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March 06, 2014 06:12 AM UTC

Thursday Open Thread

  • 59 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

"Silence is foolish if we are wise, but wise if we are foolish."

–Charles Caleb Colton

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59 thoughts on “Thursday Open Thread”

  1. I notice that the Log Cabin Republicans are not attending the CPAC event this year. The amazing thing to me is that there ARE any Log Cabin Republicans. Do any of them really believe they are welcome in the Republican party?

    This boycott may signal the end of the LCR. The Republicans don't want gays in their party. That much is pretty clear.

          3. GOP voters believe they are voting for their values of self sufficiency, God, family and apple pie.  But they certainly aren't doing that, either, unless they are hatefilled, misogynistic and narrow minded and only respect who the quite fascinating Betty Beedy termed "normal Americans".  The amount cognitive dissonance is breathtaking. You really have to give credit to the gop message machine and its understanding of the fearful and the small minded.

    2. If LCR's were one issue Republicans, your comment would make sense. However, they are not and share common interest with Republicans on a whole host of issues including government spending, government regulation and support of the oligarchy in the US and around the world.

      As a Democrat, if indeed you are a Democrat, how can you support the Democratic Party when the head of the party:

      • Engages in war crimes by killing innocent civilians with drones.
      • Wants to further enslave the working class and weaken democracy by negotiating and promoting the TransPacific Partnership (TTP) and TransAtlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
      • Bails out the banksters but does nothing to bring them to justice.
      • Bails out the health insurance industry while leaving us with second rate healthcare.
      • Wants to cut Social Security benefits (Don't fool yourself. He still wants to do this despite his recent budget. This was just a political ploy. If it would get him his Grand Bargain, he would jump at it in a heartbeat.).

      This is just a short list. I have less in common with the Democratic Party that the LCR's have with the Republican Party – particularly when it comes to the economy. About the only thing we agree upon is some social issues. I often ask myself the same question you have asked the LCR's – Why do I remain a member of the Democratic Party?

      1. JD, those are all good points, but ignore one significant point. Of the 2 major parties, which is more closely aligned with your interests? We have a 2-party system where one wins with a plurality; a majority is not required. As a result, a vote for a 3rd party only serves to hand victory to the candidate you like least. But, you knew that.

        1. You have presented what I have come to call the "Boiling Frog Predicament." (BFP for short)  For 30 years (actually nearly 80 years but I don't have time to go into all that), Democrats have been slowing turning up the heat on the working class (by that I mean anyone who makes their living by their own productive activities rather than investments). Yet, they seem to hardly notice. Perhaps, if we really let the Republican take control, things would get so bad, so fast that average Americans (the 95%) would finally wakeup and stop betraying themselves. I haven't fully resolved this for myself yet. But, I am leaning toward letting the whole thing blow up as soon and as vigorously as possible.

          1. yeah, that let the whole thing blow up thing worked so well in the Great Depression.   Helluva plan, Doddsie!

            Yeesh, either read some history or grow a brain.

            1. Listen, you moron, perhaps you should read some history or grow a brain.  The Great Depression brought us the Wagner Act. However, post war Democrats joined Republicans to undermine this to pass Taft-Hartley. It took the Great Depression and the political unrest that it unleashed to get something done in the first place.  If you don't know what I am talking about, perhaps your reading of history is somewhat lacking.

              1. You're claiming Voyager doesn't have a strong grasp of history???? I'm guessing you're about to get pounded.

                i don't always agree with Voyager and I think you bring up some very valid points. But don't claim to have a monopoly on understanding history.

                1. David, I am not making any such claim. But, his paternalistic BS drives me crazy. He started this. Oh, and another thing, at least I'm man enough to put my name on what I post and not high behind some insipid screen name.

              2. Calling Voyageur a moron will ony make you look like one. He knows more about history than you will ever forget. He just doesn't suffer fools gladly. I should know because he's found occasion not to suffer me gladly a time or two.

                  2. I'm staying out of this from this juncture. Not selling you short. Just trust me on this, Voyageur is no moron. Of course, neither are you. Now you boys settle this between yourselves.

