The Colorado State Open Thread is written to educate and spread the word about events, news, and life in our square(ish) state of Colorado. You don’t have to live in, have once lived in, or plan on living in Colorado in the future. You just need to have heard of our state and have enough of an interest to click on the link and planted your eyeballs on this story for long enough to check the “Recommend” button.
Today’s column was planned to be something entirely different than where it wound up. However, I had to take the Mrs. to Denver International Air and Space terminal (don’t let them tell you it’s any different than that), so I was up before the sun. I looked in the sky to the northwest and I saw a deceptively beautiful beam of light traveling across the dark sky. It seemed like it was a line of crystals or diamonds and it was headed towards the southeast. Now I’ve seen a deployment of Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites a couple years ago, where they were being deployed to spy on us — they were far enough north to be over Wyoming, so I didn’t worry too much. They were individual bright lights in the sky — about a dozen of them in a line. This wasn’t that. This was, as you can see from the documentary evidence in the picture above, a relatively solid line glittering and following along a flight plan from a plane. Thank goodness that the government hasn’t shut down apps for phones like FlightAware so I could see that this aircraft (at least what was supposedly this aircraft — you never really know) was a Japanese Air Lines (JAL) B789 flying from Tokyo Narita airport to Dallas Fort Worth at a height of 39,000 feet, which as we all know is in the sweet spot for dispensing of the chemicals used to control the weather. I don’t know if that was the purpose of this collection of chemicals, but we don’t have the data necessary to know what chemicals were being dispersed, why the Japanese would be helping our government spray over the US instead of over the Pacific Ocean, or if any of the data about the plane was real or if, perhaps, this was a US Air Force plane (or some secret MIB agency). If anyone has information to share, please do so.
In other news about Colorado:
- Today (Labor Day) is always a day to remember the Ludlow Massacre near Pueblo and Trinidad, Colorado. From Wikipedia:
The Ludlow Massacre was a mass killing perpetrated by anti-striker militia during the Colorado Coalfield War. Soldiers from the Colorado National Guard and private guards employed by Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I) attacked a tent colony of roughly 1,200 striking coal miners and their families in Ludlow, Colorado, on April 20, 1914. Approximately 21 people, including miners' wives and children, were killed. John D. Rockefeller Jr., a part-owner of CF&I who had recently appeared before a United States congressional hearing on the strikes, was widely blamed for having orchestrated the massacre.[6][7]
The massacre was the seminal event of the 1913–1914 Colorado Coalfield War, which began with a general United Mine Workers of America strike against poor labor conditions in CF&I's southern Colorado coal mines.[8] The strike was organized by miners working for the Rocky Mountain Fuel Company and Victor-American Fuel Company. Ludlow was the deadliest single incident during the Colorado Coalfield War and spurred a ten-day period of heightened violence throughout Colorado. In retaliation for the massacre at Ludlow, bands of armed miners attacked dozens of anti-union establishments, destroying property and engaging in several skirmishes with the Colorado National Guard along a 225-mile (362 km) front from Trinidad to Louisville.[6] From the strike's beginning in September 1913 to intervention by federal soldiers under President Woodrow Wilson's orders on April 29, 1914, an estimated 69 to 199 people were killed during the strike. Historian Thomas G. Andrews has called it the "deadliest strike in the history of the United States."[2]: 1
The Ludlow Massacre was a watershed moment in American labor relations. Socialist historian Howard Zinn described it as "the culminating act of perhaps the most violent struggle between corporate power and laboring men in American history".[9] Congress responded to public outrage by directing the House Committee on Mines and Mining to investigate the events.[10] Its report, published in 1915, was influential in promoting child labor laws and an eight-hour work day. The Ludlow townsite and the adjacent location of the tent colony, 18 miles (29 km) northwest of Trinidad, Colorado, is now a ghost town. The massacre site is owned by the United Mine Workers of America, which erected a granite monument in memory of those who died that day.[11] The Ludlow tent colony site was designated a National Historic Landmark on January 16, 2009, and dedicated on June 28, 2009.[11] Subsequent investigations immediately following the massacre and modern archeological efforts largely support some of the strikers' accounts of the event.[12]
- For more on the massacre, you can see a column for night owls by Meteor Blades where he quotes a University of Iowa professor who wrote that the Ludlow Massacre still matters a century after it happened, and you can see a long series of posts by JayRaye who ran a number of columns titled “Hellraiser’s Journal” before s/he left to write at a different location because of a changeover in DailyKos’ publishing style. Many of those columns/stories have details about the Ludlow Massacre, the people involved and attitudes that were from the time (definitely slanted towards pro-labor).
- Some of the polls for this November’s election are making the races closer than I’m comfortable with, especially the Senate race between Senator Michael Bennet and Joe O’Dea.
New polling released (last) Wednesday painted contrasting pictures of Colorado's U.S. Senate race, with one poll showing Democratic incumbent Michael Bennet leading Republican challenger Joe O'Dea by double digits and another survey suggesting a much closer contest.
Democratic firm Public Policy Polling found Bennet leading O'Dea 46% to 35%, with Libertarian nominee Brian Peotter pulling 7% and 12% undecided among Colorado voters.
An internal poll conducted for the Republican Attorney Generals Association by GOP strategist David Sackett of the Tarrance Group showed Bennet leading O'Dea 48% to 47%, with 5% undecided. The firm doesn't appear to have included third-party candidates in its poll.
The New York Times, Washington Post and CNN are among the outlets that have parachuted into the state in recent weeks to cover the contest between Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and his Republican challenger, Joe O’Dea, under the notion that the state represents a potential surprise pickup opportunity for the GOP in November.
But heading into Labor Day, the unofficial start of the home stretch of the campaign season, most polling and the money — especially the money — haven’t borne that out.
Just under $9 million worth of TV ads have aired or been booked in the Senate contest this year, according to a Colorado Sun analysis of contracts filed with the Federal Communications Commission through Wednesday.
- The rest of the Colorado Sun’s page on politics.
- The ActBlue page for Colorado State Legislators where a little donation can go a long way
That’s good enough to keep you busy for awhile. Please feel free to comment on any subject, whether I brought it up or not. This is an Open Thread, after all. I do hope you had a fun summer and your fall will be equally as enjoyable. If you want to see big brutes battling over the right to make babies with their prizes, I invite you to come up to Estes Park and watch the elk rut, which is the polite way of saying the battling of the males over the right to mate with the females they can corral. Elk Fest, the town’s end of the tourist season festival, will be the first weekend in October. We have some room, if people are coming up. And now, the floor is yours...