DANIELLE NEUSCHWANGER IS ON AT 1 And she wants to be the GOP nominee to unseat Jared Polis. We'll talk about all sorts of stuff including the Governors brand new concern about the taxpayers here. Find out more about Danielle or support her campaign by clicking here.
BOOK OF QUESTIONS TODAY AT 2 And you can buy your copy here.
CDOT IS SECRETLY DECIDING WHAT OUR LIVES WILL LOOK LIKE IN COLORADO Remember when CDOT was about roads and bridges? Remember when they focused on safe travel? That was WAY BACK before Governor Jared Polis did his political friends a solid and hired the utterly incompetent green warrior Shoshana Lew to run the agency. Joshua Sharf took a deep dive into CDOT and it's not pretty. From his article on Complete Colorado today:
This past December, they voted to adopt a rule that could end up redirecting billions of dollars from roads and highways towards inefficient boutique “green” transit. It would also encourage denser housing, limiting people’s ability to buy single-family homes. The new rule even manages to work “equity” into the mix, echoing questionable arguments made by federal Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg.
In short, the commissioners have unilaterally rewritten their charter to turn themselves from custodians of the state’s roads, highways, and bridges into the state’s centralized urban planners, helping to determine local land use, and enslave the suburbs and exurbs to the major cities’ urban cores.
So our public officials, who also can't seem to account for $1.3 billion dollars they spent with a budget-to-actual analysis. Do you want your Department of Transportation to force you to live in an apartment instead of a single family home? That's what they are trying to do. Another reason to replace Polis and the head of CDOT this year.
THIS AS CDOT IS FOUND TO BE GUILTY OF THREATENING PEOPLE TO GET IT'S WAY This story is kind of crazy but not surprising because of the above shenanigans. A contractor who had a dispute with CDOT went before the Dispute Resolution Board, which found FOR the contractor THREE TIMES and CDOT chose to ignore the ruling so now the contractor had to sue and was found to be a victim of CDOT's poor management and spiteful reactions. Not only is CDOT ignoring the contractors, but they also tried to intimidate the Resolution Board members to rule in their favor. It's like a green mafia up in CDOT right now.
A LEGITIMATE REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE FOR SECRETARY OF STATE WEIGHED IN BRILLIANTLY On the Tina Peters-Jena Griswold fight that is only getting worse. Pam Anderson sent out this tweet thread that is perfect.
DOUGCO TEACHERS WHO CALLED IN SICK TO PROTEST ARE GOING TO BE OUTED Because someone made an Open Records request and due to a prior court ruling, the district has to release the names. If you are going to get mad about this list or have a conversation with teachers who sicked out, please verify they sicked out BECAUSE of the protest before you get mad. Some teachers had already scheduled that day off for other reasons and they don't deserve to be lumped in with those who did. My question is, now what? You get the names, and then what? I really don't understand how this eye-for-a-political-eye business is helpful to kids or learning. Why not talk to ALL the teachers at your kid's school about what is going right and what is going wrong instead? We have to break down the divisiveness and this doesn't help do that.
I FEEL HEARD RIGHT NOW ON THE CDC IGNORING SCIENCE Because they have been roundly ignoring and misrepresenting science for ages now when it comes to covid. I've talked about this endlessly now and this column by Vinjay Prasad is a must read. This part is especially important:
Once that trust is broken, it’s not easily regained. One way out would be to reduce the CDC’s role in deciding policy, even during a pandemic. Expecting the executive agency tasked with conducting the science itself to also help formulate national policy—which must balance both scientific and political concerns and preferences—has proven a failure, because the temptation to produce flawed or misleading analysis is simply too great. In order to firewall policymaking from science, perhaps scientific agency directors shouldn’t be political appointees at all.
Ultimately, science is not a political sport. It is a method to ascertain truth in a chaotic, uncertain universe. Science itself is transcendent, and will outlast our current challenges no matter what we choose to believe. But the more it becomes subordinate to politics—the more it becomes a slogan rather than a method of discovery and understanding—the more impoverished we all become. The next decade will be critical as we face an increasingly existential question: Is science autonomous and sacred, or a branch of politics? I hope we choose wisely, but I fear the die is already cast.
Exactly.
