U.S. Senate
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(D) J. Hickenlooper*
(R) Somebody
80%
20%
Governor
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(D) Michael Bennet
(D) Phil Weiser
60%↑
50%↓
Att. General
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(D) M. Dougherty
(D) Jena Griswold
60%↑
40%↑
Sec. of State
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(D) A. Gonzalez
(D) J. Danielson
(R) Sheri Davis
50%
40%
30%
State Treasurer
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(D) Brianna Titone
(D) Jeff Bridges
(R) Kevin Grantham
40%
40%
30%
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(R) Jeff Hurd*
(D) Somebody
80%
40%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert*
(D) Trisha Calvarese
(D) Eileen Laubacher
90%
20%
20%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Jeff Crank*
(D) Somebody
80%
20%
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) B. Pettersen*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(R) Gabe Evans*
(D) Manny Rutinel
(D) Yadira Caraveo
45%↓
40%↑
30%
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
March 07, 2009 04:44 PM UTC
45 Comments
I mean, I enjoy reading Steve Harvey’s posts, but that’s not the same….is it?
I like it!
I’ll be tweeting at the Dem’s JJ Dinner (#09jj) tonight and tomorrow’s ReOrg (#09reorg). No reason other than to experiment with Twitter. Feel free to add your own tweets.
from onlinecolleges h/t Dave Barry
frm the Times-News h/t Dave Barry
…than a couple of weekends ago. A woman who is blonde and I knew not the brightest bulb announced to our small group at the boat landing, “Ohmigod, I just locked my keys in the car and the engine is still running!”
As she wandered off to the group, I went around the car starting at the RF door to the liftgate, to the ………unlocked drivers door.
“Ditzoid Debbie.”
In the case of the GOP the delay in having the guts to say a word against the really disgusting Limbaugh “joke” about the eventual health care bill being sure to be named the “Ted Kennedy Memorial Healthcare Bill” makes them look even more cowardly than they’ve been looking ever since CPAC.
There is no correcting the error at this point as it would just look like giving in to pressure. Too late to look honorable now. And I know there has already been talk from Dems of naming it after Kennedy but the operative word that makes it so “funny” to ditto heads is “memorial”, ha ha ha…
Not even McCain and his side kick Lindsey Graham, who made such a show of giving Ted the thumbs up on his return to vote on the stimulus bill, have had the class or guts to say boo to the big fat idiot blowhard goose.
Looks like the GOP has taken on the wimp designation they spent decades pushing onto Dems, including Dem war heroes, almost over night.
I thought Tom was synonymous with error.
if you look up “scumbag”.
Fairview is leading 32 – 21 in their quarterfinal game. They have an amazing team.
…to my best friend’s school Regis. Now all that’s left this spring is to see if the Avs clinch the #1 pick in the NHL draft.
Even if they come in 30th out of 30, they aren’t guaranteed #1.
Interesting little note out of DC…looks like just the day before yesterday, Jared Polis joined two of his fellow Colorado Reps as a cosponsor of Mike Pence’s (Nutjob-IA) bill “To prevent the Federal Communications Commission from repromulgating the fairness doctrine.” That’s HR.226 for those interested.
I personally have absolutely zero interest in the Fairness Doctrine…either for or against…but I know some of you feel otherwise. Looks like JP is only one of a handful of Dem cosponsors as well…
Interesting if you care…
…would allow their members to vote as they wished.
I do care about what happens on the public airwaves. However, I am absolutely baffled by this legislation. It is the job of a regulatory agency to regulate. This legislation dictates what that agency can and can not do. Isn’t this an awful precedent?
What goes with Polis? This makes no sense to me.
BTB, I thought David’s interview with Polis was excellent. But why the distain for radio and newspapers???
their authority to regulate. Once delegated, the legislative branch cannot micromanage the exercise of that authority (it has moved to the executive branch, and micromanagement would be a breach of the separataion of powers doctrine), but they are perfectly free to pass new legislation which circumscribes that authority in new ways. In fact, that is a responsibility of the legislative branch, one which is sometimes underexercised due to the onerousness of the task.
The legislative branch is supposed to be the final repository of, well, legislative authority, which regulatory agencies are in effect exercising when the formulate regulations. The real doctrinal issue is whether the legislative branch delegates away too much of that authority, rather than too little. The non-delegation doctrine which used to proscribe that has largely died an unheralded death, simply due to the practical demands of a regulatory state.
Checks and balances…you gotta love them. So, the recourse to bad regulatory policy is to either lobby Congress to pass new legislation or challenge through the courts.
And the courts are pretty deferential to regulatory agencies, in general, on the assumption that the agencies have greater competency than that courts in the specialized areas that are being regulated.
It is absolutely within the legislature’s proper scope of authority to pass legislation which circumscribes what regulatory agencies can and cannot, or must and must not, do. In fact, it is considered the legislature’s precise obligation to do so.
