Thursday Open Thread

53
  by: Colorado Pols May 18, 2023 at 8:05 AM MDT

“Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.”

–George Washington

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53 Community Comments, Facebook Comments

  1. MichaelBowman says:
    May 18, 2023 at 8:21 AM MDT

    I’ve been a pilot since I was 18, on the cusp of the Reagan era and the first attempt by Republicans to privatize our Air Traffic Control system. 
     

    They’re at it again, an onerous plan from the House GQP to close 375+ plus control towers that would make the entire system grind to a halt (that’s their whole point).

    They’re attempting to “De Joy” the FAA.  How about we just put our big boy pants on, update our antiquated system and empower this control system, a “public good”, to do what it does so well? 

    • JohnInDenver says:
      May 18, 2023 at 8:54 AM MDT

      Dept. of Transportation laid out what was in the Republican budget proposal for their department: NATIONAL FACT SHEET: House Republicans’ Proposals Jeopardize Transportation Safety and Infrastructure

      And then, thoughtfully, they provided a state-by-state breakdown.  Colorado's is here

      .

      • MichaelBowman says:
        May 18, 2023 at 9:18 AM MDT

        Of course it’s woke policy making the system inept!  A direct quote from a Fox News article on the debate: 

        “…critics of the Biden administration say it is too focused on "woke" social priorities instead of the job at hand. The FAA itself has shown an inclination to adopt some of the diversity and equity initiatives supported by the Biden administration.”

        • Chickenheed says:
          May 18, 2023 at 9:35 AM MDT

          This quote caused me pain. My eyes rolled more than they've ever rolled before.

          First, trying to privatize the FAA is dumb. But wanting to privatize the FAA because of DEI initiatives is REALLY dumb!

          "Let's have contractors do the work of the FAA because DEI initiatives in the FAA are too expensive and go against my belief that white men know more than other people and we can't possibly have biases cuz we're too smart for that. Good thing rules about government contractors haven't been 'woke' for years and can't be affected by a 'woke' Biden administ…wait what?"

          FFS.

          • notaskinnycook says:
            May 18, 2023 at 1:57 PM MDT

            If these dimwits get their way, they ain’t seen nothin’ yet. As a private company, if they want to attract the best and the brightest (kind of important in that field), they will have DEI policies and there won’t be thing one the whiny, fragile Republicans can do about it. Most ATCs come from the military where when the President says “You will…”, they say “Sir, yes sir!”

    • davebarnes says:
      May 18, 2023 at 10:21 AM MDT

      "Many developed countries have transferred air traffic control operations from their government to a separate entity. Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom all have self-supporting air traffic control corporations"

      • MichaelBowman says:
        May 18, 2023 at 11:21 AM MDT

        Our system would be orders of magnitude larger than any of those countries. It’s a public good and our version should be “self-supporting through the federal budget”.  The Aviation Trust Fund collects a lot of dollars as well through av gas sales and that money is dedicated to infrastructure investments. 

        • NOV GOP meltdown says:
          May 18, 2023 at 12:03 PM MDT

          On top of that imagine the billions of dollars of grift and fraud that would be skimmed off the top and go to well-connected corporate air traffic contractors with the US federal government and FAA. See: Medicare, defense contracting, big pharma, or even Xcel Energy right here in Colorado.. We have a unique level of shitbaggery in our country when it comes to “privatization”, and it runs from totally sanctioned and legal to bordering on illegal.

        • Conserv. Head Banger says:
          May 18, 2023 at 12:09 PM MDT

          While large countries, Canada and Australia don't have anything close to the number of airports needing air traffic control that the US has. Germany, the UK, and New Zealand are all much smaller area wise.

    • coloradosane says:
      May 19, 2023 at 9:50 AM MDT

      Mike, I've been a pilot since 1974 and I can say with experience that rich folks with private aircraft don't care about civilian aviation or scheduled carriers as long as they can land and take off within 20 minutes of their ultimate destinations. 

