DWI and being stone cold sober

Posted on July 8, 2008 by ChrisA

The Mesa Police Department is standing behind the officer.

Oh, beam me up. Talk about an upcoming lawsuit layed out on a silver platter.

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Democratic convention food

Posted on July 8, 2008 by ChrisA

Food rules for the convention.

Oh, to have a food cart outside the convention selling hamburgers, french fries and soda!

Posted in Dem convention | Leave a comment

T Boone on wind and natural gas

Posted on July 8, 2008 by ChrisA

Added 12:55pm:

CBS Marketwatch comments on T. Boone Pickens energy plans. Commneting on the conflict of interest…

There’s nothing wrong with promoting your own self-interest along with the public’s, and as Pickens argues, he’s too old and too rich to care much about making money for money’s sake.

Tom Bemis (Marketwatch managing editor)concludes…

Absent any political leadership whatsoever on energy policies from Washington, Pickens’ ideas deserve a shot.

And he clearly deserves credit for at least trying to find a replacement for the natural gas he wants to use in cars. It’s a lot more responsible than simply pulling “cheap” subsidized corn out of the food chain and turning it into ethanol.

Posted in alt energy | Leave a comment

Three trash carts part II

Posted on July 8, 2008 by ChrisA

I forgot to mention that I spoke with Western Disposal and they will pick up the recycling and composting carts about a month after they drop them off if I so request. That will also be the time they replace my present 96 gallon cart with the new smaller 32 gallon cart.

Posted in County Government | Leave a comment

Crude oil prices

Posted on July 8, 2008 by ChrisA

(click to enlarge)
Note the dates are “european style” so 03.07 means July 3rd. Data is from Live Charts out of the UK.

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A promise China can’t keep

Posted on July 8, 2008 by ChrisA

In 2001, China’s Communist leaders promised the International Olympic Committee that it would allow free media access to both the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the country as a whole. So far signs aren’t good that Beijing will honor its word.

Read more about this “big surprise”.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Map of 2nd Congressional District

Posted on July 8, 2008 by ChrisA

Chart from wikipedia.

Democrats Running:

Joan Fitz-Gerald
Jared Polis
Will Shafroth

Republicans Running:

Scott Starin
Tom Stone

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Women, need five grand?

Posted on July 8, 2008 by ChrisA

donate an egg!

Taken in Boulder on 28th Street a few blocks south of Iris.

Is this a common practice?

added 7/8, 6:25pm: The wife unit says I’m quite of out touch on these matters.

Posted in the weekend | Leave a comment

Biofuels

Posted on July 8, 2008 by ChrisA

Biofuels were supposed to save Earth and wean us off fossil fuels. Instead they have raised food prices while harming the environment and taking food from a hungry world and burning it in our gas tanks.

As the World Bank study illustrates, that policy is bankrupt.

Read the whole column.

Posted in alt energy, biofuels | Leave a comment

Jared Polis, you need to get out more…

Posted on July 8, 2008 by ChrisA

From todays IBD…

London’s Sunday Times called it “the culmination of one of the most spectacular victories of the war on terror.” A terrorist force that once numbered more than 12,000, with strongholds in the west and central regions of Iraq, has over two years been reduced to a mere 1,200 fighters, backed against the wall in the northern city of Mosul.

The destruction of al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI) is one of the most unlikely and unforeseen events in the long history of American warfare. We can thank President Bush’s surge strategy, in which he bucked both Republican and Democratic leaders in Washington by increasing our forces there instead of surrendering.

Of course, no need to worry as Boulder Democrats will certainly continue to drink the kool-aid and believe in your campaign plank to…

Fight tooth and nail to end George Bush’s disastrous war in Iraq.


IBD wonders, and this must be why Jared doesn’t know…

But where are the headlines and the front-page stories about all this good news? As the Media Research Center pointed out last week, “the CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News and CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 were silent Tuesday night about the benchmarks” that signaled political progress.

perhaps he should expand his reading list? IBD concludes…

The war in Iraq has been turned around 180 degrees both militarily and politically because the president stuck to his guns. Yet apart from IBD, Fox News Channel and parts of the foreign press, the media don’t seem to consider this historic event a big story.