As former Polis employee Sandra Fish has made clear, Polis supports media that supports him.
Most people can’t afford their own media, so they hope for other people’s media to be somewhat “fair” in some sense.
The people who can buy their own presses, websites, radio stations, or TV stations naturally support the right of rich people to own presses, websites, radio stations, or TV stations, without any obligation to anyone else.
Which is why, as progressive as some rich people can occasionally seem, ultimately their interests are the same as those of all other rich people. Jared Polis and Rupert Murdoch have more in common than many people might assume.
some of us figure that there is enough variety of sources that in this particular case the cure is worse than the disease.
Yes talk radio is dominated by the right. And the blogosphere is dominated by the left. Do you want a requirement that for each post of yours there must be a counter-post by Libertad?
I think there’s enough diversity of sources and opinion that we let ideas rise and fall in the marketplace by themselves. And as to all those close-minded reactionaries you want to reach with equal time on the radio – all you’ll do is piss them off if you get time to talk to them.
Print media is going the way of the Dodo. Online media, whether something organized like Huffingtonpost will be more palatable to our declining attention span than listening to a Conservative blowhard with 10 cars and $500 cigars talking about how hard the rich have it paying taxes.
In many senses of the concept, the media will be more progressive as tastes change. Anything to restrict that evolution of media would hinder the effectiveness of the message.
This whole discussion reminds me of election finance reform. In the past, Dems were at a severe disadvantage because of all the big bucks going to Rs. Reform seemed to be the answer but it has never been very successful as ways around the rules developed as fast as the rules were created.
Then Dean comes along and starts to change that by seriously going after small contributions on the internet and Obama raises it to an art and is so successful with that strategy, the Rs big money advantage gets erased. The money playing field is more effectively evened, almost overnight, by mobilizing small contributions than it ever was by trying to do the impossible; stopping the flow of money through legislated rules.
I don’t think it will be long before the right similarly starts to lose its advantage on the airwaves without any special fairness rules. As with campaign finance, an organic trend toward an evening of the playing field won’t satisfy some on the basis of principle but could very well solve the problem at a practical level.
since there’s no real barrier to entry to comment on a blog. Right-wingers can and frequently do register just to post one comment on something. If you’re talking about blogs where a moderator bans people who disagree with the site (like most right-wing blogs and Daily Kos), that’s a bit different, but still it’s pretty open.
Getting a lefty on the radio or on cable news is substantially harder, since the owners have pretty strong points of view which they want clearly expressed. The point of the fairness doctrine was to realize that would happen and try to counter it, since there’s no true free market in broadcast media (only people who can afford the license or get their cable channel carried by Comcast or whatever can enter the market).
I think it’s reasonable to debate the fairness doctrine, though I’m not sure it’s totally necessary right now. The bill Polis is cosponsoring seems a bit silly, since it’s not like the FCC is actually talking about the fairness doctrine. It’d be one thing for Polis to vote against any such bill that came up, but this sort of preemptive thing is just bizarre. It feeds into right-wing paranoia and doesn’t really do anything else.
As for me, of course I wouldn’t want to get on the radio and talk to conservatives. I’ve got a face for radio but a voice for a blog. 🙂
but laissez-faire may not be the answer. Since we can’t predict the future with certainty, let’s base preliminary judgments on the recent past and present: Non-interactive mass media outlets have long had, and continue to have, a phenomenal effect on the formation of public opinion and popular understandings. The airwaves are public, and the FCC has the mandate to distribute access to those airways “in the public interest.” Those airwaves are also expensive, which means that market access is skewed in favor of those with the ability to mobilize large amounts of capital. To the extent that highly centralized (and increasingly so) non-interactive mass media are disproportionately in the hands of those in whom capital is also concentrated, a potential problem certainly exists.
In fact, the shibboleth that the mass media is plagued by a liberal bias is due to a superficial counter-current barely touching the deeper and more fundamental currents consistently skewing such media toward nationalism and conservativism. I do believe in opening up mass media to a greater range of ideas and ideologies, and would prefer to see a commitment from progressives in office to that ideal. Whether the Fairness Doctrine is the best way to accomplish that or not is a question whose answer I don’t pressupose. But I would like to see (or hear) Jared’s defense of his position on this issue, so that I can judge it for myself.
How many times do I have to explain. The public airwaves belong to the public, that is why radio and tv stations are licensed and regulated by the government. The blogosphere is not owned by the public and is not subject to regulation. OK.
why do you keep repeating the right wing talking points??
ie so-called free market place of ideas ? There is no free market place if there is a monopoly. There is no free market place is access is controlled. Ideas do not rise and fall…in talk radio…..there is political indoctrination because of the scope of radio…
I don”t give a flying #@% if you think that opinion is diversified enough….that is not the point.
