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August 12, 2008 03:04 PM UTC

Primary Election Day Open Thread

  • 102 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

You’ve worked so hard, we wish you could all be winners.

Unfortunately…

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102 thoughts on “Primary Election Day Open Thread”

  1. All of you that have been out there, working your ass off, taking the slings & arrows of everyone’s comments, on placing yourself square in the public eye to have that voters say yah or nah – thank you.

    1. When Cheney and McCain start sabre-rattling against Russia, I get a little worried. They are very effective at starting wars–just not finishing them.

    1. Results will show up first on county clerk sites. For example:

      El Paso County results

      Adams County results

      For the congressional primaries, the newspapers and TV stations will probably be aggregating results as fast as they come in. Check the home pages, there should be links to results. Denver and Colorado Springs TV stations should do vote crawls under regular programming, and break in with updates during commercial breaks. None of the stations is doing dedicated coverage tonight.

      The Rocky Mountain News is doing live updates throughout the day with reports from polling places and primary news.

      Voters can check their own voter registration information statewide on this page. Select Verify Your Voter Registration Information under the heading Voter Registration in the top left column. You can do the same, plus find polling place information, on individual county clerk pages.

  5. Folks seem to be more interested today. It is unfortunate that so many Unafilliated voters don’t know they can vote in a primary simply by stating their desire to do so.  

      1. but it also demonstrates once again the questionable “wisdom” of being unaffiliated in this state.  Being so guarantees you can’t participate in caucuses, assemblies, and primaries… unless you are willing to declare a party affiliation on the day of the primary.

        Being unaffiliated in the 2nd, 5th, and 6th this election year pretty much leaves you out “in the cold” as far as who your next U.S. representative will be.  It will also leave you with no voice if you live in a contested state legislative district where one party dominates.

        I can’t say I’ve ever heard a good reason to be an Independent in Colorado.

    4. One thing the conservatives are always whining about is that we supposedly have such a high corporate tax rate compared to other countries but if most manage not to pay ANY what are they whining about?

          1. Do you know the difference between revenue and profits?

            If you read the actual GAO report (“Do the research” as you like to say), you’ll notice that the businesses that don’t pay on profits still pay payroll taxes and the employees still pay income taxes on that income.

            The corporate tax rate is too high.  Hopefully McCain will lower it to 25% like he says when he wins.

              1. So in years where you aren’t profitable (hypothetically, of course) do you pay taxes on your non-profits just to make Sen. Dorgan happy?

                It’s terrifying to me that you actually own something and are such a delusional, angry lunatic.

                Ever tell any of your employees that you took their ‘dog wives’ for a walk?

                1. You have no idea what business I’m in, its profitability, or my customer satisfaction ratings. For you to be “terrified” just shows how off base you are. Can you spell “ranting”?

                  1. And it’s because I have no idea you feel like you’re safe saying things about my wife when I’m embarrassing you with facts.

                    I think you should just tell me who you are.  We could be great friends…

              2. 🙂

                I didn’t think so, but it was worth a try.

                How much do you think it cost us to have Senators dumbass direct the GAO to make a report on the fact that if you make no profits that you have to pay no taxes on those profits?

  7. “Voters rejoice: Tomorrow, you can turn on the television without seeing Jared Polis, Joan Fitz-Gerald and Will Shafroth at every turn.”

    Now if only the same could be said of Obama and McCain.  November can’t get here soon enough–even if it does mean I’ll be another year older.

      1. …what crummy choices the voters made?

        I know all too well that should a Democrat get elected to the White House that the fRightwing will be in full attack mode.

        1. in full attack mode already?

          I’ve gotten a number of ridiculous emails from conservative friends trying to link Obama to bin Laden, OJ, Mike Tyson, etc.

            1. News posted something on their website without any explanation or disclaimers saying that Obama holds dual citizenship, American and Kenyan.  It’s absolutely false .  Kenya doesn’t even recognize dual citizenship.  Olbermann didn’t think much of the Rocky Mountain’s standards.  

