Colorado Progressive

2010 Minus 1 - a Media Misinterpretation

2009-11-04T14:57:00.003-07:00

Election 2009 is over. What is statistically a dead heat is being portrayed as everything from a rebuttal of Obama to the great hope of Republicans in 2010. It is neither. Trumpets sounding a Republican revival for 2010 neglect the fact that self-identification as Republican is at its lowest point in history, that Democrats in New Jersey and Virginia were not exactly the strongest of

Nineteen Reasons We Should Encourage Texas to Secede

2009-04-17T15:34:00.001-06:00

No, Nosy isn't dead. Here are 19 reason thinking Americans should encourage the Lone Star State to go it alone:1) 49th in teacher pay2) 1st in the percentage of people over 25 without a high school diploma3) 41st in high school graduation rate4) 46th in SAT scores5) 1st in percentage of uninsured children6) 1st in percentage of population uninsured7) 1st in percentage of non-elderly uninsured8)

Why Money is Good

2008-10-04T22:12:00.002-06:00

Following that bit of mood music, to the meat of the post.I've been reading a lot of stuff recently that would lead me to believe a lot of people are beginning to think both capitalism and money itself are bad things. I won't go into why capitalism is actually quite good (under certain conditions) in this post and will simply remind you that we haven't come up with a better system for ensuring

How We Became France

2008-10-03T23:27:00.003-06:00

How did it come to this?The Right, once so proud of hating the French despite L'Enfant and the support that enabled us to defeat the British, has led us to the point where our country is forced to become French.No, we're not getting the good stuff. We get to keep cheap chain restaurants, bad wine, fear of raw-milk cheese and 60 hour work weeks. No, we get nationalization.Congress just

Poll Reading for Dummies

2008-09-17T21:36:00.004-06:00

Dang, I've been waiting a long time for this one....In the New York Times/CBS News poll released today, Obama leads McCain by 48% - 43%, a margin they point out is within the poll's sampling error. Many journalists are quick to call this a "statistical dead heat". They're wrong. Here's why.(If you're a mathophobe, stop reading. We're going to talk statistics here.) To begin with, what

Tax Plans Compared

2008-09-17T18:45:00.006-06:00

Last I heard, 53% of all Americans still believe Obama will raise their taxes.After yesterday's$85 billion "loan" to AIG to keep yet another failed business afloat, this chart may be a moot point. In the last couple weeks, we've added $5 trillion - yes, with a "t" to the national debt through the acquisition of Fannie and Freddie. We just added another $85 billion. There's a chance the AIG

Economic Disaster: A Primer for Republicans

2008-09-13T19:26:00.008-06:00

To start, a graph:What this shows us is that in the years since Republicans became "Fiscal Conservatives", our national debt has grown by $1 trillion offset by the $200 billion surplus created under the rule of a "Tax-and-Spend Liberal." As my daddy in Kentucky would say, "I don't think we can afford no more of them."Last week the Bush Regime decided to rescue another pair of failed businesses,

Bristol Palin By the Numbers

2008-09-03T20:55:00.005-06:00

It's been a while since I've posted here. Got to get back to it.I do not look down on Bristol Palin. She had the disadvantage of a poor sex education probably caused by her mother's ideology but she has the advantage that her mother has a good, if after the last weekend dead-end, career. She also has magnificent access to services (who wants to piss off a Governor known for abusing authority

The Dumbest Thing I Heard Today...

2008-01-14T18:01:00.001-07:00

...was on NPR of all places. I was listening to the news when I heard the announcer say the stock market had stopped its downhill slide....First, if anyone can make that prediction with certainty, what the hell are they doing working at NPR. Second, how can anyone say the market has stopped a downhill slide based on a single day's results.I expect that kind of editorializing from CNN, not from

Here Come the E-Mail Attacks

2008-01-07T20:39:00.001-07:00

Rightwing BS Alert!!!! Got this one from a friend today:The following is the 2007 winning entry from an annual contest at Texas A&M University calling for the most appropriate definition of a contemporary term. This year's term: Political Correctness."Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical, liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media

If You Fly Southwest (a little off topic)

2008-01-07T19:54:00.000-07:00

Southwest Airlines is a great carrier. They're no-frills and in my case, they fly where I want to go. I pretty much abandoned Frontier for them. But here's an interesting little artifact of the Southwest web site:When you try to book a flight logged into the site with your Rapid Rewards number and your password, it doesn't show you all the available flights, nor does it show you all the

Now This Makes Me Angry

2007-12-09T20:24:00.000-07:00

Democratic leaders were briefed on "aggressive interrogation techniques" - read torture - in 2002. The briefing included a tour of one of their "black" prisions, those extraordinary rendition centers overseas and therefore exempt from U. S. law. Our Speaker of the House, Ms. Pelosi, was one of those on the tour.Waterboarding was described. No objections were raised. What that bit of

Isn't This Called Obstruction of Justice?