Let’s add the Boulder Daily Camera to the list.

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Toddlers and racism

Posted on July 8, 2008 by ChrisA

These people really need to find something else to do, with both their day job and no doubt their spare time as well.

Posted in the weekend, you can't make this stuff up | Leave a comment

Three trash carts

Posted on July 7, 2008 by ChrisA

Thanks to the Boulder County Commissioners, Ben Pearlman, Will Toor and Cindy Dominico, starting July 16th I will have 3 trash carts in my garage. One (formerly) 96 gallon for trash, one 64 gallon for single stream recycling and finally one 32 gallon for compostables. I should send the commissioners a bill for space in my garage.

We are already recycling quite diligently every week and don’t need any help from the County, thank you very much. Compostables, well most of it, would be grass after weed-eating. That’s much more than is allowed by the County. Guess I’ll just cut it and let it lay on the ground.

Thankfully Western Disposal will pick up the extra carts if we don’t want to use them. They will be the real losers in this deal, at least in our case. We used their 96 gallon trash service, not for the amount of trash but so they would take grass and tree limbs. Now we’re reducing to 32 gallon trash and our bill will fall by about $72 per year.

You can keep up with Boulder County recycling efforts here.

Micromanaging is the expertise of all areas of Boulder County government. Keep up the great work Commissioners.

I’m proud to say I registered as a Democrat during the primaries to vote against every Commissioner that had a challenger in the appropriate primary. Naturally, I changed my voter registration back to non-affiliated as quickly as possible.

Posted in County Government | Leave a comment

Boulder County Recycling

Posted on July 7, 2008 by ChrisA

We are governed by idiots. The idiots would be the County Commissioners

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Who favors increased oil and gas exploration?

Posted on July 7, 2008 by ChrisA

According to a recent Pew poll, almost everyone but Republicans and of course Boulderites. Read about it here.

Posted in energy | Leave a comment

Get in before the law changes

Posted on July 7, 2008 by ChrisA

According to the head clerk for Boulder District Court and reported by the Camera, 15 adverse possession cases were filed this June in an apparent attempt to file before the new updated law comes into affect.

Of the 25 active adverse-possession lawsuits in Boulder County — where a person or company claims someone else’s land after trespassing on it for at least 18 years — 15 of those cases were filed in June, said Debra Crosser, head clerk of Boulder District Court.

….

Crosser said she was surprised by the influx of Boulder-area residents ready to sue their neighbors for land using the previous, less restrictive law.

“It’s not unusual to have a run on a certain case type, but it is unusual to have that many (adverse-possession claims) filed,” Crosser said.

The rate of filing cases is 5x higher than normal.

Sounds like neither Crosser or Clay Evans of the Daily Camera understand people’s motives. In a recent editorial, Clay went so far as suggesting getting along with your neighbors and deciding if it’s really important or not…

We understand that government, including the courts, is responsible for enforcement of the law. But sometimes, you’re better off leaving the G-men out of it.

So next time any of us don’t like what a neighbor is up to, we might consider whether inviting “the authorities” into the spat is really the best next step.

If the answer is, “maybe not,” then we might ask, “Does this really, really matter?”

And if we decide it does, then maybe it’s time to grab a peace offering — a beer, a Coke, some Haagen Dazs, a bunch of flowers — and head next door for a little face time.

It appears they both underestimated the zeal with which some Boulderites will go after their neighbor’s property. Perhaps along with title insurance, “Adverse Possession insurance” should be required at closing.

Posted in land grab III and higher | Leave a comment

Finish the job

Posted on July 6, 2008 by ChrisA

I get this strange feeling these soldiers would not support Jared Polis, candidate for the 2nd Congressional District in Colorado. One of his campaign mailings is right in front of me and states Jared’s Iraq war position as:

Fight tooth and nail to end George Bush’s disastrous war in Iraq.

I suspect that Jared’s Democratic primary challengers for this open seat probably feel the same way.