              Then there’s Lieberman and McCain working the he’s really “other”, not a real American like us ordinary people pretty hard already. McCain seems to forget that being born in Hawaii isn’t being born on foreign soil. At least not in Obama’s lifetime.  He himself was born in the Canal zone so what on earth is he getting at?  As if we didn’t know.

              As a Jewish American it really makes my skin crawl to see Lieberman making these insinuations about Obama not really being a loyal American, not really one of us. That’s what they said about Jews in Germany not so very long ago: They aren’t “real” Germans, not like the rest of us everyday ordinary Germans. How can they be trusted to be loyal and patriotic? Lieberman makes me ill.

              One can only hope he and McCain make enough of us ill. There is nothing more un-American than labeling some of us not real Americans because our backgrounds or parentage don’t fit  a particular idea of the “right sort”. And there is nothing more despicable than trying to drum up that kind of dangerous sentiment for political purposes. May McCain not only lose but lose big.  

  10. All the shills can return to the shillaries where they can rest up, absorb some new talking points, and get ready to come out again in Oct.

  11. Ok, this has nothing to do with politics but it’s hilarious. From the Boulder Daily Camera

    LONGMONT — A man claiming to be a police detective tried to get an adult novelty shop to give him free X-rated videos, saying he wanted to make sure the performers weren’t underage, authorities said.

    …

    Authorities said Monday that the man showed a badge and left a business card from the Longmont police “age verification unit.” Cmdr. Tim Lewis said there is no such unit.

    2. by allowing off-shore drilling but not ANWR.

      It would make political sense and put at least some new energy in the pipeline.  Ds seem far more religious about ANWR than offshore.

      1. I think Obama is right to say he’d be willing to accept a certain amount of offshore drilling, even though he pretty much agrees it’s a sham, as part of a compromise to start getting somewhere on an over all good energy plan.  

        It’s hard to get away from wanting to make the Rs suffer the way they’ve made us suffer,  from wanting to crush them and all their works, but I’m willing to let a cooler head, like Obama’s, prevail so we can actually get good stuff done, stuff that will not be perfect in deals which won’t focus entirely on screwing the other side.

        Not that screwing the other side doesn’t feel great, mind you, it’s just that it tends to turn you into something no better than the other side while creating nothing of value.

    3. Take a step back and re-frame the question; namely, debate the following pro or con:

      Resolved, that US energy policy should commit to the primary objective of converting to renewable, rather than non-renewable, fuel sources; and to reducing carbon emissions.

      This should be the central issue of the election.  Virtually everything else-Iraq, the budget deficit and the recession, the future environmental (and economic!!) health of Colorado, the nation, and the planet-are shaped by the direction we take on this issue.

      So far the Dems have been unable or unwilling to really stand up and lay it on the line with the core issue (as with so many other things).  The Repubs meanwhile are trying to exploit offshore drilling as their new fear factor ie: Dems are weak [on Communism-terrrorism-OSD to reduce foreign oil dependence.]  Based on past experience my expectation is that to provide cover as “moderates” or “bipartisan” (but really, to show they are also “tough” [on Commies-terror-oil production], the Dems will allow themselves to be co-opted by the Repub frame, and submit to “compromise” on OSD.  

      If you want real and meaningful compromise that includes OSD, it should be in the framework of a larger program for net conversion to non-renewable fuels and reduced carbon emissions, with continuous environmental oversight, windfall profits tax, no new leases before existing claims are proven, etc.

      I would like it if we could have this debate on its merits, but I’m not holding my breath.

      1. We should call their bluff.

        We’ll auction oil leases, but if you are not at full production in 5 years, you lose your lease, forfeit whatever you payed for it and the government reauctions it.

        2. It took BP about 10 years (and $2 billion of investment) before a drop of oil was actually produced from its deepwater Gulf of Mexico ThunderHorse discovery.  That field had many technical challenges (e.g. water depth, drilling through salt) that offshore Florida/Atlantic seaboard might not, but it still takes years to plan and execute wells if they are in frontier areas.  At least, it does if you want it done right.