2007-12-06T18:12:00.000-07:00

Destruction of evidence by anyone - obstruction of justice. Or are stormtroopers exempted?

It's Time to Go

2007-12-06T18:07:00.000-07:00

Obviously the Iraqis don't need us any more. If they have time for another month off, it's time for our troops to stop dying for them.

And in a Follow-Up...

2007-12-05T16:01:00.000-07:00

...Bush is demanding the Iranians come clean about their nucular (sic) program. That's a favorite tactic of liars - when caught in a lie, try to divert attention by demanding someone prove they aren't lying. Aside from being logically impossible, it's a pretty sad state of affairs whey you try to cover a lie by demanding someone else prove they're truthful.

Bush Wants Five-Year Interest Rate Freeze...

2007-12-05T15:55:00.000-07:00

...for adjustable-rate mortgages. Aside from being insulting to all of us who didn't overbuy, speculate, use our homes as ATMs or flat-out shouldn't have been given a mortgage, the five-year freeze on ARM rates does one important thing for the Bush Administration. It delays the crash until someone else's watch. A five-year moratorium would put the impending end of cheap interest firmly in

Another Bad Republican Idea

2007-12-04T18:01:00.000-07:00

Let me put my indignation aside, first. When I bought my house, I got a 30-year conventional mortgage. When I refinanced to pay off my ex-wife, I got a 30-year conventional mortgage. I could have lived high for a couple years, waiting for the rate to balloon. Of course, even then, my house isn't more than I could pay for. Offered the ARM, I thought, why would the bank loan me money at a loss

There are 3 Kinds of Liars:

2007-12-04T17:01:00.000-07:00

Liars, damned liars and George W. Bush. Given the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran (the person who released this report deserves a Medal of Freedom, by the way) and Bush's presser this morning, not to mention his past assertions that Iran was busily developing nuclear weapons despite knowing damned well they weren't, how can anyone believe him again. It appears WWIII, Armageddon or

Some People Just Need a Life

2007-12-03T21:27:00.000-07:00

While that could be said about me, this article proves that God really provided some people with too much free time.It's "The Golden Compass" and it's a movie, people! Entertainment. Imagining that evil is represented by a church, well hey, you demonize Islam and I can't imagine that Christ would approve of the Inquisition. Churches are perhaps institutions designed to do God's work but they

Sunday Night Rant

2007-12-02T21:13:00.000-07:00

It's bad when I can't get motivated to go skiing. Part of it is the La Nina fall - little precipitation leads to few runs being open and a high chance of running into someone who shouldn't be on the same run I'm on. Sounds like elitism, it isn't. But I digress.A few nights ago I wrote about the Disgust-O-Meter being on zero. It's there because it's burnt out. I have enough outrage in one

Your Homeland Security Money at Work

2007-11-30T17:38:00.000-07:00

Props to AP:_$345,000 for crashproof barriers and 60 closed-circuit cameras to monitor the University of Arkansas Razorback stadium, which local officials think could be a terrorist target._$5 million for the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology to buy a nearly deserted town to use for counterterrorism training._$70,000 for Huntsville, Ala. to create a fallout shelter in an abandoned

Turkey plane crash kills 57

2007-11-30T17:27:00.001-07:00

I really hate it when Turkey planes go down. Thanksgiving refugees, maybe? An actual headline from AFP, sometimes you really don't need further comment. And the most popular headline on Yahoo? This one.Sometimes I wonder about that free press thing. After all, you get what you pay for....

Still Not Ranting

2007-11-29T19:52:00.000-07:00

Don't know what's going on - no rants come to mind. There are lots of indignities to write about but nothing that really stands out. Australia joining the Coalition of the Leaving? Yawn. GOPers competing for who's the most hypocritical and bigoted? Old news. Dems caving? BTDT. Economy tanking/sky falling? Happened in 1929 and we survived. Expectations ratcheted down? That's been the

Disgust-O-Meter at Zero

2007-11-28T17:17:00.001-07:00

Still recovering from the holidays (or the holiday cold). Expect a return to rants soon....

One more thing....

2007-11-18T17:58:00.000-07:00

The Yuan, China's currency, is pegged to the Dollar so don't expect Wal-Mart prices to start rising any time soon....I bet the Chinese wish they'd have let it float a little sooner, though. I wish I'd have bought Microsoft in 1980, too, then we wouldn't be having this discussion.