      Common good is out the door.  

      Retired from American Airlines 2012 and my generation of mostly military trained pilots are gone. Safety systems are strained on all fronts. FAA is owned by corporate interests and enforces FAR's that way now. 

      With onboard instrument systems no one cares about a control tower for lower class airspace or low volume airports. 

  2. 2Jung2Die says:
    May 18, 2023 at 8:28 AM MDT

    Happy Syttende Mai – Norwegian Constitution Day, don’tcha know? Celebrate with smoked salmon if ya got it! (woopsie, it was actually yesterday, but y’all can celebrate anyway)

     

  3. Duke Cox says:
    May 18, 2023 at 9:00 AM MDT

    The ongoing saga of, “The Liberation of Granny le Pew Pew”, has reached a new level of tawdry, with the news of our congresswomans’ filing for divorce.

    🎶 How you gonna keep em’ down on the wellsite, after they’ve seen Palm Beach?🎵

    Questions abound…

    1. Is she abandoning her new grandchild, as well as her husband and 4 boys?

    2. How soon will she move to Texas or Florida? There are many safe districts in those states, where she is adored, unlike CD3, where her vile behavior has really taken its toll on her popularity. It is unlikely she will take her boys with her, I believe.

    3. How strident and hypocritical will be her cries for privacy, when her very first campaign ad featured her family, and photos of the heavily armed boys have been a fund-raiser for years.

    4. Is this such a scandal that we will hear nothing of her first grandchild? No birth announcement? No information about the mother and her family? Is the baby going to be cared for by the neaveau riche Boeberts,  or abandoned to a life of eating government cheese?

    What gives, Granny?

     

     

     

     

     

    • MichaelBowman says:
      May 18, 2023 at 9:24 AM MDT

      Who knew that putting your life on hold meant ending your covenant marriage and leaving your adolescent children in Rifle to fend for themselves?  
       

      Her Mothers Day tweet didn’t require a caption. 

    • Conserv. Head Banger says:
      May 18, 2023 at 11:57 AM MDT

      I would echo a past post from kwtree that the Boebert family deserves an amount of privacy.

      Having said that, I do find it disconcerting that there has been no mention of the young mother in any of the press that got reported here. She's doing the work after all and I have to wonder if she really wanted to be a mom at age 16.

      Hadn't thought Boebert might bail out of Colorado in 2025, after she loses to Adam Frisch (yes, I'm confident that will happen). Good riddance to bad rubbish if it happens. 

      • NOV GOP meltdown says:
        May 18, 2023 at 12:09 PM MDT

        I would guess there was a ton of familial pressure put upon the young father and mother to have the child and get married. Pressure from a family that is no long even together anymore. Do as I say and not as I do. Kind of sad.

      • MichaelBowman says:
        May 18, 2023 at 12:09 PM MDT

        I would normally agree, CHB, but this new crop of GQP-ers are a unique class all to themselves. The “for thee but not for me” mentality is particularly repulsive and I’d argue warrants pushback. 

      • Lauren Boebert is a Worthless POS says:
        May 18, 2023 at 2:13 PM MDT

        "She's doing the work after all and I have to wonder if she really wanted to be a mom at age 16."

        Or spend the rest of her life tethered to Bimbobert's spawn as co-parents. 

    • notaskinnycook says:
      May 19, 2023 at 12:05 AM MDT

      Remember Duke, Granny Oakly came from Florida. I wouldn't be surprised if she went home if, I mean when she loses. 

  4. JohnInDenver says:
    May 18, 2023 at 9:15 AM MDT

    The Colorado Springs story showed up in Newsweek.

    The article doesn't have much that would be new to readers here — but the comments following, ESPECIALLY those who claim to be from Colorado Springs, brought a smile to my face.  Here are two:

      * "Despite what the candidate who just lost wants everyone to believe, Yemi is not some far left radical liberal. He's pretty much what a conservative looked like before Obama was elected and Republicans lost their mind and started sprinting to the far right as fast as they could."