                  3. Just one more thing. There's nothing wrong with using a screen name. Some have very good reasons for doing so. I started when I was a very minor (HD level) party officer and didn't want to have to be so constrained by being diplomatic. One doesn't want to piss off potential volunteers, show too much favoritism before the dust settles around candidates we'd have to support in the general, etc.

                    I've always written letters to the editor under my own name and get them published  pretty regularly when I'm in the mood. But there too you have to write in a certain style. 150 tightly edited words, not too snarky, certainly nothing approaching salty language. You can't have playful back and forths. So even though I'm no longer even a minor party official I'm enjoying being BlueCat here. Not because I'm ashamed of my opinions but because it's fun not to have to be a nice, polite, aging Jewish mom all the time.

                    1. I must respectfully disagree. (See, it is not my modus operandi to call people names.) We need to have the courage to stand up and be counted. 

                      Don't get me wrong, as long as Pols permits people like AC to hide behind aliases,  I can understand the desire to remain anonymous. 

                      BTW – This Jewish grandfather has done worse to embarrass his children and grandchildren than anthing I've said here. Just ask them.

                    2. I respectfully disagree right back.  This is just a blog. A relative handful of people of read it. What's important is how we back up our comments with good sourcing for facts we site. 

                      When I write to a newspaper or magazine ( I got several letters into Newsweek back in the day before it became a complete joke) I have no qualms about going public enough that I've received a couple of hate snail mails in my time. I write here for fun. 

                      And, also BTW, how the hell did a Zaidy manage to wind up with such a white bread name as James Dodd? Oh wait. My great uncle by marriage went from being (I'll spell this phonetically because I have no idea how it would be spelled in English with western letters) Yonkel Zeckser to Jack Jackson at Ellis Island. 

                    3. It is fairly mundane story involving a left wing mother who did not hold with the retrictions upon marrying goyim. But, who could not completely abandon the traditions.

                  4. It wouldn't matter if she kept some traditions or not. If your mom's Jewish you are. My son also is a nice Jewish boy with a similarly white bread surname for the same reason. 

      2. Clearly Dems aren't going to agree to the basic premises on which your list is based but to me gays remaining in the contemporary Republican party are baffling for more fundamental reasons.  It's because entrenched homophobia is so much and so blatantly a basic component of the contemporary Republican party's agenda. That's why it's so hard to understand why any self respecting gay person would be willing to continue the association. Especially since the Democratic Party is every bit as center right as the traditional Republican party ever was.

        If you are gay and an old school Republican the Dem party is the natural place for you. There are hardly any liberal Dem pols left in office while the majority can only accurately be described as business friendly center right. Eisenhower would be to the left of most 21st century elected Dems, very much including Obama and the Senatorial Dem leadership, and the party platform he ran on was to the left of anything you'll see from Dems today. So if you're gay and not the most extreme kind of rightie, why the heck do you want to hang out with people who despise you?

        1. PS I meant to say "all" the basic premises. It got lost in my attempt at editing. You do bring up some very good points but also leave out many of the positives but that's part of your point too. That perhaps the LCRs see the balance more toward the positives.

          I have trouble seeing how that can be true and don't see how the GOTP is better on any of the issues you raise than the Dems are. But I didn't mean to say you had no valid policy points. It's tough to edit accurately here. I see it more in the light of a Jew or African American wanting to be member of a White Supremacist/anti-Semitic organization even if that organization also promoted some economic policies with the which the Jew or African American agreed.

          1. I simply ask you to remember who was responsible for "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and DOMA. Both were broadly supported by Democratic officeholders. DOMA passed the Senate 85-14 and the House 342-67.

            1. don't ask, don't tell, don't pursue was indeed a Clinton initiative.   May I remind you, it replaced the total ban on homosexuals in the Armed forces that preceded it.   Again, you make the argument that incrdemental reform is worse than outright repression.  Don't ask, don't tell, don't pursue led, rather inexorably,to the present open service of gays in the military.  

