monkeys fly a couple of times in the past without getting his facts straight first. He’s been lucky so far – despite being behind the internet redefinition of “santorum,” he doesn’t have quite that much clout on the web. But at least he has good intentions going for him – what happens when someone doesn’t even have that?
Just read your link and yeah, it appears Paul likes to bully anyone until someone with real power pushes back.
Explains why he’s now been fired. Who would want someone representing their business who behaves like that?
I’m rejoicing. I am a small business owner and would never, in a million years, dream of responding to a client in that way.
Ocean’s Marketing emails are rude, arrogant, vile and totally disrespectful to a client that had a legitimate complaint. All the company had to do was write the man a simple and sincere apology for his gifts not arriving on time for Christmas, as promised and guaranteed on their website, and offer a $25 credit or free shipping on his next order and none of this would be happening.
But nope. Ocean’s Marketing decided to be complete assholes and put it in writing, to boot. Nice of them to show their true colors in print.
The only reason Paul is backtracking and now showing regret is because his bullying backfired. Big time. Mike even gave him a chance to make things right–read through the email exchanges. Paul aggressively attacked Mike, the same way he did the client, Dave. It was only when he found out that Paul was actually who he said he was and had an actual media outlet to make this crap public, does he begin to backpedal.
Paul can skip apologizing to Mike Krahulik. If he’s really being sincere here, the first thing he can do is make things right with the guy he totally screwed over and repeatedly mocked.
I don’t know why anyone has issues with this because it is a great thing. In this case it is the power of the internet and social media putting a total asshole in his proper place.
1) Punishment for being a generalized asshole shouldn’t extend to one’s family. I guarantee you his family is getting harassed by the Internet mob now.
2) “The death penalty is fine because this one time they executed someone who was guilty!”
Mob justice is all about “we want to see blood,” not about “do the right thing.” That has always been the case. Yes, the mob often gets a genuinely bad guy. But there’s a reason that we don’t base our justice system on bloodthirsty mobs even if they DO often get bad guys.
What this guy did is not illegal (nor should it be). But it is shameful and so having society call out for-shame, that is, I think, exactly the right approach.
Now will sometimes the shaming be more than appropriate? Absolutely. And sometimes it will be less. Society is imperfect. But it does tend to adjust as more is learned.
And in a couple of weeks everyone will have moved on from this story. The guy will be unemployable in most lines of work, but for very legit reasons. Aside from that, it will be over.
Human beings change. This guy is an asshole now. Will he be an asshole in five years? Maybe, but even if he isn’t, this story will still be online, forever.
I’m not really comfortable with permanently available to the public criminal records for nonviolent crimes. I think sex offender registries are probably unconstitutional. Both of those look at much more serious things than being a shitty customer service representative and kind of an ass. What if this guy turns out to have a mental illness that is treatable?
I don’t think writing off a human being forever is a laughing matter, and I don’t believe in “shaming.” The word is “bullying,” and even assholes don’t really deserve to be bullied. It’s good that people now know not to do business with this company, but I don’t like the mob mentality or the fact that people are gloating about his future unemployability. He’s not going to be the same person in a few years that he is today. Who among us has the right to judge a future person who doesn’t yet exist and declare that he shouldn’t be able to support a family?
” What if this guy turns out to have a mental illness that is treatable? ”
Maybe we should also inject in the argument whether or not he got a good nights sleep the night before. Or maybe he wasn’t properly hydrated, or maybe his mommy didn’t love him enough.
Jesus fucking Christ.
This is just a fundamental disconnect at the deepest level — stability vs. change, people as basically good, all the big questions.
Maybe y’all would be interested in knowing that the Reddit mob has also gone after and harassed a girl raising money for cancer patients and a guy who donated a kidney to a stranger.
They don’t usually get this shit right. Encouraging it encourages them to get it wrong more often.
and I have to say it. I believe a lot of times the things you say are exercises in political correctness.
Plus you go off on wild tangents that lead you to some segue, which is then another exercise in political correctness.
It gets annoying.
One can drop the “political” and still have the accusation be accurate.
Opposing bullying is simply “correct.”
So if that annoys you, I’m sorry, but that’s really just too damn bad. I don’t think anyone in the world would come off smelling like roses if their worst-ever interpersonal interaction were published online and left there as the top Google search result for their full name for all of eternity. If you think this guy got what he deserves, I really hope you are just that perfect. If so, why not change your username to your real, full name? After all, everything you say online can and should be used against you, right?
