Purple Haze

I haven't commented on politics too much lately, but the GOP Gubernatorial slate aren't really practicing it, anyway. More like slapstick. Yes, I know the conventional wisdom is that the Dems will suffer losses in the mid-term elections because of Tea-Bagger activism, but you couldn't prove it here in Colorado. As those who are paying attention know, Colorado is a former Red State that has been trending Blue. It also, according to CPR, has the largest percentage of Tea-Baggers in any state. I guess that puts us in a Purple Haze, but it sure has been a trip here, and the rest of the country is beginning to stare.

There's all sorts of fun 'n' games going on here, as we're having a primary right now. I could go on forever, but let's peek in on the GOP Gubernatorial Primary.

After it was revealed that the old school, conservative,"jobs" candidate's most recent employment was plagiarizing college profs at 300k a crack, the anti-immigrant guy jumped in with the unsurprising assertion that AZ's new law was forcing illegals not back to Mexico, but onto Colorado's welfare rolls. Presumably, his solution will be to shove them along to Nebraska. Problem solved. Soon they'll be in Canada, where the party out of power ISN'T trying to eliminate their health care system. Thanks, Immigration Nazis!

Now the Tea-Bagger candidate has jumped in with the opinion that Hickenlooper, the current Denver mayor, and  presumptive Dem candidate, is by installing bike-share stations and encouraging greener transportation alternatives, hastening a "U.N. takeover". He went on to explain that the plot is "well disguised".

True dat, true dat. As are Curly, Larry and Moe's Statehouse credentials. In politics these days, though, paranoia is the new black. So no one can really guarantee that images of bicycle-mounted U.N. shock troops, or 30 foot walls from Pueblo to Four Corners (neatly slicing off - ouch! pun intended- Trinidad, sex-change capital of the nation) WON'T resonate with voters. 

Nor are the Democrats averse to the hijinks. Hickenlooper, who has been perking along just fine, rightly reminding voters that he had created more jobs and balanced more budgets than all the GOP candidates combined, couldn't resist announcing to a large crowd that included several car dealers that he wanted to "wean Americans from the automobile". Innocent enough for us two-wheeling fifth-column types, but in the Rocky Mountain West, where visiting your neighbors often requires a 3-hour drive... well, like the gun fetish thing, Dems usually just don't go there. 

Over in the Senate Primary, Andrew Romanoff, who led the charge when the state legislature went Democratic in '06, has been trying to paint his incumbent opponent, Michael Bennett, who was appointed when Ken Salazar joined the Obama administration, and who has done pretty well with his brief time inside the Beltway, as a big-money Washington insider. I'm expecting an ad about Bennett's Swift-Boat adventures on the Arkansas River any day now. There is a Republican Senate Primary, and it does feature another of those zany Tea-Baggers, so stay tuned, as hilarity will undoubtedly ensue. 

Actually, speaking of the Arkansas, a new Jean-Claude and Christo project to cover it in the trademark orange fabric is advancing nicely. I don't doubt the Tea Baggers will have something to say about THAT before this whole thing is over, too. There's nothing to stop the U.N. Navy from sending kayaks, too.