The Sky (Dollar) Is Falling! And What to Do About It

2007-11-18T17:43:00.001-07:00

I read (and here's a shameless plug for) The Motley Fool, some of the best investing advice on the Web. Okay, the good advice is free, the better advice is going to cost you a bit. So here's a great article on the Dollar and its seeming free-fall.The Dollar is dropping and there seems to be no bottom. Oil prices are rising and there seems to be no ceiling. China seems to own us and there are

How to Talk to a Republican #10 - National Security

2007-11-17T20:54:00.000-07:00

My dad used to say Republicans start wars so Democrats can get us out of them. And I used to laugh at my father's wisdom.The myth that Democrats are somehow soft on national security arose during the Congressional endgame of the Vietnam War. Johnson knew the war was lost during the last half of his presidency and Nixon knew it was lost going in. Still they escalated until finally the

Friday Night Rant

2007-11-16T18:23:00.000-07:00

Ah, what lovely incident of the week should be its end. Perhaps the eternal question:Who won the effing debate.Pundits will argue but I know who lost. We, the people. The asker of the question, "Pearls or Diamonds" is now claiming CNN made her ask the question. At gunpoint? Was waterboarding involved? Or is this a fifteen minutes moment? Don't know but as long as Wolf Blitzer doesn't shave

Another Grim Record - Sexually Transmitted Diseases

2007-11-15T18:37:00.000-07:00

Some abstinence-only person explain this one to me. It's long been established you can't get any kind of VD from a toilet seat so how, if your program is working, can it be that sexually transmitted diseases are being reported at all-time record numbers? By the numbers for 2006:- Chlamydia: one million cases.- Gonorrhea: 358,000 cases.- Syphilis: 9,800 cases.More alarmingly, a superbug

Back from GOPerville

2007-11-14T22:12:00.000-07:00

Colorado Springs, at the foot of Pike's Peak, is a beautiful city. Shame the damned GOPers own it.Anyway, I went down there for a professional meeting tonight (for any of you wondering, the ISO 9000-2008 Standard is only cosmetically changed from the 2000 version - if you know what I'm talking about, you'll appreciate the news and if you don't, don't ask - it's a dive into Geek Hell you'll

How to Talk to a Repubican #9: The Estate Tax

2007-11-13T21:33:00.000-07:00

Warren Buffett, no relation to Jimmy, is a billionaire. He has made billions by buying and trading stocks. When Buffett speaks about money, I listen.The Right calls it the Death Tax, claiming it's somehow unfair to leave the heirs and assigns of one who has lived the American Dream(tm) with a reduced sum of money. This argumentation is incorrect on many levels but here's what Buffett had to

Gas Guzzler's Gone

2007-11-13T17:21:00.000-07:00

And my Jetta was assembled in Mexico. The engine's Polish. Was soll' das?

For What It's Worth...

2007-11-12T21:06:00.000-07:00

...or maybe just a bit less, looks like the Gas Guzzler might soon be someone else's property. That pretty much makes this an open thread.BTW: The unreadable bumper sticker reads "Transplant", our answer to those "Native" stickers some sport....

Clinton Campaign Takes Hit

2007-11-11T15:01:00.000-07:00

Finally, Hillary's numbers are headed in the right direction. She's down by 9 or 10 points in two polls, a number that's exact within statistical error.Painful to discover we Democrats don't take kindly to George Bush tactics like planting questions in audiences. Even more painful to first deny, then to have to admit you did it. This is not what we're looking for to lead us out of the morass

Sunday Morning

2007-11-11T10:48:00.001-07:00

No outrages so far. Nosy is looking for his next professional challenge, unpleasant but necessary. Got a bite on selling my old car - 20MPG gas guzzler (compared to the Jetta) back on the road but someone needs it and the carbon footprint to make a new one is immense. Notice the skis and the bike in the garage? Anyone have any good ideas for the Rant of the Day?

How to Talk to a Republican #8: Infant Mortality

2007-11-10T22:17:00.000-07:00

Maybe they don't care because it's not their constituents dying. In an earlier post at my other site, I mentioned our high placement (not a good thing, GOPers) in maternal mortality. Turns out that trend extends to infants as well, where we place among the worst in the civilized world, ranking above only Latvia:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071111/ap_on_he_me/saving_the_smallest_us_pictureMost

Deregulation or Not - A GOPer's Dilema

2007-11-10T17:10:00.000-07:00

Deregulation is one of the fundamental tenants of Conservative philosophy, a profound and self-evident belief that the "market" will regulate itself and everything will become as competitive as possible. This belief works well for commodities. The price of corn or oil will, for example (and whether you believe it or not) gravitate toward the most competitive price based on a few factors:- The

Open Thread

2007-11-09T21:13:00.001-07:00

In honor of Nosy's plunge into Haloscan hell, visitors, please amuse yourselves.

