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February 08, 2014 01:17 AM UTC

Weekend Open Thread

  • 85 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

"Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy."

–Norman Schwarzkopf

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85 thoughts on “Weekend Open Thread”

        1. Probably because he's approachable, likeable, and can actually connect with the majority of the population. It's not surprising a GOP synchopant would find that unsuitable in a "leader".  AC prefers bowing to people who know they're better than he is. 

          1. Maybe because he supports the black guy. 🙂

            I'm being facetious. I don't think AC is a racist. I think he's more of a general hater. I think he hates anything/anyone that's different, or threatens his fantasy of a 1950's Happy Days kind of world, that never existed in real life.  Being black is just one small part of why AC hates Obama. He'd hate him just as much without it.

    2. What's this? Biden hanging out with his constitutents?

      From a 2012 photo?

      PANIC! PANIC! PANIC! Alert all conservatives to burn the picture down and pray to whatever invisible god that you think exists.

      Scary! 

      NOT!

  4. Not tech savy enough to copy the link, but there is video of Superintendent Cindy Stevenson resigning from Jeffco Schools.  She is saying that she can't continue with a board that doesn't respect her. (paraphrasing).  Sad and scary day for Jeffco Schools!

    1. GOLDEN – KUSA – The Jefferson County School board meeting that started at 8 a.m. Saturday morning abruptly ended in an emotional resignation by superintendent Cindy Stevenson.

      "I can't lead and manage because I am not respected by this board," Steven said during the meeting, according to a Tweet from Jefferson County Schools. "This board does not respect me."

      The board room was overflowing spilling into the hallway and had to be moved due to the crowd. The board then asked Stevenson to address the audience.

      "I have approached the board and I will be gone by the end of the month. I can't manage this district with this board," she said Saturday, according to Jeffco's Twitter account. She was tearful during the statement.

      The three new board members walked out of the meeting when she received a standing ovation and cheers from the crowd after her speech. Security asked that the meeting end as the crowd became rowdy cheering and applauding for the superintendent.

      http://www.9news.com/news/article/376845/188/Superintendent-I-will-be-gone-by-the-end-of-the-month

      1. Such is the life of every superintendent, city manager, etc.  You serve at the pleasure of the board that hires you.  She'll get another job.  And they'll get another superintendent.  If you don't like what the board does, change the board at the next election

      2. quiote a response of public support for the supe. Hopefully the voters, will come to the same conclusion that Ralphie and I share. They need a new Board

        1. Unfortunately school board races are so low profile it's easy for dedicated wackos to take over boards. This has been happening since the extreme Christian right took over so many school boards starting decades ago.  When people see what these boards do, it's too late to do much more than what these good pople are doing… cheering those who got screwed after the fact.

          3. I don't think it's that simple. We now have slates running against each other and the voters do tend to listen to what they will get with each slate. With that said, the right wing slate tends to lie talking about improving schools, then when they get in office, focus on their real agenda.

            But they get the votes because the alternative is continue with what the schools have been doing. And when voters have an alternative of try something new or stick with something that's been failing for decades, many will vote for the try something new.

      1. Wow. Ominous for Jeffco schools. I liked Superintendant Stevenson when I worked in Jeffco, but she was also known as a bit flaky. She wasn't very supportive of the teacher's union, although she bargained in good faith, and she didn't make any shady deals like Bennet did in DPS, but she was 150% behind kids and programs that would help Jeffco kids. Truly had a heart for children.

        My Jeffco friends are mostly too old to have school aged kids, but they are alarmed about this. And that is part of the problem, I think…the boomers and activists are "seniors" and don't make school board issues a priority, while the young moms and dads get active in the PTAs and whatever the acronym is now for the group of parents advising the Principal.  So the young parents are active, but not usually willing to rock the boat that their kids are riding in. If that makes sense.

  5. Interesting story – What happened when Boloco founder John Pepper became an Uber driver

    Last October, Boloco co-founder and CEO John Pepper resigned his job after a tussle with directors about the restaurant chain's direction.

    In that situation, lots of other entrepreneurs might take time off to travel, or become an "entrepreneur in residence" at a college or investment firm.

    Pepper decided to become a part-time Uber driver. (Uber is a transportation service that lets you summon a range of vehicles, from taxis to SUVs, using a smartphone app. The drivers are all freelancers.) He's done almost 50 rides so far, in his Jeep Wrangler and his Tesla Model S electric sedan.

                1. I don't watch Al because he yells all the time, true to his preaching background. The scandals you mention do diminish his credibility.

