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May 04, 2007 03:36 PM UTC

Friday Open Thread

  • 42 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

Where you pick the topics, and no annoying radio host cuts you off.

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42 thoughts on “Friday Open Thread”

  1. Owens was pompous and arrogant.  I’m sure he’s thinking he should be running instead of Schaffer.  Any rumblings or rumors that he will?  Or, has Wadhams cleared the field so there’s not a contested primary? 

          1. The Party of God, on the other hand, believes in crucifying its candidates who get caught in any type of sex scandal.  They tolerate every other type of scandal, but if the candidate engages in any type of sexual pecadilloes, s/he is finished.

            1. I can’t forgive hypocrisy.  I thought that things would change in 1995 when the GOP took the House and Senate.  We exchanged one group of self-centered, self-important, power grabbing bastards for another.  If I had anywhere else to go, I’d leave the Republican Party. I don’t differentiate between “Hot Pants” Bill’s zipper problem and Duke Cunningham’s accepting bribes. 

              1. You dont see a difference between an affair and a criminal offense? If you were to say you dont see a difference between Newt’s affair and Bill’s I wouldnt object. But there is a fundamental difference, at least to me, between Cunningham and Clinton.

                1.   That even bothered me somewhat, but it wasn’t grounds for removal from office. It was grounds for his disbarment as well as the fat monetary award he had to shell out for Paula Jones. 
                    When litigants play fast and loose with truth during discovery proceedings and get caught, juries usually punish them by dinging them with fat adverse judgments.  That’s why so few perjury cases are prosecuted as crimes.  The liar is usually punished financially in the civil suit.
                    As for the B.J., to the extent that a private consensual sex act between two adults was wrong, the only victim was Hillary.  She had the choice to either keep him or throw him out on his ass.  Reasonable men and women could differ as to whether she made the right choice.  (I’m not so sure I would have kept him, but that’s irrelevant since I’m not married to him.)
                    The idea of spending $40,000,000 of Gecko’s hard-earned tax dollars to prove that Monica gave Bill the B.J. and he fibbed about it at the deposition is ludicrous.

                2. but they’re both a violation of trust.  I want to support family values candidates.  If someone I didn’t vote for disappoints me, oh well, I didn’t have an emotional investment in them anyway.  But when someone I want to believe in lets me down, I’m angry. 

                  Newt and Bill are cut from the same cloth as far as I’m concerned.  Self-centered bastards.  Cunningham is too. 

            2. you mean like the way they have cast off Rudy? or the way they have cast off Newt? What about Rush? The list goes on and on of prominent Republican’s with zipper problems who are still front and center nationally. Here in CO the former Governor’s transgressions were covered up, in GOP circles a certain former legislator who was fooling around with his aid is still a prominent consultant.

              What I’m saying is, you couldn’t be more wrong.

  2. I heard that “moderate” State Senator Steve Johnson is mulling a primary challenge to Marilyn Musgrave. This is the kind of RINOism that the values voting grassroots must not tolerate. Marilyn Musgrave is a conservative hero, and any of these RINO operatives talking to Steve better know that the national party will ENTHUSIASTICALLY support Marilyn in 2008!!!

    1. He is exactly the kind of leader easter Colorado needs. One that is able to work with others to help solve the issues of water, agriculture, development…on the plains and Front Range.

      Besides, if you hate him Rizzo, he’s got to be good.

      1. Car31, I don’t care if it’s a Republican or a Democrat, but getting rid of Musgrave would be good for Colorado.  With that in mind, I checked to see if Michael Baller, who I believe but do no know, was the money man giving to Chuck Gosnell the funds for the Christian Coalition of Colorado’s hit pieces (a/k/a Lamborn Lambporn) in the 5th CD (see http://www.coloradop…), was also a donor to Marilyn Musgrave’s campaign.  Surprise!  Surprise!  Surprise!  It appears his wife and he donated $7,000 to Marilyn Musgrave.  If Gosnell has tapped Baller for funds to attack Lamborn’s opponents, he may well do the same to attack Musgrave’s opponents. 

    3. And how dare you use “grassroots” in the same sentence with her.  She is the most detached, uncommunicative Representative in the State, if not the nation.  She has money, but literally no volunteers–how is that “grassroots”?