What Democrats Need to be Addressing

2007-11-09T15:33:00.000-07:00

In my real job, we refer to graphs like this as Pareto charts. Pareto is an Italian mathematician most famous for the Pareto principle, most commonly called the 80/20 rule. It states 80% of all effects come from 20% of causes.The chart illustrates both the rule and what Democrats should be doing. The leftomost two bars, Iraq and the Economy, represent what 74% of what everyone thinks is most

You Don't Know Beans - An Argument for Publicly Funded Elections

2007-11-06T18:21:00.000-07:00

If ever there was a reason to consider publicly financed elections, consider this. The US Farm Bill contains the Food Aid Program, a post-war program designed to do two things: To use the food the Government was buying to prop up food prices and to propagandize the largesse of the U. S. That was fine but now the Government isn't buying excess commodities yet the program continues as before. <

Ethanol, Rome and Roses

2007-11-05T20:26:00.000-07:00

The push to get ethanol from corn reminds me of a story I once read. I'm a rose aficionado, so I read about them in various publications. There was a story of a time when Rome nearly starved. It seems rose attar (the scent), rose petals and roses themselves became so wildly popular that farmers around Rome stopped growing wheat, turning their entire agricultural production to producing rose

Challenging Conventional Wisdom

2007-11-05T16:57:00.001-07:00

Based on my recent reading into conventional wisdom in business and some conversations over at Americablog, I'm starting to reconsider some of my position regarding fringe candidates on both sides, specifically Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich. One represents the far right (although you can't convince most of his supporters of it) and the other, farther left than most want to go. Ron Paul would be

Tom Tando (no Cred) is Resigning

2007-11-04T15:55:00.000-07:00

We in Colorado's sixth congressional district have a golden opportunity before us, the chance to be represented by a more than one trick pony. Tom (no cred) Tancredo has announced that, regardless of the outcome of his Presidential campaign, he will step down.Now Colorado's Sixth has never been held by a Democrat, not surprising, since it was only created after the 2000 census gave us another

Democrats Cave on Torture

2007-11-02T16:31:00.000-06:00

Can I please have a third party? One with some whatever dangling parts are required to stand up to a 24% President? It's no wonder young people are turning to radical alternatives like Ron Paul. In my youth they did too in Ross Perot.I ask this question of our leadership: Do we condone torture? Even more fundamental, do we condone those who condone it? I realize Mukasey didn't say he

Feinstein and Schumer Cave on Mukasey

2007-11-02T16:29:00.000-06:00

So I guess torture, specifically waterboarding, is okay with some Democrats.Shit.

TABOR - A Work of Fiendish Genius

2007-04-24T20:30:00.000-06:00

Know your enemy, Sun Tzu tells us, and know yourself and you will always prevail. Knowing the evil genius behind the Taxpayers' Bill of Rights (TABOR) is essential to knowing the enemy we fight and our response is essential in defeating them.The goal of the Right is to shrink government, normally defined as the amount of taxes they pay, no matter what the collateral damage. In conceiving TABOR,

Delusional

2007-04-23T20:49:00.000-06:00

If there has ever been an excuse for invoking the 25th Amendment and removing our Leader from office, it's his unwavering support of Alberto Gonzales. Gonzales's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee included "I don't know" more times than I can count and painted a picture of a person unable to fulfill his job. Yet Bush continues his "unwavering support", both of Gonzales and of

Tragic Events at Newt Gingrich University

2007-04-22T16:53:00.000-06:00

Newt Gingrich made the infinitely dumbassed statement that if the students at Virginia Tech had been armed, they would have gotten the attacker before he got what, two, three of them? I suppose two or three college students are worth less than a historical misinterpretation of a single sentence (the second amendment) but let's fast-forward a few years to Newt Gingrich University on a beautiful

Second Amendment - Where's the Dumb Line

2007-04-18T19:14:00.000-06:00

When the Second Amendment, the one so often abused by the Right, was penned, the most fearsome weapon fired less than one shot per minute. A musket was good for one shot and, if you didn't hit the person you were firing at, they could take it from you and beat you to death with your own weapon before you could reload. There was a good reason, though, for authorizing the citizenry to bear arms:

Tortured Logic

2007-03-23T18:28:00.000-06:00

The week's political events have led me to an intellectual impasse due to logic tortured worse than Gonzales would have enemies of the state. For all the tortured, circuitous paths the debate on the Iraq war has taken this week, there are two things I don't understand:1. Why does the party who sent our troops into an unfounded, unnecessary war with inadequate armor, who keeps them in the

Cheney Diagonsed with Deep Vein Thrombosis

2007-03-05T18:26:00.001-07:00

Shame they didn't take him to Walter Reed for treatment.

Accountability Triumphs

2007-03-03T15:49:00.000-07:00

Compare Bush's steppin' and fetchin' (like their pants were on fire and their asses was catchin' - with nods and respect to the Charlie Daniels Band) to get to the Southeast in the wake of this week's tornadoes and his lackluster response at the destruction of New Orleans. What's the difference between then and now?Oversight. Bush is quite frankly scared shitless of his own incompetence in the

Completely Off Topic, Adobe Tech Support....