Posted in Jared | Leave a comment

Boulder land grab post…

Posted on July 5, 2008 by ChrisA

over at the Colorado Index (warning Boulderites, this is a Republican website). Found this landgrab post purely by accident via the wonders of search engines. It’s “old” as it was posted in May 2008 after the Kirlins lost their appeal.

Some interesting points in the post…

Our guess is that Judge Klein may be looking for new employment after the fall election. If the number of hits that this site gets when we write about it is any indication, many more folks than usual will be voting not to retain the guy. Usually, every judge gets about a 40% non retain vote. It doesn’t take that many folks to move it to 50%.

I didn’t realize that non-retention votes on judges were typically so high. If this is the case then it appears Judge Klein may well be looking for a new job.

As I’m sure most people who follow the case already know, Judge Klein ruled in private on documentation only. This lead the Colorado Index to report and conclude…

Acting in private, without public arguments means that none of the litigants got to challenge each other in court. That is not good. Someone is clearly lying. The public is denied the chance to take a good look at Judge Klein’s handling of the situation and the presentation of the witnesses.

If we were Boulder voters, we would be voting not to retain Judge Klein because he refused to make the hearing public.

Vote NO on Judge James C. Klein this November.

Posted in Judge Klein, land grab | Leave a comment

Speaking of the Honorable Judge James C. Klein

Posted on July 5, 2008 by ChrisA

He had another rather controversial ruling recently in a teacher child sexual relations case…

Monday’s sentencing of a Louisville woman to 20 years of intensive supervised probation — but no prison time — for having sex with an underage boy once again raises the question of whether female and male sex offenders get equal treatment under the law.

Irene Gomez, 39, was sentenced in Boulder District Court more than a year after being arrested for having sex with the boy, which whom she had two children. One of their children was conceived when he was 13 and she was 32 and the other when he was 16 and she was 35, police said.

While Gomez will have to register as a sex offender and won’t be able to see her children — she has five altogether — until she successfully completes a treatment regimen, some think she is getting away with a lesser punishment than men would in a similar position.

The prosecutor comments…

That includes prosecutor Amy Okubo, who lost her bid Monday to get Judge James Klein to include two years of work-release as part of Gomez’s sentence.

“I don’t think there’s any question that (if the gender roles were reversed) we’d be talking about a prison sentence here,” Okubo said. “Frankly, her behavior is outrageous.”

(bold is mine)

Erika Stutzman from the Daily Camera editorial board takes on the decision in a recent editorial and concludes…

“Grooming” and consent issues are given their due during sentencing phases in courts, and they were in this case as well. So, too, were the victim’s statements. He said he didn’t consider himself a victim, and he said he thought Gomez was a good mother to their children. The victim’s perspective should be respected — but victims aren’t sentencing judges and for countless good reasons.

What may be slipping through the cracks is the intent of the sexual assault law — which is to protect children from harm.

Those children include 13-year-old boys.

I don’t want to get offtrack at the moment so I won’t comment at this time on the disparity between the treatment of the adult men and women in similar situations.

The point is I can’t get to the voting booth fast enough to cast my single vote against Judge James Klein. Please join me. See Judge Kleins bio here.

Added 10/26/2008:
For additional information on Judge Klein scroll down the left sidebar and select the labels ‘Judge Klein’ and ‘land grab’.

Posted in Judge Klein | 1 Comment

Highlights from Dick and Edie’s summer newsletter

Posted on July 5, 2008 by ChrisA

(click on individual images to enlarge)

Posted in land grab | Leave a comment

McLean/Stevens get lampooned by neighbor

Posted on July 5, 2008 by ChrisA

Highlights from the Boulder Daily Camera article…

Jeff Bradley, a freelance writer and Boulder resident living near the disputed Hardscrabble Drive lot, this week began circulating a fake Fourth of July holiday newsletter via e-mail — posing as Richard McLean and Edith Stevens.

Read the whole thing and the lampooned 4th of July newsletter is here.

Posted in land grab | Leave a comment