                  However, he was and is a bona fide civil rights activist. He was the first one to insist on bringing out the truth about Trayvon Martin, for example, or the many cases where people of color have been profiled and killed by the police.

                  People aren't 100% wonderful or terrible. It's just lazy to insist on labeling that way.

      2. Talk of impeachment bubbles up every now and then; it's probably mostly just to get the "real America" vote out, though I wouldn't rule out someone trying. President Clinton had the political savvy to turn the Republicans impeachment to his advantage; however, President Obama doesn't seem to be as politically savvy.

        If some clown in the House of Representatives tries to bring impeachment forward, will President Obama be able to turn it to his advantage?

      3. I don't think it matters if the Rev is showing this video. What does matter is that the R wingnuts say these things, endorse these thoughts, etc. Pretty disgusting

        1. Well if they have to reach back that far, more evidence they've got nothing. And Rand Paul still carrying on about Lewinski. Not that Bill is running for anything these days. This stuff is ancient history to young and many not all that young voters.

    2. No GOP politician in his right mind would call out a constituent for being a racist, paranoid idiot. They risk alienating a large portion of their core demographic. 

      1. It's not fair to call everyone who disagrees with President Obama racist. However, I don't think it's unfair to call out the constituent for being uninformed and paranoid (at minimum), if not racist as well. 

          1. I wouldn't disagree there. John McCain, for all of his flaws, has been one of the few people with the integrity to stand up to cretins like the constituent in the video.  

      2. Actually some have. Remember four years ago the Dem tracker who broke the story of Ken Buck referring to birthers as dumb ____?  He tried to steer a Tea Party meeting to the issues and was lambasted for it.

        The Dem equivalent would be for someone to be serious about cutting social programs.

        Sometimes statesmanship has a cost.

              1. AC doesn't read books. He listens to crap from Faux and Rush.

                Nothing more, nothing less. He doesn't need no educatin'!

                AC is just one example this:

                He wouldn't care about politics as long as AC's gettin' paid!

              2. C, I have read a few.  I know the KKK was made up of mostly southern Democrats and that the passage of the civil rights acts of the 60's happened because Republicans who were in the minority party provided the needed votes.

                2. Those southern Democrats broke away from the rest of the Dem party during the civil rights area because northern Dems supported civil rights while Rs allied with the Dixiecrats who ceased to be Dems and became Rs over opposition to desegregation. That's why..duh… the south went from Dem to R. Todays Dems aren''t the same as during the civil war era or as they were when southern segregationists were part of the Dem party. The Republican party bears no resemblance to the party that existed during those eras either. You do know that today's KKK members aren't Dems don't you?

                  1. As to the KKK, during its years of significance it was alligned with the Dems in the south.  Senator Bryd was a memeber as I recall.  It is now of no significance and its members are not alligned with either major political party.

                    1. I repeat:

                      So, are you claiming to be the party of this particular Lincoln? The one who had this to say after passage of the National Banking Act of 1863?

                      "Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people, until the wealth of the nation is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed."

                      Going backwards hurts, don't it?

                      – See more at: http://coloradopols.com/my-comments#sthash.pj6e1Ewv.dpuf

                      In other word, my dear little AC, the positions of Parties, and of Party leadership, change. 

                      It's good that the Democratic Party positions and leadership have changed over the last 150 years.

                      It's unfortunate that the Republican Party positions and leadership have strayed so far from what President Lincoln was concerned about.

                    2. No matter how hard you try you're just not going to get that whole line of reasoning to fly, AC. Just look at the  crowd (not the podium) at your next GOTP convention. Then do the same at at the next Dem convention. Look at who supports equal rights today. Look at which  party is supported today by the overwhelming majority of African American voters regardless of the whether or not the candidate is African American. I think they know better than you who represents their best interests now.

                      You do know nobody buys this particular meme of yours, don't you? Come on. Admit it for once. I mean your party has openly admitted it's no longer worth it to even bother to attract African American votes. You probably won't be drummed out for admitting the existence of objective reality this once. Unless you really are as dumb as a rock.

                3. Yes the Democratic party was the party of racist rule in the South for a century. But we then cast our racists out, accepting the tremendous political cost of doing so.

                  And the GOP welcomed them with open arms.

            2. I think the Abe Lincoln shine wore off around the time of Tricky Dick.  

              Trying to innoculate your party against charges of racism by recalling political parties of 150 years ago makes as much sense as trying to appeal to women by reminding them of the terrible threat their uncontrolled libidos pose to social order.  

                1. Please google "dixiecrats". The racist wing of the Democratic Party went over to the republican side of the aisle upn passage of the Civil Rights Act.