              1. It's funny how change works: repression can happen practically overnight; reform takes years.

                From an LA Times review of the Randy Shilts book Conduct Unbecoming:

                The outlines of the story are relatively straightforward. Gay men and lesbians have not only always been warriors for their countries but archetypal in the forging of our civilization's understanding of the committed warrior: Just keep the Alexanders and Fredericks the Great in mind through all the contemporary discussion of what erotic preferences the proper soldier may profess. American military history properly began with the Prussian disciplinarian Baron Frederick Von Steuben, to whom historians have given credit only second to that due George Washington for training an army that could win the war of independence (Washington agreed). Von Steuben was also famously, notoriously, a lover of men. Then there is the story of Dwight Eisenhower's asking WAC Sergeant Johnnie Phelps, during World War II, for a list of the names of lesbians in the WAC battalion. She reminded him of how highly disciplined, decorated and efficient that unit was and concluded, "I'll make your list, but you've got to know that when you get the list back, my name's going to be first." Case closed, on this particular purge anyway.

                During the Cold War, the homosexual scare added alarm to the red scare. Ironically it was J. Edgar Hoover who made persecution of other homosexuals a high priority. And it was Eisenhower who instituted the executive orders that defined homosexuals as security risks. Ike was playing politics; Hoover was playing Torquemada. Gays served as easy targets. Americans had grown up beating up fairies and tomboys. The gay man and lesbian had no recourse, the tiny homophile movement offered no protection, and the sudden glare of attention could isolate and root out servicepeople on the basis of rumor and intimidation. In a time when the debate over homosexuality is, at last, out in the open, it is important to remember how complete was the silence that surrounded the subject until the 1970s.

                Shilts' book shows that homosexual women and men were randomly victimized in an almost parodic version of the images of tyranny the military claimed to be fighting. The shock of this book is its detailed revelations, based on government documents as well as hundreds of interviews, of how every principle of freedom, fair play, judicial correctness and basic loyalty were made mockery of by a U.S. government inquisition acting against members of our own military. It is worth remembering that the human rights to which former President Jimmy Carter was so devoted did not extend to the human rights of the American citizens who happened to be gay and who happened to be serving in the nation's armed forces.

                1. It's funny to me that no one ever seems to remember that the draft age was lowered to 18 in 1942 and that 1942 was not so coincidentally the same year the prohibition against gays in the military was instituted. 

            2. Public opinion as a whole and individuals' personal opinions hit a tipping point and changed radically, very recently and quickly on gay rights issues. Clinton's solution was a solution for a different time when many who now support full rights including gay marriage hadn't gotten anywhere near there yet. 

              It was, as Voyageur has pointed out, a considerable step in the right direction in the pre-tipping point world and one of the many steps that did lead to the tipping point. DOMA , which now seems so quaint, was to sooth the still largely homophobic public's fears enough to make any progress possible. As in don't freak out, we still aren't going to mess with "traditional" marriage.

              Anything like DOMA is now doomed just as surely as separate but equal was doomed but you don't get from 1 to 11 in a day. More often you get incrementally from 1 to 5 then a tipping point kicks in and you jump the rest of the way pretty quickly.

              Jumping all the way to gays openly serving and getting married would have gotten nowhere fast in the 90s. Which is not to say nobody should have been pushing for it. The pushing is what gets us to those tipping points. God bless those who do the pushing.

                1. Gays serving openly definitely would have been a non-starter then, regardless. So would any state allowing gay marriage. So would an African American President, for that matter. 

                  It's amazing how things that seemed like they couldn't change for at least a generation get to tipping points and then change with lightning speed. That's why we should never give up hope for things that seem impossible. Like civilized 21st century universal healthcare. The impossible can become possible enough to actually happen almost overnight. It's no crazier than things that sounded crazy in the 90s.

  4. As for Polis and the Dollar bill–yeah, it should be done away with.

    Costs of printing it is a big chunk of change. Dollar coins would last a ot longer.

    Any of the countries that I have visited lately (Australia and Canada) have gone to a dollar coin–and they don't miss it a bit. (Or should that be 8 bits?).

    1. Personally I'd rather get paper money in change than a load of heavy, clunky coins. And I must not be the only one because this has been talked about for ages and the public is very resistant. I suppose I'd get used to all that clinking and jingling and stress on jeans pockets when out and about without a purse at summer venues if I had to. But I wouldn't like it.