2007-03-02T18:31:00.000-07:00

....sucks. Actually I'm not qualified to make that observation because they've made it impossible to contact them. The situation is as follows: A long time ago I bought a product from Syntrillium Software, Cool Edit 2000. In the interim, my computer took a digger (with help from me), causing me to completely re-install Windows XP. Since Outlook Express is an integral part of WinXP, the

They Fired the General in Charge of Walter Reed....

2007-03-01T20:27:00.000-07:00

And replaced him with an able GOPer administrator known for letting soldiers lie in their own urine. As for this veteran, I'd go back on active duty just to participate in the firing squad for the traitors we so calmly refer to as the Bush Administration. Remember, Bush is a Republican, Republicans are Bush. Keep driving home the equivalence and Bush becomes our best advertising.

A Little Political Humor

2007-02-28T20:51:00.000-07:00

Bill Clinton is placed against the wall, and just before the order to shoot him is given, he yells, "Earthquake!" The firing squad falls into a panic and Bill jumps over the wall and escapes in the confusion.John Kerry is the second one placed against the wall. The squad is reassembled and John ponders what his old pal Bill has done. Before the order to shoot is given, John yells, "Tornado!

A Timeline of Bush Lies

2007-02-28T20:21:00.000-07:00

Here's something neat from Mother Jones:Bush's Timeline of LiesYou need popups enabled and it takes a few seconds to download. Lots of fun!

By the Numbers: Iraq = Vietnam

2007-02-21T19:50:00.000-07:00

A lot of comparisons have been made between the Iraq war and the Vietnam war. One of the defenses of the Iraq war are the casualty numbers. After all, we lost 58,000 men in Vietnam but so far have only had 3,200 casualties in Iraq. So Iraq isn't as deadly, right?Problem is the numbers the Pentagon itself put out that the ratio of killed to wounded is 16:1. That means we have had 51,200

Bush Compares Himself to Washington - Where do I Hurl?

2007-02-19T17:29:00.000-07:00

Where can I hurl?Today the Deciderator actually had the gall to compare himself to George Washington, a man who had to be practically shanghaied into running for President and who maintained that Executive powers should be governed by restraint:"I feel right at home here. After all, this is the home of the first George W. I thank President Washington for welcoming us today. He doesn't look a day

The Long Implosion

2007-02-19T16:57:00.000-07:00

In nucular (sic) weapons, the longer the implosion, the greater the explosion. The GOPers have been imploding since the American people rejected their ideology last fall and watching McCain campaign, the explosion just might be beginning.It looks like John the former Straight Talker needs a little while to get his stump speech in order. Right now, he's spinning like a weather vane, pointing in

Welcome to the Post Conservative Era

2007-02-11T18:38:00.000-07:00

The election of 2006 marked the end of the era of the conservative. Reading an article in Der Spiegel (via Watching America, a website I highly recommend for all progressive thinkers) led me to believe that we are entering the Post-Conservative era of American politics. The writers point out that the Conservative Right were correct about two main issues, free markets and communism.Now, with

Ritter Betrays Labor

2007-02-10T20:01:00.000-07:00

After insinutating he would sign the measure repealing the requirement for a second vote to unionize a shop, Governor Bill Ritter betrayed his supporters and vetoed the bill.While perhaps not as aggregious as Ken Salazar's vote to shred the Constitution and deny habeas corpus to American citizens, this vote would indicate that we got another GOPer-lite in Democratic clothing in Mr. Ritter. I

Dinosaur Flatulence and the GOP

2007-02-10T19:48:00.000-07:00

Sometimes they write themselves. Any opportunity to use dinosaur, flatulence and the GOP in one sentence should never be avoided. How about this one: The flatulent sound of GOP dinosaurs debating global warming provides evidence of their ignorance and their unwillingness to be cured of that state.I am referring in particular to Dana Rohrbacher (R, Calif) and his comments concerning the cause

Paycheck Lenders - Proof of the State of the Bush Economy

2007-02-05T17:31:00.000-07:00

Today I heard an article on paycheck lenders on NPR. These are legal loan sharks who charge up to 500% interest for people to take out loans against their next paycheck. If the lendee is not able to pay off their loan with their next paycheck, unlikely since their pay is so insufficient that they had been driven to the paycheck lender in the first place, the fees kick in and the lendee is never

Bush's Economy - Another Surprise Visit

2007-01-31T17:56:00.000-07:00

The economy is good, if you're a stockholder, if you're a CEO, it's the best it's ever been. Republicans have all but eliminated your taxes and are trying to shift the rest of them to the backs of those of us who aren't benefitting from the economic recovery - wage earners and middle class families.Class warfare? Damned right it is. The Republican elitists want you to believe what's good for