      But thanks, I’ll take a look at Steve now.

      1. If it’s a “plus” in Musgrave’s district to be homophobic, then the Lambpornographers will probably paint Johnson as supporting a “radical homosexual agenda”.  That said, I didn’t know his position to be as you state but I return to the premise that Oscar made–anyone is better than Musgrave. 

  3. I have deep antipathy for Marilyn Musgrave and her hate-based ideology, but two things she has done lately have gone against my preconceptions.  First, she has taken a strong leadership role in opposing the Army’s proposed Pinon Canyon Expansion.  That position may follow from traditional Republican property rights advocacy, but in this case `the enemy of my enemy is my friend,’ and I appreciate her stand in preserving this remote but spectacular area.  I can tell you her position certainly resonates with the ranchers down there who are completely up in arms about the Army’s land grab, and probably with lots of folks on the eastern plains.  Second, and more surprising, she was one of the speakers at the dedication ceremony of the Sand Creek Massacre Memorial National Historic Site which I attended last weekend.  She spoke with very genuine emotion about the injustice of that tragedy and a desire to live together with Native Americans as neighbors.  I will never agree with her politics, but I give her credit for having more substance than I thought. 

  4. “Daniel J. Kopelman of Aurora, CO, whose duties include oversight and maintenance of the state’s master voter registration database, was offering “GOP campaign help” in the form of voter and “fresh” fundraising lists at the web site of his privately-owned company Political Live Wires.”

    http://scoop.eplurib…

  5.   Don’t know if anybody else noticed but the state House approved the Employment Nondiscrimination Act earlier this week on a bipartisan 44-18 vote. 
      That’s a pretty hefty margin for outlawing employment discrimination based on sexual orientation. 
      What’s impressive is that in addition to a small group of RINOs (White, Witwer and Roberts) who have been pro-human rights in the past, a couple of right wingers joined in supporting the bill this time, including Reps. Stafford and Marostica. 
      Marostica is particularly impressive since he replaced Jim “They Marry Horses, Don’t They” Welker last Nov!
      The times, they are a changing……….

    1. I’ve been close to Debbie since we were in the Republican
      Leadership Program together.  She has a huge heart but since she’s a Republican, you’ll never read about it in the papers.  I think you can count on more votes like this one from her.

        1. Clue me in.  I’m sure you meant “when a dam breaks” but I have no freaken idea what you’re talking about.  Was this supposed to be a comment to a different post?

    3. The defection of such conservatives to the radical homosexual agenda kinda undermines his argument that Colorado is a fundamentally homophobic red state based on the Ref I results.

    4. In my sometimes-humble opinion, I believe the ENDA is potentially more important than any other “gay-rights” legislation (including gay marriage/partnershps).

      Praise be!

      1. Politicians will be politicians.  I’m just glad the voters last November stuck up for traditional values.  Everyone knows politicians are out of touch with their constituents–and this is yet another example of it.

  6. Should YouTube users have the right to post everything (within commonsense, good taste rules)on the internet without threat of copywrite infringement lawsuits? (Ex.- Someone shoots a short video at a Nuggets game with their cell phone and uploads it on YouTube)

     

    2. There was a discussion on NPR recently on this topic, specifically looking at the Dem, and now Rep, debates. MSNBC wanted them taken off youtube. With something like the debates, which, arguably, help to inform voters (a public act), should be allowed. Something like a nuggets game is arguably protected. That is especially true if you recorded the game on a DVR and then uploaded sections to youtube. If you paid for a ticket, recorded a minute on a cell phone and passed it on, well, that could be allowed.

      I think it comes down to whether or not something is a public good or not. Of course, we now progress into the argument of what is a public good, and whether something that is offered exclusively through a pay only outlet can be determined to offer a public good. The nuggets game, for instance, is not necessarily a public good. The debates, on the other hand, arguably are a public good. 

  7. Surely, somewhere, someone has compiled all the changing reasons for the War in Iraq. By that I mean how it started out to be about an imminent threat to the U.S. – smoking guns, mushroom clouds – that was not imminent; then about finding weapons of mass destruction that weren’t there; then about establishing a democratic government; then about training enough Iraqis to maintain their own civil order. And now the goal has devolved to just reducing violence to an “acceptable level” so that we can declare victory and leave.