    2. No no no.  I'm a Ham.  When I send overseas for a QSL card, all the foreign Hams want Green Stamps to cover postage. It's already $2 for most guys.  If we do away with the Green Stamp, it will be $5.

      1. Unforunately its not the right, its myopic anti-fracking peeps with no strategic sense.

        The initiative they are proposing would allow any jurisdiction to ban any business–like Moffat County kicking out whomever it wanted. If it survives the Title Board and gets enough signatures it will go down in flames on the ballot, IMHO.  

        The others that are proposed, 1 by Local Control Colorado and the nine proposed this week, being run by RBI and alledgely backed by Polis, are much more likely to pass muster in a statewide vote by my analysis (and from conversations).  I suggest folks look at those.

        Flame away…

          1. That wasn't directed at you,sorry to be non-specific, its a prediction that I have now identified myself as a closet fracker. Nuance is treason. Strategy is capitulation. Tactical adaptation is betrayal.  As anyone who knows me IRL or has read any of my diaries here can surely attest to. cool

  6. Hey Pols,

    Another blog bug: I can comment on most threads, but when I go to the Tanc/Numbskull thread, I'm not logged in. When I try, I get a red box with teh message "undefined." 

    1. Try logging in directly to WordPress. Click the "Reply" link when you are not logged in and it will take you to the main WordPress login page. Once you have logged in their you will be returned to where you started. There is a problem with the interface between the login on the Pols page and WordPress. This workaround has consistently worked for me.

  7. Hey, everybody. I am not allowed to post a diary since I am still on "COPolsProbation" (I just joined yesterday), but there is some information that really needs to be disseminated quickly. 

    While reviewing data in my City Council Ward in Aurora, I noticed a error in the voter file (Secretary of State voter file via VoteBuilder) that had an entire precinct, several hundred voters, listed in the wrong Ward. This mistake has been in place since the redistricting. This is not just a VAN issue. The SOS has it wrong. 

    I have contacted all the relevent officials (City Clerk / County Clerk / SOS) and they will be fixing this particular problem. But if it can happen here, it can happen anywhere. 

    So, Candidates and Campaigns, check your voter file for accuracy. If mistakes like this one are found after the caucus/assembly process is complete, it could cause any number of problems for nominated candidates. I found the issue by comparing the SOS data against the official city districting maps from their planning and development office. 

    I think that County Commission, City, and special districts are the most likely to be effected by this. But everyone should probably double check, just to be safe. 

    And if someone wants to go ahead and put this out there in diary format, since I can't, so that people will actually read it, that would be a good thing. 

    –Andrew Bateman

  9. Those cowardly Founding Fathers who did not stand up to be counted!

    Well, okay, let me rephrase that. Many of the Founders were the 18th-century equivalent of a certain category of modern-day bloggers – writers on political topics, typically using a pen name, who are also connected to formal journalism and simultaneously active in partisan politics.

    John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, Gouveuneur Morris – these and other notables of the Founding were not just drafters and signers of America’s founding documents, wartime leaders, statesmen, diplomats, and jurists. They were also prolific media commentators capable of great works of political philosophy (such as The Federalist Papers and Cato’s Letters, both originally published as newspaper columns) as well as ribald jests, character assassination, and political rumor-mongering.
     

    …While I knew that the Founding Fathers were fond of cloaking their political commentary with pseudonyms,Infamous Scribblers filled in the detail by providing their bewildering variety. Hamilton like to employ a nom de plume that revealed what he regarded as his philosophical roots in classical Rome: Publius, Pacificus, Cattalus, Horatius, and Philo Camillus, for example. Newspaper publisher Benjamin Franklin displayed a mastery of evocative names such as Silence Dogood, Alice Addertongue, Fanny Mournful, Obadiah Plainman, and the delightful Busy Body. The champion in terms of sheer numbers appears to be John Adams, whose 25 or so pen names included Populus, An American, A Son of Liberty, and the vaguely Wrestlemaniacal “Vindex the Avenger”

     

    http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_did_the_founding_fathers_use_pseudonyms_in_the_Federalist_Papers 

     

     

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