Did anybody happen to catch the month of September? Apparently, it’s already over. It’s time to Get More Smarter with Colorado Pols. If you think we missed something important, please include the link in the comments below (here’s a good example). If you are more of a visual learner, check out The Get More Smarter Show.
► The re-election campaign of Republican Rep. Mike Coffman is coming unglued with just a few weeks left until ballots drop in Colorado. Both Coffman and his counterparts at the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) are getting throttled by media fact-checkers for a series of negative ads against Democrat Morgan Carroll that would need to improve just to be labeled a “half-truth.”
How did Coffman’s campaign respond to three straight troublesome fact-check stories? Like you might expect, saying this is “why no one takes fact checks seriously.” Perhaps a Coffman spokesperson was misquoted; they probably meant to say, “We don’t take facts seriously.”
► Donald Trump should probably take a break from Twitter. Or, better yet, maybe he should just stop trashing a former Miss America contestant for being overweight. From Politico:
While Hillary Clinton is riding high after the first presidential debate, Donald Trump is jumping down into the gutter.
In the wee hours of Friday morning, the impulse-control-deficient Republican nominee let loose a torrent of tweets, calling former Miss Universe winner Alicia Machado “disgusting” and accusing her of having a sex tape.
Trump may or may not win the Presidency, but he’s going to make damn sure to offend everyone in America before he’s finished campaigning. Even some of Trump’s campaign staffers can’t take it anymore.
► This has been a pretty awful week for Donald Trump, as the Washington Post explains:
The narrative that the race was tightening, and that the GOP nominee could really win, had taken hold going into Monday night. The days since have brought a stream of reality checks, as Trump’s preternatural unwillingness to ever admit he was wrong keeps him on the defensive. Since the first 20 minutes of the debate, when he was most on message, the national conversation has been all about issues that are unhelpful to his cause.
In a campaign where Trump’s charisma helped him rise to the top, his inability to resist picking on people—no matter how small or insignificant—is his Achilles heel. And by taking the bait, Trump lunged right into Hillary Clinton’s “artfully designed trap.”…
…Whether or not Trump wilted under the bright lights of the Hofstra stage, with 86 million watching, his messy messaging afterwards has only made things worse. First he blamed a faulty mic. Then he started declaring himself a “landslide” winner. But the attacks on Alicia Machado, in particular, cement his image as a schoolyard bully to undecided voters and reinforce concerns among GOP elites that he cannot avoid picking unwinnable fights. “It is a beauty contest,” Trump said on Fox News, offering the latest excuse for his misogynistic fat-shaming. “You know, I mean, say what you want, Bill (O’Reilly), I mean, they know what they’re getting into. It’s a beauty contest!”
Trump will try to get back on track next week with campaign stops in Colorado. Trump will appear at events in Loveland and Pueblo on Monday. The GOP Presidential candidate is scheduled to speak in Pueblo at 3:00 pm before an appearance in Loveland optimistically-set for “around 5:00 or 6:00 pm.”
Get even more smarter after the jump…
► Nazi and Adolf Hitler comparisons are sadly not uncommon in modern political discourse. But as CNN reports, this might be the first time we’ve heard a politician trying to favorably compare himself to Hitler (no, it’s not Trump):
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte on Friday likened himself to the Nazi leader, saying he wants to kill millions of drug addicts, just as Hitler killed Jews during the Holocaust.
“Hitler massacred 3 million Jews. Now there is 3 million, what is it, 3 million drug addicts (in the Philippines), there are,” he said in a speech in his hometown of Davao City.
“I’d be happy to slaughter them. At least if Germany had Hitler, the Philippines would have (me). You know my victims, I would like (them) to be all criminals, to finish the problem of my country and save the next generation from perdition.”
We’d condemn Philippines President Rodrigo Détente here, but what can you say that would be worse than what he said about himself?
► Governor John Hickenlooper is standing behind Amendment 70, a ballot measure seeking to increase the minimum wage in Colorado to $12 per hour by the year 2020. Hickenlooper also voiced support for Amendment 72 (cigarette tax increase) and Proposition 106 (end-of-life options for terminally ill patients).