      * "Wayne Williams sealed his fate when he did a commercial last year with the corrupt democrat Jenna Griswold."

  5. ParkHill says:
    May 18, 2023 at 10:31 AM MDT

    Anti-Abortion Killing the Republican Party. Josh at TPM.

    Democrats continue to over-perform in election after election.

    We know that Republicans had a dismally disappointing midterm even though they did manage to capture a razor thin House majority. But that trend has continued and arguably intensified. According to Daily Kos Elections numbers, in 18 state legislative races held in 2023, Democrats have over-performed presidential results by an average of 6.6 points. Compared to 2016, it’s 10.9%. The DeSantis-backed candidate for Mayor of Jacksonville, Daniel Davis, got upset by underdog Democrat Donna Deegan. The Post has a good run-down of these and other races from Tuesday.

    Of course we know about high profile contests like the Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice race in which Janet Protasiewicz scored a commanding victory over former Justice Daniel Kelly and shifted the balance of power back to the Democrats.

    The clearest through-line to all of these results is abortion.

  6. Washopingmylastpostwouldbemylast says:
    May 18, 2023 at 1:35 PM MDT

    Breaking on FOXnews and other O&G propaganda spin outlets.

    “New scientific reports once again prove conclusively that carbon emissions are not responsible for the majority of wildfires in the West!  Burn it if you got it!

    And, remember, our only existential threats come from south of our border, non-heterosexuals, skin pigmentation, and socialistic liberals!”

    https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/16/us/western-wildfires-fossil-fuels-study-climate/index.html#

    https://apple.news/Ax06rRm2VRvKNDPKL-aGP5Q

  7. Pam Bennett says:
    May 18, 2023 at 2:39 PM MDT

    Disney killed a major move to Orlando worth over a billion today.  Oops, something about a bad business climate in the state.  Yeah, lots of people are rethinking how to say [obscentity here] to mini-sfb.

  8. ParkHill says:
    May 18, 2023 at 3:48 PM MDT

    Ian Millhiser at the twit.

    Neil Gorsuch claims that Covid public health measures may have been the greatest peacetime intrusions on civil liberties in American history.

    Could someone please give this profoundly ignorant man one (1) book on slavery or Jim Crow? 
    https://supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/22-592_5hd5.pdf

    My hot take for today is that rounding up Japanese Americans and sending them to concentration camps was actually a much worse intrusion on civil liberties than telling people to mitigate the spread of the deadliest disease to emerge in the last century.

    Anyways, I disagree with the premise that requiring people to wear a mask was worse than the Trail of Tears.

    • JohnInDenver says:
      May 18, 2023 at 5:58 PM MDT

      A few others worth mentioning … just for the sake of clarifying the measures, donchaknow.

      * I'm thinking someone may have mentioned the lack of civil rights for all those women from 1789 until (pick the moment — right to serve in office, right to vote, right to serve on juries, right to own property, end of "marital" exception to rape laws, …. )

      * there may have been a few infringements on the civil rights of LGBTQ+ citizens.

      * the indignities of the public health requirement to wear a mask was more limited in time (and area needing to be covered) than the on-going "indecency" laws mandating proper modes of dress,

    • notaskinnycook says:
      May 18, 2023 at 6:38 PM MDT

      He did say peacetime. The Japanese-American internment was during WW2. And he was talking about white people, er, men. Not a group accustomed to any sort of oppression. 

      • Washopingmylastpostwouldbemylast says:
        May 18, 2023 at 8:04 PM MDT

        Oh, I don't know? I can see Gorsuch and at least four other Supremes in the yeah-but-many-white-men-have-been-victims-of-oppression-too camp?

  9. coloradosane says:
    May 19, 2023 at 9:43 AM MDT

    MAGA GOPA grab taken from the digital scan. (Atlantic/Magellan/AP)

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