Most of the time when I post, there is an immediate counter-post….usually by Libertad or you, if the issue is the Fairness Doctrine…for god’s sake. That is precisely the exhange which is missing on the public airwaves.
I just posted before reading the much more erudite posting of SH and sxp 151…sorry if this is confusing….
from the Tulsa World
Seriously, Dunkley?
You learn something new every day, though. I thought they mostly shot speed in Tulsa. Or, I should say, speed and guns at the same time:
http://museum.icp.org/museum/e…
http://www.newsobserver.com/ne…
manage to keep shoveling their, uh, “credibility.”
No one is asking that it be changed to people marrying their pets. All they are asking is it that the specification of gender be removed.
This is the same crap that was used to argue against inter-racial marriages in North Carolina back in the 60s & 70s.
and Rowlands are so fixated on marrying their pets and their livestock I say let them.
During the credits the Sea Captain comes with the wooden girl from the bow of a boat. “Hurry up, before she changes her mind.”
Right, onto pets. Color me cynical, but I still think vehement complainers are self-hating. Seems like someone needs to do a welfare check on some “pets.”
In fact, most of those pushing for gay marriage are already having sex. By identifying it with animals, multiple partners, children, etc. they hope to alarm those who may not care enough only about 2 men or 2 women having sex in a relationship that also affords other privileges.
Put the brakes on new drilling rules
By The Daily Sentinel
Friday, March 06, 2009
A committee of the Colorado Legislature began reviewing new oil and gas regulations Friday – rules that the Legislature must approve before they can be implemented. Lawmakers should not be in a rush to approve them.
Long before the Legislature approved a series of bills in 2007 that required the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission to adopt new regulations for oil and gas drilling, this newspaper strongly supported the notion of developing stricter state rules to help protect Colorado’s health and environment.
We still believe that ultimately needs to be the goal. But with the gas industry in rapid retreat for many reasons, we also think it would be sensible for the Legislature to hold off on adopting the new rules for the time being.
No, we don’t believe the new regulations are a primary reason that the great boom in gas drilling Colorado has experienced over the past decade and more has come screeching to a crawl over the last few months.
One needs only to look at weekly rig counts in the West to see that almost every other state in this region – from Texas to Wyoming – is also experiencing a slowdown in drilling on a par with Colorado.
International energy prices, a drop in demand by industrial users of natural gas and limited pipeline capacity have far more to do with the slowdown than the regulations adopted by the state oil and gas commission.
Even so, the rules are already increasing costs for businesses. Energy companies have had to hire additional personnel to explore what they will have to do to comply with the new rules once the regulations are implemented. And actual compliance will add still more expense to the cost of drilling.
In a normal business environment, these additional costs wouldn’t be devastating. But, as everyone knows, this is far from a normal business environment, for the energy industry or any other sector.
On the same day that lawmakers began reviewing the oil and gas rules, federal officials released the February unemployment numbers that showed the national unemployment rate jumped to 8.1 percent, the highest level since late 1983.
That, by the way, was in the midst of the last energy bust in this region.
The 651,000 job losses recorded in February were across the board, not limited to any single sector. And analysts believe the number will grow. A turnaround in the unemployment numbers is not predicted until 2010.
Locally, there has also been dismal news about jobs. Energy companies large and small have been shedding workers, and the report that Halliburton has been cutting its workforce was simply the most recent. Other firms, not directly involved in the energy business, have also been hit hard. The pending closure of long-time local business Grand Junction Steel will put roughly 100 people out of work.
In such conditions, it’s not surprising that political and business leaders from Mesa and Garfield counties are pleading with state officials to do something to help the gas industry regarding the new regulations.
As recently laid-off gas company official Dave Cezack noted during a press conference last week, the new gas rules amount to a new tax on industry. And it’s not good to add taxes for anyone during tough economic times.
We agree. We’ve argued for many years that boosting taxes during an economic downturn is counterproductive. And this is much more than a normal, cyclical, economic downturn.
Temporarily halting the implementation of the state’s new gas rules won’t suddenly turn around the gas industry in Colorado. Not by a long shot. But burdening any business with additional costs in the middle of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression is a terrible mistake, not just for this business but for the entire economy.
The Legislature has an opportunity to avoid that by postponing the implementation of at least the most onerous and costly of these rules, if not the entire package.
Why would a laid-off executive still be giving press conferences? I wondered who this guy was, so I did the natural thing.
http://www.google.com/search?q…
Not absolute evidence by any means, but this sounds a lot like Councilman Les Wynan.
Did Chris Gates spring a last minute challenge to Pat Waak’s re-election? Did the state central committee pass a resolution endorsing the re-election of Dick Wadhams as chair of the party opposite?
The Colorado Democratic Party reorg went smoothly. Leaders reelected. It was nice to say “HI” to our congressional delegation.
The big news was the vote for establishing the Labor Initiative.