          Nearshore GoM wells are a piece of cake, but that’s because the industry has decades of experience drilling there.  But I don’t know how much the industry knows about, for example, potential drilling hazards in any of these new areas we’re talking about.  Drilling in frontier areas can mean nasty surprises.  And by nasty, I mean blowouts and other health/safety/environment incidents.

          1. They keep saying drilling will help gas prices–I say it won’t.

            I am trying to take away the “help with gas prices” argument so we can get back to discussing how and where to drill responsibly.

            Until we disabuse the public of the notion we can drill our way to a solution, we can not have a real energy discussion: especially in an election year.

          2. The left is banging away at the unused leaqse theory as their latest grassy knoll explanation for why evil oil companies want you to suffer from the lack of energy. Apparently, all democrats are opposed to all drilling for all time _ a guaranteed loser with the American people, but its their funeral.

            1. the left is trying to counter the meme that drilling in the US will lower gas prices.

              Of course we have to drill in the US, but it is not a solution to gas prices.

              1. Otherwise, you are left with the untenable theory that there is absolutely no relationship between supply and price.  None, and forget 5,000 years of economic history to the contrary.  That’s the left’s story and it’s sticking to it, which is why the public isn’t buying it.

                1. Problem is there just isn’t that much supply in the U.S., nor is there much capacity to actually drill even if more land is available for leasing. It’s not Democrats saying drilling in ANWR and the OCS won’t affect prices, it’s Bush’s own Energy department.

                2. The only solution is conservation and a new energy architecture.

                  I have no problem with drilling as long as it doesn’t permanently damage the environment, the oil companies are responsible for restoration, and there is a permanent fund created on the front end to prevent Bankruptcy escapes by proxy drillers and small operators.

                  Truthfully I would rather hold onto the oil, save it for plastics and other non energy purposes–use it in 50 years after we’ve drained the rest of the dirt bags around the world.  But I’m willing to compromise on this to achieve other goals.

                  But lets disabuse the public of the fantasy that it will lower prices.  We’ve seen what lowers prices–people are driving less.

            2. The left is banging away at the Republicans’ cynical use of high gas prices to plunder the remaining, unleased public lands, including protected wilderness. Claiming Democrats are “opposed to all drilling for all time” is a Republican canard that withers under the barest scrutiny.

              1. How much offshore drilling are you willing to allow in currenty prohibited areas and when will you allow it?

                Likewise, how much of ANWR will you open to exploration and drilling and when?

                The left is against drilling because, at bottom, it believes that the economy operates on magic, not on supply and demand.

                How many times on this board has the term “Big Oil” been used as an insult?

                How many times have idiots advocated a windfall profits tax as a way to LOWER gas prices — yeah, that’ll do it!  Make it harder and more costly to produce and they;ll lower their prices. Right.

                1. Offshore leases for a defined period with sufficient environmental and liability safeguards (as Danny describes above) are fine, assuming the affected states agree.

                  I’m not willing to allow any drilling in ANWR. At some point, you either decide we are stewards of the planet or you’re willing to auction off that stewardship for a brief and insignificant drop in oil prices in a decade.

                  The left is not against domestic exploration and drilling. The boom in domestic oil and gas drilling — with exploration and drilling increasing every year but one since 1998 — disproves this fish tale. The left is rightly against giving away the store in response to cynical fear-mongering over high gas prices.

                  Bob keeps invoking the law of supply and demand while ignoring half the law — demand. It’s easy to ridicule tire gauges and storm windows, but either of those would reduce demand by a greater amount than ANWR would increase supply. Which measure gives Americans more control over their fortune, reduces emissions and leaves the wildlife reserve unmolested? If Big Oil lobbies for the other measure, I’ll feel entirely justified using it as an insult because our values are at odds.

                2. ANWR is offlimits unless we can keep the pads contained.  The traffic would permanently damage the environment at current technology.  As technology allows for smaller footprint drilling we can reexamine.

                  Offshore, I believe in lifting the blanket ban, but placing areas offlimits due to impacts on sensitve environmental zones, risk to tourism (important industry) or excess risk of mishap.

