Honestly I’d rather have snowfall than raining bullets like in Nashville. The Colorado State Open Thread is for people with an interest in our square-ish state to come and share thoughts, opinions, neat tricks and other things that are on people’s minds. The state has been fortunate this year in having above-average snowfall.
From 9News, the snowfall is doing very well statewide, with all areas except the Arkansas River basin standing above 100% of average — it is only at 89% of normal. The Colorado Sun map is from a few days earlier and it doesn’t have this latest snowfall. Everyone cautions that this is just one year of good snowfall and the drought has a 23 year headstart, so water will need to be good for a few years to make a dent in Lake Powell and Lake Mead’s levels.
The other major news today which came from Nashville was the school shooting. Here in Colorado, the Republicans filibustered legislation that would have made more restrictions on guns, including expanding the list of people who can request red-flag confiscation of guns and making it easier to sue gun manufacturers. The bills passed primarily along party lines. My feeling on red flag restrictions are not the same as my friend who was up here earlier than this week. He’s a libertarian and he feels that before anyone loses their Constitutional right to a gun it must be adjudicated in a courtroom and not just be a decision by some teacher or separated spouse who has an order that the other person has to keep a minimum distance. He felt if the spouse has such an order but is concerned that it won’t be honored, the fearful person can get themselves a handgun to protect themselves, which I think is nuts. A person shouldn’t have to live in fear and get a handgun for protection when they know their spouse is likely to violate the protection order and may be a better shot with a gun or may ambush them. I just believe individuals don’t have an unlimited right to possess a deadly weapon (at which point we devolved into an argument over the 2nd Amendment which did not and has not ever led to anything other than an agreement to disagree between us).
The news earlier in the week had to do with two school administrators at East High School in Denver being shot (but fortunately not killed) when a school resource officer started searching a student who had a history of problems and the student pulled out the gun and started shooting. The student was later found in the foothills after they had apparently committed suicide. This followed by two weeks another shooting about a block from the same school where a minor wound up dying from his wound.
A couple of Colorado related diaries — the Fanatical Extremist Republican diary earlier in the week was on Colorado’s Ken Buck. If you’d like to see how much Buck sucks, check out www.dailykos.com/…
Also, the Space Command headquarters relocation to Alabama reportedly was made by Trump being upset he didn’t win Colorado the way he thought he rightfully should.
From the Washington Post—
When Trump gathered his advisers at the White House on Jan. 11, 2021, the senior military official present was Air Force Gen. John Hyten, a former head of the Space Command. He told me in an email: “When asked, I provided my best military advice[,] which was counter to the [Air Force] recommendation of Huntsville. I recommended Colorado Springs. My rationale was that the threat, primarily China, demanded that we move as fast as possible to reach full operational capability and that we could do that in Colorado much quicker than in Alabama.”
The White House appears ready to reverse a Trump administration plan to relocate the U.S. Space Command from Colorado Springs to Huntsville, Ala., because it fears the transfer would disrupt operations at a time when space is increasingly important to the military.
A Colorado Springs Gazette article reveals the reason Trump made the decision to move the Space Command:
During the second conversation in February 2020, Trump asked Suthers if he was a Republican and asked Suthers about his chances of winning Colorado during the upcoming election. When Suthers said the chances were "uncertain" Trump "seemed perturbed," according to the letter obtained by Colorado Politics.
Trump then asked a Space Force officer if Space Command should stay in Colorado Springs; the high-ranking officer said, “Absolutely, Mr. President.”
The former president responded saying he would name a permanent home for Space Command after the November 2020 election.
“I want to see how it turns out,” Trump said, according to the letter. Trump later admitted on an Alabama-based radio show he single-handedly picked Huntsville, Alabama, as the new home for Space Command.
I’m still managing to get along. My sister is going to arrive tomorrow to help me sort through things. I also have found a place to donate clothes and other things — a Ukrainian woman who owns a deli here in town has contacts back in Ukraine as well as to refugees here in the US and she said she would send things to both locations. Please take care of your loved ones, get your paperwork in order and share the locations so that it can be found in an emergency, get a will and advanced directives for care set up and include at least copies in your emergency go-bags when the year long fire season is here.
In the meantime, the floor is yours...