The Meme and the Minimum Wage

2007-01-30T17:06:00.000-07:00

Today the Senate voted to end debate on the measure to increase the minimum wage to $7.25 over the next two years ending a week of debate in which Senator Ted Kennedy pointed out that every Congressman made as much money as a minimum wage earner will earn in four months. And naturally, the GOPers found a way to get their elite constituents a piece of the pie by saddling the bill with tax breaks

The Deferred Tax Increase

2007-01-29T17:29:00.000-07:00

Amid the usual Bushit of the State of the Union speech, one nugget reeked particularly like GOPer. The masterpiece of Bush's current "blame it on the next guy" strategy was the proposal to tax the fortunate few of us who have health care plans costing us AND OUR EMPLOYERS together more than $7,500 per year. And I have the reddest of fishwrappers, the Houston Chronicle, to thank for pointing

How GOPers Support the Working Poor

2007-01-24T19:17:00.000-07:00

The following Senators, all GOPers, voted against cloture on the Senate measure to increase the minimum wage to $7.25 per hour: NAYs ---43 Alexander (R-TN) Allard (R-CO) Bennett (R-UT) Bond (R-MO) Bunning (R-KY) Burr (R-NC) Chambliss (R-GA) Coburn (R-OK) Cochran (R-MS) Corker (R-TN) Cornyn (R-TX) Craig (R-ID) Crapo (R-ID) DeMint (R-SC) Dole (R-NC) Domenici (R-NM) Ensign (R-NV) Enzi (R-WY) Graham

If Illegal Immigrants were Cows....

2007-01-23T17:46:00.000-07:00

Today I got one of those stupid e-mails stating implying that the Department of Agriculture, since it can find one cow with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or mad cow disease) from all the millions in the country, they should be allowed to search for the millions of illegal immigrants.I had seen this BS so often I was fed up. I hit reply-all and replied, if you're willing to assume the

A Great Argument for Curtailing War Funds

2007-01-11T17:18:00.000-07:00

One of the best arguments I've heard in a long time for curtailing funds for Bush's war in Iraq came today during a debate over stem cell research. I believe it was Senator Lugar who was bloviating against funding the research, stating he was not only voting his own belief, he was voting the belief of millions of Americans. He felt it was patently unfair to ask millions of American taxpayers to

Allard on What's Important

2007-01-04T20:37:00.000-07:00

We have two Republican Senators from Colorado. Ken Salazar is a GOPer-lite who voted for Bush's torture and deny habeas corpus law, a gutless Republican wannabe who wouldn't stand up for the principles our country stands for. The other Colorado Senator, Wayne Allard, is a true-red old school GOPer whose idea of the most important thing facing this country is the immortalization of Ronald

A Republican Tax Cut

2007-01-03T18:01:00.000-07:00

I'm sure somewhere someone promised a tax cut. Somewhere someone underestimated the amount required to do a job only Government can do and instead of finding a bathtub to drown Government in, the GOPers in charge of Arapahoe County chose a storm sewer. Maybe it was a gift to developers, maybe an undercollection of property taxes but for some reason, I got a card in the mail informing me I was

Bad Idea in Colorado

2006-12-20T11:53:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Jump to the Left for tagging my blog. Sorry, Jump, I can't respond right now. For all who haven't heard, we're having a blizzard here in Denver. New powder and I'm stranded about a hundred twenty miles east of where the action is. Consolation is that while this kind of storm dumps a lot of snow on us, the resorts west of the Divide don't get it.Speaking of not getting it, there's a move

Amendment 40 - Judged and Found Lacking

2006-10-10T19:18:00.000-06:00

This is another of those amendments that seem better than they are. What could be better for the state than mixing up the Judicial branch every few years, throwing the experienced old farts off the bench in favor of some young firebrand? What could be wrong with being able to get rid of an ineffective judge every few years without all the trouble of impeachment? What would be wrong with the

Amendment 39 - School Improvement Republican Style

2006-10-08T17:13:00.000-06:00

On the surface, Amendment 39 sounds like a great idea aside from its blatant attempt to write what should be statutory into the Constitution. According to Amendment 39, 65% of all public education funds would be spent on "specific items", code for in the classroom. There is a similar measure called Referendum J that would mandate a similar percentage but would not be constitutional nor would it

2006-10-08T12:06:00.000-06:00

Here a very good link to a draft description of Liberal Values:http://www.huffingtonpost.com...liberal-values_b_31218.htmlI'd challenge a Conservative to come up with something similar.

