CO-04 (Special Election)
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(R) Greg Lopez
(R) Trisha Calvarese
90%
10%
President (To Win Colorado)
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(D) Joe Biden*
(R) Donald Trump
80%
20%↓
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
90%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
90%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(D) Adam Frisch
(R) Jeff Hurd
(R) Ron Hanks
40%
30%
20%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert
(R) Deborah Flora
(R) J. Sonnenberg
30%↑
15%↑
10%↓
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Dave Williams
(R) Jeff Crank
50%↓
50%↑
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
90%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) Brittany Pettersen
85%↑
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(D) Yadira Caraveo
(R) Gabe Evans
(R) Janak Joshi
60%↑
35%↓
30%↑
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
May 18, 2023 08:05 AM UTC
53 Comments
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?
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
.
Of course it’s woke policy making the system inept! A direct quote from a Fox News article on the debate:
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.
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!”
"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"
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.
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.
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.
For comparison Australia has 613 airports, New Zealand 62, Germany, 103. The UK has 144.
The US has just short of 20,000.
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.
As Leona Helmsley would say, "Only the little people fly commercial."
Agreed that technology has certainly shifted the narrative. Long gone are the days I’d dial up Akron on a rotary phone in the 2V5 lobby to file and then run to the plane to take off! An onboard iPad and cell phone can make magic happen these days.
About all we can do is pay our AOPA fees (member since 1978!) and let them do their magic.
A day in a minute:
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)
I'll celebrate with fattigmann and rommegrot, but you can keep the lutefisk and lefse!
I will keep the lefse then because I really like it, but wouldn't feed lutefisk to even T***p for his role in 1/6. They say lutefisk was originally made by putting lye in fish to poison enemy soldiers. I have no reason to doubt this story, it's truly the worst food known to mankind.
Lye has its place in cooking. Remember those big ol’ soft pretzels you got at the mall? They went through a lye bath as they rolled around on the cooking racks. That’s what made them all brown and shiny. I worked at one of those kiosks one summer and had the caustic burn scars on my hands for years to prove it.
So, guess in which part of the anatomy lutefisk leaves the caustic burn scars!
Also…hominy.
OK, lye's legit. I come to Pols to learn things. But nuttin's gonna make me start liking lutefisk!
How about Smelt? You eat Smelt?
Head cheese? Souse?
I used to go to yearly smelt fries, though mostly for the beer. When it's breaded and deep-fried, literally almost anything tastes good (no need to gratuitously mention bull testicles right now).
Meet me at the Testicle Festival !!
(Sing along) 🎵Rocky Mountain oysters ain't chicken of the sea. They don't have 31 flavors; nah, just one or two or three…🎵
Like many other beloved ethnic traditions, lutefisk was born of necessity. Dried fish was carried on Viking ships and stored in Norwegian cellars as food that would not spoil, soaked in lye to "rehydrate", then made edible by rinsing and drenching in butter.
So like chitterlings, menudo, and unleavened bread for Passover, what was once a cheap survival food became invested with nostalgia and ethnic pride.
People don't eat this stuff because it tastes good – it's all symbolism and cultural pride.
Have you happened to stumble on to Alaskan Daily on TV? A great short series (11 episodes) focusing on local journalism. Well done.
I prefer to eat food that taste good and has some nutritional value – not to make political or cultural statements.
I get people liking lefse (my family is split), but for me it's what a tortilla shouldn't be.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
The kids are the victims in these ugly situations…always. You don't get to pick your parents.
Luckily, I cannot imagine they read this blog.
"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.
Remember Duke, Granny Oakly came from Florida. I wouldn't be surprised if she went home if, I mean when she loses.
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."
"Wayne Williams sealed his fate when he did a commercial last year with the corrupt democrat Jenna Griswold."
I thought that doing that commercial and cleaning up the mess in Mesa County after Tina Peters were the two high points of his public service.
No good deed goes unpunished.
Anti-Abortion Killing the Republican Party. Josh at TPM.
"The DeSantis-backed candidate for Mayor of Jacksonville, Daniel Davis, got upset by underdog Democrat Donna Deegan"
After all, City Hall is responsible for so many abortions.
This is what “catching the car” looks like.
Breaking on FOXnews and other O&G propaganda spin outlets.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/16/us/western-wildfires-fossil-fuels-study-climate/index.html#
https://apple.news/Ax06rRm2VRvKNDPKL-aGP5Q
"New scientific reports once again prove conclusively that carbon emissions are not responsible for the majority of wildfires in the West!"
Everyone knows that the fires were started by the Jewish space laser.
May she long live in infamy.
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.
Ian Millhiser at the twit.
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,
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.
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?
MAGA GOP