THIS COLUMN EXPLAINS THE PROGRESSIVE NEED FOR ANTI-RACISM PERFECTLY And it's an article about Shelby Steele, best selling author and Hoover Institute Fellow who also happens to be of mixed race and grew up black. You should read the whole thing, but this jumped out at me:
Steele’s first book, The Content of Our Character, which earned him the National Book Critics Circle Award, begins with a striking observation: the racial struggle in America has been primarily over moral authority—which is to say, innocence. Since the dawn of American slavery, the distinction of race in American life has been used to sanction the power of one race over another. But given the moral intuitions of human beings, we don’t typically pursue power without believing in our own innocence. Thus, racism stems from the compulsion to use racial difference as validation of our own goodness and superiority. Historically, a claim of white innocence and black guilt grounded white supremacy.
When the United States finally acknowledged its long history of racism against blacks at the height of the civil rights movement, white Americans experienced a loss of innocence, and black Americans gained a degree of moral authority. In Steele’s eyes, this is perhaps the most underappreciated historical shift of the twentieth century. Though the indictment of racism was long overdue, the underlying logic of white supremacy—that race signifies guilt or innocence—lived on in an inverted form. Since the acknowledgment of black victimization and white wrongdoing gave blacks their first experience of power, black power became inseparable from white guilt.
At the very moment that blacks experienced greater freedom, an impulse emerged to identify more deeply with—and even take pride in—the group’s history of victimization. This embrace of past historical suffering as a way forward also opened those blacks choosing assimilation and individualism over group identity to the charge of betraying their race. Meantime, white Americans, feeling guilt over past racism, could regain moral authority and innocence only by assuming responsibility for black advancement—for example, by supporting affirmative action, welfare expansion, public housing, and other programs associated with President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.
IF DEMOCRATS ARE TRULY THIS OUT OF TOUCH IT'S VERY GOOD FOR REPUBLICANS I read this article in the hard left mag The New Republic with great interest, as it is discussing the strategy of what Dems need to do in the upcoming election cycle. If this is what they think is going to win, good luck to them. I do agree with Sen Tammy Duckworth when she says “Part of what we need to do is to remind parents of what we’ve done,” Duckworth said. “We have to communicate to parents around the country, but the work’s not done yet.” I will be happy to remind voters that the Democrats have been following the teachers unions advice on school closures and Black Lives Matter and Nikole Hannah Jones on their anti-American curriculums. I'll be happy to.
THE GENDER WARS HAVE KILLED THE DADDY-DAUGHTER DANCE Because a dance for men and their daughters or women and their sons was deemed "not gender inclusive" enough. I can't make this crap up. This is so sad, some of my favorite photos were of Q and Chuck at the Daddy-Daughter dance at her school. So stupid.
OTC PAINKILLERS COULD INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF GETTING TINNITUS We don't think of things like Tylenol or Ibuprofen as being potentially harmful, but they most certainly can be. New research shows that overuse of these drugs can increase your chances of getting tinnitus by 20 percent! Here is an interesting article on how bad Tylenol is when taken too much and how many people it KILLS every year!
SPOTIFY REMOVES SONGS FOR INACCURATE STATEMENTS Yes, this the Babylon Bee and this is satire, but is it really?
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THIS IS A LOVELY PIECE ON PJ O'ROURKE Who died yesterday at the age of 74. Read it here.
NO A BUNCH OF BIRDS DIDN'T DROP DEAD IN THE SKY Although I can see from the video where some might think that. Ecologists say it was likely a predator who was chasing the flock which drove them down quickly and some of the crashed and died.
SCHOOL BOARD MEMBERS RECALLED...IN SAN FRANCISCO? Yep, you heard it right, three Democratic school board members were recalled yesterday in the most liberal city in the world. But I'm sure the Dems are right that if they just remind people what they've done....
GOOD GUY WITH GUN STOPS BAD GUY STORIES And I'm sharing this to reiterate HOW IMPORTANT proper training with your firearm is. Not just target shooting, but knowing the laws in your state around lawful use plus knowing what to do to not accidentally hurt bystanders. Read some stories of successful defense with a gun here.
THAT RUSSIAN SKATER HAD THREE HEART DRUGS IN HER SYSTEM And now I'm mad. Finding one could be a mistake, but finding three should exclude her from any competition and certainly strip her of any medals she may have won by cheating.
THE ULTIMATE SOUTHERN INSULT This is legit.