                  LBJ told Chief of White House staff Bill Moyers "We've lost the South, likely for a couple generations" when he signed the Bill into law.

                  Educating you is too much like babysitting. Ho do you NOT know this stuff?

                3. Tricky Dick, president, crook, racist served as POTUS from 1969 until he was forced to resign in disgrace in 1974.  You might reread my comment, then rethink your 'reply.'  

            3. Yeah good luck convincing anyone that the Democratic Party is the party of today's former confederacy. Since the southern strategy the Republican Party has clearly been the Party that uses Racism, along with God, guns and gays, to turn the former confederacy into a Republican stronghold and get middle income working Americans to vote against their own economic interests. 

              Neither Lincoln, who insisted on the supremacy of the union over the rights of the states to secede and eventually came to accept the need to end slavery for good, nor TR the trust busting reformer and conservationist nor Eisenhower the self described liberal who warned us against the military industrial complex but believed in strong civilian government and who ran on a GOP platform to the left of Dem platforms today, would be members of today's GOTP.

  7. Extremist, right-wing "Constitutional Carry" candidates are running in at least two legislative races, probably more.

    Former Republican state Sen.Tim Neville is running for SD 16 held by Sen. Jeanne Nicholson, D Black Hawk. He is the preferred candidate of Dudley Brown, according to 5280 Magazine, and received the endorsement of RMGO. http://www.nevilleforcolorado.com/2013/07/29/rmgo-pac-endorsement/

    J. Dallas Brooks is running for HD 19, a seat currently held by Rep. Amy Stephens, R Monument, who is running against U.S. Sen. Mark Udall. http://www.dallasforcolorado.com/#!issues/c4nx

     

     

    1. Both of these candidates are wackos, and would never vote for either of them if they were running in my district.

      Dallas, misrepresents eminent domain as confiscation–it's a necessary evil, if we're to get anything done–how does he propose building a road if it passes over private property? The Kelo case doesn't automatically legitimize abuses, as Dallas suggests. However, I personally disagreed with the outcome of the Kelo case.

  10. High Speed Trading is cheating

    Then [Red] Auerbach turned to life lessons. "Everybody always asks me how to gain a competitive edge," he said, "and I'm always surprised because the answer is so obvious." Eighteen-year old me knew where this was going. He was going to tell us to work hard, that successful people prepare for their luck, yada, yada, yada.

    "You cheat."

    We so need a small tax on finacial transactions. It not only would end these trades based on small differences, it would also be a morally just tax where Wall St could start repaying some of the cost of the recession they caused.

    Good luck however finding 50 Senators who would vote for this. In fact, good luck finding 10. Most are, like our two, wholely owned by Wall St (as would any of the GOP contenders).

  12. For any of you involved in teaching programming in K-12 – Learning to Code vs Learning Computer Science

    Learning to code is merely teaching people to spell.

    Computer Science is about what makes a poem beautiful, why alliteration is alluring, how iambic pentameter unlocks the secrets of Shakespeare.

    That is what I think we need to be teaching.

    It's not the languages, it's the concepts. I've gone from Fortran -> Pascal -> C -> Assembler -> C++ -> Java -> C# -> Javascript. The language doesn't matter, it's the concepts, the design, the architecture.

    1. Adolf Hitler argued that for the German woman "her world is her husband, her family, her children, and her home" (wikipedia)  As I understand it authoritarian expression from the right may be fascism and from the left may be communism.  What I find interesting is Hitler's support for the old Kinder, Kuche, and Kirche which is similar to the "barefoot and pregnant" philosophy espoused by many gop politicians.  Women didn't fair so well under the soviets, and I don't know that I would call the Koch's Nazi's, but corporations have been doing what corporations and wealthy merchant families, including East India Trading Company, have been doing for …well, forever.  They look out for their own interests and power base. They have a real fear of democratic governments, and because women do better under democratic governments, they have a concommitant fear of the power women can bring to bear against their profligate corporate actions. 

      I hope much the same as Ben Franklin did, I hope we can keep this form of government.  Fear of more people voting, and ever watchful of their bottom line like Magpul is afraid of Sandy Hook and it's possibly continuing repercussions, the corporations want more power and control.

      This is war, and it is a continuous war.

      1. The modern day Kochs are corporate fascists. The definition of fascist, per

        The 1983 American Heritage Dictionary defined fascism as: "A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism.

        but their grandparents were Nazis. That was the history link. I hadn't known that Fred Koch, the Koch brother's father, was the son of Ilse and Karl Koch, energy industrialists of Nazi Germany.