On Thursday, the Denver Post hosted a debate on the merits of Amendment 70.
► Fox 31 Denver provides a guide to understanding the various measures that will appear on the fall ballot.
► The next Presidential debate takes place in St. Louis, Missouri on Sunday, Oct. 9th. Republican Donald Trump apparently couldn’t be bothered to pay attention during his own debate prep, so the Trump campaign is now threatening to bring in Chris Christie.
Yes, that Chris Christie. The New Jersey Governor with the 23% approval rating.
Meanwhile, post-debate polls show Democrat Hillary Clinton with a big bump among Millennials — a group of younger voters that she had been struggling to attract to her side until Trump provided a big assist on Monday.
► New polling numbers continue to indicate that any momentum gained by Donald Trump in recent weeks was short-lived. Results from Public Policy Polling show that Hillary Clinton is leading Trump by at least 6 points in Colorado.
► Ed Sealover of the Denver Business Journal breaks down the importance of the various battles for state legislative control:
Forget the presidential and U.S. Senate races. The battle for control of the state Senate could be far more important for Colorado business on issues like roads, construction and energy.
Oops — we already did forget about the U.S. Senate race.
► The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced another set of grants to assist cleanup efforts from last year’s Gold King Mine spill.
► Another day, another terrible story for Donald Trump about his (cough-cough) “charitable foundation.” From the Washington Post:
Donald Trump’s charitable foundation — which has been sustained for years by donors outside the Trump family — has never obtained the certification that New York requires before charities can solicit money from the public, according to the state attorney general’s office.
Under the laws in New York, where the Donald J. Trump Foundation is based, any charity that solicits more than $25,000 a year from the public must obtain a special kind of registration beforehand. Charities as large as Trump’s must also submit to a rigorous annual audit that asks — among other things — whether the charity spent any money for the personal benefit of its officers.
If New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D) finds that Trump’s foundation raised money in violation of the law, he could order the charity to stop raising money immediately. With a court’s permission, Schneiderman could also force Trump to return money that his foundation has already raised.
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.
► Democrats are significantly outperforming Republicans in fundraising throughout the country…thanks in part to a campaign finance change that Republicans demanded two years ago.
► On Wednesday congressional Republicans overrode a veto from President Obama on a 9/11 bill. Before the ink was even dry on that override, 28 Republican Senators admitted that they probably screwed this up.
► The news can be pretty depressing sometimes, so make sure you read this story before you start your weekend.
Don’t forget to check out The Get More Smarter Show. You can also Get More Smarter by liking Colorado Pols on Facebook!
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Um, that senate vote was 97-1, right? Yes, curse those Senate, er, Republicans!
While World leaders gathered last night to honor the life of Shimon Peres, the sweaty, near-400lb Screaming Yam lie tweeting from his gold-plated bed. Mulligan, anyone? Gardner?
Yes, one often wonders if Donald ever glances at a mirror while tweeting about what fat pigs all the women he doesn't like are, if he ever peruses Melania's old soft porn modeling photos before calling other women disgusting for similar photo histories, or wonders what is the likelihood a woman in Melania's league would ever have given him the time of day with his age and looks had he been a 75K, or even a 120K a year cubicle dweller. I'm guessing he needed every penny of the "billions" he pretends to have to make himself an “attractive” (gag, threw up in my mouth a little) prospect.
Another historic Clinton endorsement. This one from Republican (naval bases etc.) San Diego:
Wow! Trump may well succeed in uniting Americans. — against him😋
Then of course there's the Chicago Trib that endorsed the guy who doesn't pay enough attention to world affairs to recognize the word "Aleppo" or name a single foreign leader as future leader of the free world.
Guess Chicago's Republican paper hasn't gotten to the acceptance stage of grief over Trump, a vulgar ignorant con man who thinks paying taxes to support things like our military, vets and infrastructure is for stupid people and paying contractors what they're owed is for saps, being their party's standard bearer. If they had, as have other conservative papers, maybe they could have faced endorsing the only qualified grown up in the race even though she's a Dem and a Clinton.