                  Bob you are wrong about why the left opposes drilling.  The left recognizes Oil is not a renewable resource and building our industrial architecture on a commodity with a extremely limited supply is not sustainable at current levels of demand.

                  Instead we want to conserve our oil, transition to a new energy architecture, and improve our quality of life by preserving the wild places, improving our health and preventing the catastrophic costs of the climate crisis.

                  I oppose the windfall profits tax unless it was used to fund alternative energy research/implementation–we could even give it back to them if they used it for AE.

                  All “big” things get used as an insult–even “big labor.” I think its stupid but people need enemies.  I generally shy away from it, but I fall into it to.

                3. But here’s what I say:

                  Very learned people at the Department of Energy say that drilling in ANWR and the OCS will at best lower gas prices by 10 cents per gallon in ten years (that’s the best case, the “mean” case is a little more than 4 cents).

                  So the question has to be asked whether the risk to coastlines is worth a best-case discount of 10 cents per gallon on gas. There may be areas where that is the case, and I think that has to be considered on a case-by-case basis. But it would need to be tied to a commitment to explore. It doesn’t help gas prices if oil companies are just going to hoard the land to keep it out of the hands of their competitors with no intention of ever producing.

                  ANWR is, in my opinion, a non-starter. If they put the whole thing up for lease, I don’t think anybody would drill there. The NPR-A is right next door, and that’s the case there. They drilled one hole, found a shit-ton of oil, capped it, and abandoned it. Too expensive to drill even at $100/bbl. That combined with the fact that I think it’s land that’s worth protecting, my answer would be none of it unless and until it really is the last resort.

                  I do not and have never advocated a windfall profits tax. I would however advocate killing the subsidies, not as a way to lower prices but because I’m totally opposed to corporate welfare for profitable businesses, and generally opposed to it for failing businesses, and leery about it for developing businesses. But in defense of those who do advocate such a tax, I don’t think anyone has proposed it as a way of lowering prices, rather to punish the oil companies. I think it’s a rather stupid idea.

            3. the effect the amount of oil in places like ANWR could possibly have on the supply/demand equation.  Nobody thinks that it would bring down prices by a significant amount, while decrease in demand is already bringing the price down, proof that even modest conservation would save us more than ANWR ever will provide.  

              Obama agreeing to a certain amount of offshore drilling (never in AMWR) as a bargaining chip makes sense.  The belief that it will change the equation for consumers doesn’t, not just according to lefties but according to the government’s own projections. So don’t be so quick to call those of us who think  the real solution  lies in a different direction childish. Believing in some kind of ANWR Fairy; now that’s childish  

          3. That is a really, really good point. If I was a Democratic strategist, I would get a bunch of experts together who could explain the difficulty of drilling–let alone finding anything. That is a much better explanation to average Americans about why it is a bad plan.

            Who knows what effect it will have on gas prices? All that matters is that it is not practical when we have a real energy crisis in this country.

            Sustainable, Renewable, Reusable

    1. He’s barely above the margin of error, and it’s August.

      I’m just glad Obama is so different:

      While the Adler Planetarium earmarks look normal on the surface, there is a catch. The Chairman and two of the Vice Chairman of the Adler Planetarium Board of Trustees raised a total of almost $250,000 for Sen. Obama’s 2008 Presidential campaign. The Adler Planetarium was probably pleasantly surprised when they found that their earmark increased by $2.7 million dollars, in other words, by a factor of ten.

      The Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Frank Clark, stands out amongst Obama supporters. On Sen. Obama’s website, Mr. Clark is listed as a bundler who raised in excess of $200,000 for the Senator’s Presidential campaign. In 2004, Mr. Clark donated $5,000 to the then State Senator Obama’s U.S. Senate bid. In 2005, Mr. Clark became the Chairman of the Board at Adler Planetarium, and in 2006 Sen. Obama earmarked $300,000 to the Planetarium. Then, in the same year that Mr. Clark’s involvement in the Obama campaign skyrocketed to raising an excess of $200,000, Sen. Obama’s earmark for the Adler Planetarium increased tenfold to $3,000,000.