(Note: I’m not suggesting this. I don’t think it would be a good idea. But if you prefer to be able to be kind of a dick sometimes online, as do we all, without that permanently showing up when future employers Google your name, then I think you’re hypocritical to join a mob of bullies in tarnishing a human being forever for being kind of an asshole to one customer.)
You’re now comparing what people say on an anonymous political blog to how a business owner, representing a much larger business, interacts with his clients?
This wasn’t just some “interpersonal interaction”. These were business replies to a client with a legitimate complaint. This was a business owner that openly mocked and threatened a client repeatedly (and has done it before) and then openly mocked and threatened the owner of a media outlet when asked to reconsider the treatment of the client.
You really don’t get it, do you?
At first, I thought you were just digging in and doubling down out of sheer stubbornness, which, while annoying and immature, is acceptable. But now it’s become obvious–you really just don’t get how unacceptable this owner’s behavior has been in the past, was in this case and continued to be until someone stood up to him.
Apparently, somebody with a brain gets it because he has been fired due to his horrific, on the job performance. But yeah, let me grab a hankie to catch my tears over his bad luck at getting caught being a bad business owner and an abusive asshole.
Since you like to defend the indefensible, if you have time on your spare hands consider adopting Bank of America execs, because they could really use the help right now.
We had 2 rules at the school I went to. Be glad you didn’t attend. You wouldn’t have approved of either of them.
1. Karma is a bitch.
2. You reap what you sow.
I know. I know. You give up. Except you keep replying which sort of indicates otherwise, doesn’t it?
But I guess I just wanted a few more ridiculous ad hominem attacks from someone who is old enough and wise enough to know better before I went on with the rest of my day!
And yes, you’re welcome.
I don’t. I call that karma, which does not happen often enough in this world. It was awesome.
But yes, lets go on about the finger wagging about bullying, which fits the narrative.
that what we put out there in the virtual public square is there forever. Who doesn’t know that? Those who don’t have the sense to bear that in mind are going to suffer. That’s the new reality and there is no going back. Those who forget that will suffer the consquences. Just the way it is. We all have to live in the world as it is, not as we would like it to be.
Two of them:
Deal with the world that is.
Create the world that ought to be.
They’re not mutually exclusive.
But until you manage to create a world where that particular genie gets put back in the bottle, people need to deal with what is. Good luck with the genie.
There’s a fine line between a proper public shaming (which this guy deserved) and mob-driven bullying. Sure, his attitude was atrocious, and he deserved to be fired and his company taken down for its careless attitude toward its customers. But with an Internet mob reaction of this size, it’s almost certainly going to go beyond his work record and the company’s future. It’s no different from admitting that the paparazzi are out there stalking celebrities – just because it’s reality doesn’t mean that it’s acceptable.
Just entirely predictable isness as in this is the way it is. Beware what you put out there.This kind of thing will happen.
That is seriously the best laugh I’ve had in ages!
I flew it! I flew it!
I dunno, they’re all “Baby Plane” to me until I get one of my own. But I FLEW IT I FLEW IT I FLEW IT and I almost unwittingly invaded Canada, fortunately my flight instructor knows where the border is and stopped me.
And be careful up there – airplanes are very unforgiving of mistakes.
It’s so little and lightweight that anything you screw up can pretty much be unscrewed before the ground gets very close. I hit some pretty good winds and got knocked around real good and was fine, couldn’t stop giggling the whole time. As long as I don’t try any barrel rolls I think I’m cool if I stick to the wee little two-seaters. But I want to try the seven seater float plan I flew to the island on (not as the pilot, as a commercial passenger) eventually, and those aren’t terribly forgiving.
Altitude and airspeed.
Write that on the palm of your hand.
Paying attention the whole time. I would never pilot a plane because my mind is always working through something. So I’d lose focus on the flying.
You can’t space out. The plane gives you constant kinetic feedback. It’s so small and light that you feel every tiny breeze or high or low pressure air pocket. I stink at meditation — I can shut off my conscious mind, but my subconscious talks even MORE than my conscious mind! So if I go off into meditation land I may write half a novella there, but I sure don’t get any brain-emptying relaxation done. If I’m being forced to pay 100% of my attention to something that my body is doing, though, I get the benefits other people get from meditation. That’s one reason I ride horses and run, and flying was like that, but more so.
Another great one.