    GWB: I mean, there is an acceptable level of violence in certain societies around the world, and the question is, you know, what is that level? And that’s where the experts come in.

    They’ve got experts for deciding what levels of violence are acceptable?

    I – you know, you and I can’t determine that sitting here in New York, but we can – we can ask people’s advice upon that; David Petraeus would have an option on that. Ryan Crocker, our ambassador in Iraq.

    Notice it doesn’t occur to him to ask an Iraqi.

    But it’s a very interesting way of putting the question, and – because all – there is an acceptable level of violence in all societies, even our own.

    CR: And where do you –

    GWB: Even though all violence is to be abhorred, nevertheless, there is – you know, there’s certain violence – levels of violence that people say, “Well gosh, I can go about my life, I’ve got [unintelligible]”

    In other words, reduce the level of violence until it’s just a nuisance.

    I keep thinking of what John Kerry said in 2004 about terrorism becoming a nuisance. Here’s a snip:

    In the interview published on Sunday, Kerry told New York Times reporter Matt Bai, “As a former law-enforcement person, I know we’re never going to end prostitution. We’re never going to end illegal gambling. But we’re going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn’t on the rise – it isn’t threatening people’s lives every day, and fundamentally, it’s something that you continue to fight, but it’s not threatening the fabric of your life.

    The wingnuts went absolutely ballistic over this. I think Kerry should have thought this out a bit more carefully before he said it. It’s one thing to go on about your life knowing that there’s illegal gambling going on somewhere, and quite another to live with a threat of suicide bombers. Certainly the possibility of terrorism can never be reduced to zero, and maybe Kerry was trying to say that the goal is to make terrorism a remote enough possibility that we aren’t constantly worried about it. I can’t imagine it ever being just a nuisance, however.

    But here’s Bush thinking there’s some level of violence to which people can adjust. “Well gosh, I can go about my life, I’ve got [unintelligible],” in spite of there being corpses in the street. There may be a point at which people become numb to violence, but adjusting? I don’t think so.

    The Bush-Rose interview continues,

    GWB: Well – and by the way, if the standard of success is no car bombings or suicide bombings, we have just handed those who commit suicide bombings a huge victory. In other words, if you say, you know, “I’m going to judge the administration’s plan based upon whether they were able to have no car bombings in Baghdad,” we will have just given – because car bombings are hard to stop – or suicide bombings – very hard to stop. We have just given al-Qaeda or any other extremist a significant victory.

    Huh?

    And that’s one of the problems I face in trying to convince the American people, one, this is doable – in other words, I wouldn’t have our troops there if I didn’t think this is, one, important, and secondly, achievable. But I also understand on their TV screens, people are seeing horrific bombings, and they’re saying to themselves, “Is this possible? Can we possibly succeed in the face of this kind of violence?” And that’s where this enemy – the enemy of moderation has got a – you know, they’ve got a – they’ve got a powerful tool in [unintelligible]

    Actually, I’m not seeing horrific bombings on my TV screen. Compared to what part of the Vietnam War we used to be able to watch on the nightly news, Iraq is nearly invisible. We hear about it more than we see it.

    Along these lines, Eugene Robinson has a great op ed in today’s Washington Post called “Lost in the Fog With Commander Guy.”

    In Tipp City, just before his reminder about the Oval Office rug, Bush said success in Iraq would be defined as “a country that is stable enough for the government to work, that can defend itself and serve as an ally in this war on terror, that won’t be a safe haven, that will deny the extremists and the radicals.”

    But that doesn’t necessarily mean an end to bloody suicide bombings, he added. “Think about that: If our definition is no more suiciders, you’ve just basically said to the suiciders, go ahead.”

    Yeah, think about that.

    Speaking to the contractors’ group Wednesday, the president elaborated: “Either we’ll succeed or we won’t succeed. And the definition of success as I described is sectarian violence down. Success is not, no violence. There are parts of our own country that have got a certain level of violence to it. But success is a level of violence where the people feel comfortable about living their daily lives. And that’s what we’re trying to achieve.”

    What is the man talking about? What “parts of our own country” experience violence remotely comparable to that in Iraq? Is he serious?

    Sheltered and delusional would be a better guess.

    All you Bush abd Republican supporters on this blog….please defend this craziness.

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