      1. That a scientific institution get more funding. That $2.7 million is about 1/1000th of the amount that big oil was given in tax breaks under GOP rule. But big oil didn’t help the Republicans get anywhere did they? Watch out, Obama has the astronomers on his side!

          1. To receive millions in campaign contributions from the oil lobby, which is then turned into negative ads–lies–against Democrata, so the GOP candidates can get to Washington to give them more money through tax breaks? The same oil companies whose refusal to allow tougher fuel standards has directly led us to our dependence on foreign oil? All this while they rake in $165 billion every 3 MONTHS!?!?

            Even if your argument is true, and Obama made it happen through his position in the Senate, it is hardly on the same scale.

      3. This is huge news for Obama and very bad news for McSame:

        “Former Republican Jim Leach of Iowa was among Republicans the Obama campaign said were crossing party lines to support Obama. The Illinois senator’s campaign said he was also being backed by the Republican mayor of Fairbanks, Alaska, Jim Whitaker. The campaign did not release the names of other GOP supporters or the size of the group.

        “I’m convinced that the national interest demands a new approach to our interaction with the world,” Leach, a foreign service officer before being elected to Congress, said in a conference call with reporters.

        Leach predicted that many Republicans and independents would be attracted by Obama’s campaign but said his decision to endorse a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time wasn’t easy.

        Let the landslide begin. And Leach is no light weight when it comes to the Republican party.

        h/t C&L

        My prediction: We’ll be seeing a lot more of this.

        If you want to see where the money is flowing…you know, where people actually put there money where their moth is…visit this site:

        http://electoralmap.net/index.php

        They give McSame a 20% chance of winning.

        1. Your valid points are diluted by the fact that you’re incapable of making a post that doesn’t include an insult or a name calling.

          Don’t you think you’d, you know, sound smarter if you called him “Sen. McCain” or even just “McCain”?

        2. What happened to Chuck Hagel?  There’s no risk to him endorsing Obama, since he’s leaving office, but he now says he won’t endorse.

          If any major R was lame enough to cross party lines, you’d think it would be Hagel.

  15. on Yahoo

    “Sexual orientation shouldn’t be a barrier to participation in the public sphere,” says Polis, who has received encouragement from gays and lesbians from around the country. “It’s a difficult issue for my opponents to try to use against me overtly without a backlash,” he says, “but there have been some jabs, insinuations and whisper campaigns.”

    Granted, I have to rely on the internet for all of my Colorado news while down here (New Zealand) on a multi-year vacation, but I hadn’t heard anything on ColoPols or the Denver papers about any jabs, insinuations or whisper campaigns.  I thought it was a complete non-issue.  Did I miss something?

    1. I barely even heard coded references (single, lack of “family”).

      I can think of only one major use of his orientation by one of the vet groups that I felt was making an issue of his status.

      1. But since Dems, in this case, don’t have to worry about the primary pick having to actually compete with a viable Republican opponent, it’s a non-issue. We shouldn’t kid ourselves that Dems are so damned pure and enlightened as to be willing to run an openly gay candidate in a competitive district.

    2. Granted, I have to rely on the internet for all of my Colorado news while down here (New Zealand) on a multi-year vacation

      I had no idea how bad my life sucks until I read those words.

        1. Sorry, if it makes you feel any better, I only call it a “vacation” to make myself feel better about the cost-of-living imbalance I found down here – vacations cost money but career moves aren’t supposed to. It might be pretty, but it’s damn expensive and salaries are much lower than back when I was in Denver (we’re talking white collar too – engineering). Plus, Colorado still has much better snow and (as evidenced here) a real political spectrum.

          I don’t regret my move for a second, but I know in the end, I’ll be back in Denver.  However, if anyone finds a spot of extra cash and vacation time and wants to head down here; I’d be happy to show ’em around. Admission: a bushel of real green chile…

    1. either at early voting centers or absentee. The results should be known very soon after 7 p.m., because clerks have already counted the early votes and are just waiting to post them.

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