Amendment 38 - The Ballot Initiative Goes Amok

2006-10-07T18:54:00.000-06:00

Again I mention my love-hate relationship with the ballot initiative in Colorado. I love it for its citizen democracy concept - we citizens can actually pass a law. I hate it for the special interests who try to use it to get out their base, to discourage others' bases and to pass crap laws that would never survive the public scrutiny of our elected leaders, idiots that they often are.Amendment

Salazar's Mea Culpa

2006-10-06T22:11:00.000-06:00

Today Ken Salazar offered a lame excuse for voting to shred the Constitution and grant Bush powers normally reserved for the likes of Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh and his old buddy Castro. Here goes:http://salazar.senate.gov/news/releases/061006mil.htmHe knew, he said, that it was a bad bill but it was the best we could get at the time to move along detainee trials. Under the

More Amerikan Justice

2006-10-06T17:35:00.000-06:00

A follow up, this from NPR:http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6211231Is this what America is about?

Amerika, 2007

2006-10-06T17:00:00.000-06:00

President Bush's law providing cover for torture also would seem to provide cover for instances like this one:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061006/ap_on_re_us/guantanamo_alleged_abuseBush's Amerikan Gulag Authorization Act of 2006 not only provides legal cover for those beating helpless prisoners - the Marines in the story linked above are good examples - it provides for the "disappearing" of

2006-10-05T22:02:00.000-06:00

An aside from Colorado matters, did anyone notice that Condi had to sneak into Iraq again today? Of course, somewhere in that cavern called a mind she still believes we believe it was a "surprise" visit. In reality, the security situation there is so bad that our officials, Prez included, can't announce their arrivals for fear of shoulder-fired missiles.Stayin' the course: 22 Americans dead

Ballot Initiatives, Love 'Em or Hate 'Em

2006-10-05T19:32:00.000-06:00

I got my blue book today although it's printed on unbleached brown paper. That thing is HUGE! It's a good half-inch thick, compressed. It's my intention to go through the initiatives over the next few days from a progressive point of view but first I'd like to talk about the ballot initiative process itself.I both love and hate the process. It embodies all that is both good and bad about our

GOPer Implosion Continues

2006-10-03T19:24:00.000-06:00

Isn't the election in five weeks? Shouldn't the GOPers (Greedy Old Perverts) be on attack message now, impugning the patriotism of Tammy Duckworth, who lost her legs in Bush's Iraq? Shouldn't Rove be orchestrating Soft on Terror, Stay the Courses, all the talking points that have passed for Presidential leadership the last six years?Thanks to Mark Foley, it isn't the case. The GOPers are in

Ah, the Greedy Old Perverts

2006-10-01T21:52:00.000-06:00

The Mark Foley story, outside of the mainstream media, of course, has been quite amusing in a sick way. Let's see, Hastert is already throwing the "threaten the leaker" card around instead of going after the perpetrators and their enablers (including himself, if truth be known). Foley is still out there on the streets, presumably having learned that IMs aren't secure. The GOP is asking if they

The Salazars' Betrayal

2006-09-30T21:19:00.000-06:00

The Salazar Brothers, Ken and John, betrayed Colorado last week with their vote to turn the United States into a law of torturers and gulags. The interrogation techniques their "yes" vote on the Republicans' effort at absolute power for the executive made legal the United States's use of the same interrogation techniques the Vietcong used so effectively on our airmen and that the Khmer Rouge

The Most Important Issue in America

2006-09-27T19:59:00.000-06:00

Quick, what's the most important issue facing Washington right now. Is it the War in Iraq, the war against radical jihadists? The deficit? Health care? Poverty?To Marilyn Musgrave, it's gay marriage.Misplaced priorities, anyone?I keep remembering that kiss Bush gave her on the head. That brain wasting disease Bush seems to suffer from must be contagious.

Global Warming - A Visual

2006-09-17T20:00:00.000-06:00

Today I went up to Summit County to ride my bicycle. As always, I'm astonished and depressed at the damage the bark beetle is doing to the forest there. Just a rough visual, one in four trees are dead and I'm certain numerous others are infested. It seems there's no stopping the pest. The town of Dillon was taking draconian action, clearing their forest of infected trees yet it is most likely

The 65% Solution

2006-09-16T11:10:00.000-06:00

On the surface, it sounds like a great idea. Write into law through the ballot initiative that 65% of all education funding must be spent in the classroom. Great, you say. Mandate that we can't be wasting money on lavish administrator salaries and grounds and all that fluff. Now ask yourself, why would GOPers, conservative sponsors of the measure intent on raising private education up as the

His Lips are Moving

2006-09-15T21:02:00.000-06:00

Look here... A Washington Post story about the CIA closing the Bin Laden unit.Then here.... Here Bush says "You know, there is a kind of an urban myth here in Washington about how this administration hasn't stayed focused on Osama bin Laden. Forget it. It's convenient throw-away lines, you know, when people say that."Once again, Bush's actions don't square with his rhetoric. I tend to believe

Democracy on the March

2006-09-15T19:57:00.000-06:00

I love it when the Shrub gets angry! It means he's not getting his way which also means Democracy probably has prevailed. No, George, you don't get to try the detainees using evidence they can't see. No, George, you can't use coerced (read obtained by torture) evidence and you can't use hearsay.His jaw clenches. You can see the muscles clenching. Well, King George says, if you won't get me

A Sea Change in the Colored-Red State

2006-09-15T08:50:00.000-06:00

We're on our way to renaming the state Coloazul.Screw "purple state." We're going for blue.