        You're right – this battle of democracy vs. corporations has been going on forever, and the interests of women, like every other living organism, are not on the side of corporations. Patriarchal control-freak policies can also  be cloaked in leftist ideology, although that is rarer these days.

        China's control over the means of reproduction, banning more than one child, forcing abortions on those who  twice become pregnant, is just as oppressive as the modern religious right in the USA making it almost impossible to obtain abortions and contraception, when necessary.

        Neither state trusts women and families to make good decisions.

        The Koch brothers grandmother, Ilse, was a horrible woman who was alive as recently as 1967.

        The trail of fascism through modern history is fascinating.

        1. We agree on many things, but the link between Ilse Koch and the American Kochs … I can't find.  For me it is a moot point.   I don't care who they come from, I care what they do.  Their political and economic philosophies are naive and they use them to justify what they do. They are self serving predators.  

          I do admire and always appreciate your posts.   yes

          smiley

          1. Miss Jane: My bad. I usually investigate things better. Ilse Koch, the Bitch of Buchenwald, had two sons, one of whom committed suicide, and one other who isn't named.

            Neither of these could have been Fred Koch, the oil and gas contractor who went to the USSR and made his fortune under Stalin building refineries, then later became anti-communist and founded the John Birch society in the 1950s. Those parts are not under dispute, and are confirmed on the Koch official bio page.

            As far as the Nazi connection, Democratic Underground says there is none. I got spoofed – thanks for checking me.

            The only link between the German Kochs and the American Kochs is the name and the general wish to paint anything evil as "Nazi".  Stalin killed as many people as the Nazis, though, and papa Fred G Koch helped Stalin refine a lot of oil.

            David and Charles Koch don't really need help from ancestors to demonstrate potential for high evil with capitalism run amok.

            I'll double-check before posting next time.

            1. No worries. It happens.  And I love DU.  They have helped me maintain my perspective for a very long time. I need to renew my star.  Our own Hawkeye used to post there, I believe. He can be a bit volatile.  But he means well, on the whole of it.

              We help each other along while we walk in the same direction, and work for many of the same goals.  You do good work.  I always learn something from you.  Thank you.  smiley

               

               

               

               

              learn something from you.

               

               

               

  14. I decided to dump Windows 7 on my laptop and install Ubuntu.

    I like what I'm seein' so far… now I have to figure out how to uncompress this .deb file… or make it install…

     

  16. The Personhood movement is disgusting (but you knew that.)

    The sad story of Marlise Munoz has not previously been discussed here:

    Texas family grieves after brain dead pregnant woman is taken off life support

     

    FORT WORTH, Texas — A public battle over the fate of a brain-dead, pregnant Texas woman and her fetus ended quietly and privately as she was taken off life support and her family began preparing for her burial.

    John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth complied Sunday with a judge's order to pull any life-sustaining treatment from Marlise Munoz, who was declared brain-dead in November, but kept on machines for the sake of her fetus…

    … Munoz's husband, Erick Munoz, sued the hospital because it would not remove life support as he said his wife would have wanted in such a situation. The couple, both paramedics, was familiar with end-of-life issues, and Erick Munoz said his wife had told him she would not want to be kept alive under such circumstances.

    But the hospital refused his request, citing Texas law that says life-sustaining treatment cannot be withdrawn from a pregnant patient, regardless of her end-of-life wishes.

    Judge R.H. Wallace Jr. sided Friday with Erick Munoz, saying in his order: "Mrs. Munoz is dead."

    Erick Munoz found his wife unconscious in their Haltom City home on Nov. 26, possibly due to a blood clot. Doctors soon determined that she was brain-dead, which meant she was both medically and legally dead by law, but kept her on machines to keep her organs functioning for the sake of the fetus.

     

    To the fetophiles this is an outrage:

    First forced abortion documented in Texas

     Thousands of babies are killed daily in the United States, but it is uncommon to have the eyes of the nation fixed on a particular baby. While abortion clinics pull in money hand over fist from willing clients, Marlise Munoz was not a client. Marlise Munoz did not consent to her child’s death. A terrible tragedy rendered Marlise incapable of defending herself from a hideous forced abortion, sought by the victim’s family, sanctioned by the State of Texas, and carried out by JPS Hospital.

    The consequences of the unrepentant killing of Baby Munoz are chilling: any woman could undergo a forced abortion if unable to voice an opposition.

    The court order for the execution of Baby Munoz appears to have violated Texas law, which states “A person may not withdraw or withhold life-sustaining treatment under this subchapter from a pregnant patient.”

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