Imagine...

2006-09-14T21:45:00.000-06:00

Today the GOPer Senate laid a smackdown on GWBush - no way will we approve your drumhead tribunals that deny the accused the right to see all the evidence against him, that accept "coerced" (read "alternative interrogation techniques" or "torture") evidence or even hearsay before declaring summarily that the poor guilty bastard is indeed guilty. Firing squad tomorrow at dawn. No, they said,

Tancredo Wraps Himself in the (Confederate) Flag

2006-09-12T20:12:00.000-06:00

Tommy the Xenophobe shows his true Confederate colors:http://www.splcenter.org/intel/news/item.jsp?aid=79We knew he was a xenophobe and a white supremacist. Now he's openly attending Confederate rallies. What next, Hakenkreutze on his campaign posters? A shaved head? Seriously, I don't think Tom's extreme position represents Colorado's Sixth Congressional District and I certainly don't think

Casualties of 9/11

2006-09-11T19:10:00.000-06:00

I honor the 3000 who died in the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon five years ago. In addition to them, there are a number of other casualties of that attack, the greatest of which is the country I was ready to defend. Many of Republican Washington's policies are no longer defensible. This is the saddest casualty of the attack.We lost foremost truth. Our government has systematically

Fascism, the Truth

2006-08-30T05:19:00.000-06:00

It seems that everyone besides Republicans today are fascists. There are islamofacists, there are those who support fascism and the islamofascists (Cheney and Rumsfeld tell us that, anyway). Let's take a look at fascism's poster child of the last century, Nazi Germany.First, fascism was great for business, at least at the start. One of Hitler's early successes was getting the trains running on

Bush's Economic Effectiveness - Two Great Stats

2006-08-28T17:22:00.000-06:00

I heard two great statistics on NPR this evening that pretty much sum up the effectiveness of Repug handling of the economy. First the number of cars "torched" in Colorado to get out from under loans or to generate cash has risen from 7 in 2000 to 83 in 2005. Second, the number of homeless in Co. has gone from about 3,ooo to about 15,000 in the same period.Real wages, meanwhile, have fallen by

Doesn't Understand the Nature of the World

2006-08-18T22:22:00.000-06:00

Bush claims his opponents, particularly the Federal judge who ruled his warrantless wiretapping program unconstitutional, "do not understand the nature of the world in which we live." I would submit it is the Chimperor who is not quite aware of the nature of the world or the restrictions on the office he holds.I just returned from a trip to Muhlenberg County, Kentucky, my hometown. I was met

Tomorrow's Primary

2006-08-07T21:59:00.000-06:00

Tomorrow I'll be having dinner with a visiting cousin from Kentucky. There are no contested Democratic races in Colo. 40, Colo House District 6 and it's still two years before we can vote Allard the Torturer out. So I'll be going to a nice restaurant with visiting relatives.In the loca race between Peggy Lamm and Ed Perlmutter, no decision. It's been a negative campaign, they all seem to be

How Misdirection Works

2006-08-06T19:20:00.000-06:00

This afternoon, I was surprised at first to read that half of all Americans believe that Iraq had chemical weapons when we invaded them (I refuse to use the over-used and inaccurate "weapons of mass destruction" when general officers have stated they'd rather be hit with a chemical round than a "conventional" high-explosive round because when a chemical round goes off, you have a chance). Are we

Republican Primary in Wingnut Central

2006-08-05T19:31:00.000-06:00

Colorado Springs is the epicenter of wingnutism in Colorado. Home to Cheyenne Mountain and James Dobson, the 5th Congressional District, Colorado College excepted, is a Republican wonderland, full of knee-jerk, unthinking Conservatives like Duncan Bremer who believes the way to peace in the Middle East is to convert all the Moslems to evangelical Christianity. I'd like to invite Mr. Bremer to

Non-News as News

2006-08-04T22:35:00.000-06:00

This is not news: GOP Chair Says Democrats Weak on TerrorKen Mehlman, Chairman of the RNC, saying Democrats are weak on terror is like a weather man talking about weather. I read the above article and noticed nothing in it that wasn't a misrepresentation or an attempt to reinforce Wingnut memes. An example of misrepresentation: "Will we elect leaders who recognize we're at war and want to use