Lost in the holiday week’s news but worth a mention lest it disappear down the memory hole–a week ago Friday, just after accepting Adam Frisch’s concession in this year’s heartbreakingly close CD-3 race, soon-to-be sophomore Ultra-MAGA trainwreck Rep. Lauren Boebert was asked about her support for ex-President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign announced just a few days before. Newsweek’s Andrew Stanton took notice of Boebert’s cagey answer:

Boebert was asked about whether she would endorse Trump during an interview with Denver news station KCNC-TV on Friday. While she maintained she is a “huge supporter” of the former president, she …

“The great proof of madness is the disproportion of one’s designs to one’s means.”

–Napoleon Bonaparte

awesome + uniting

• The Tradition of Big Beer Releases on Black Friday Continues
• Holiday markets around Colorado offer a way to celebrate and support local artisans. Here’s where you can find them this year
• Customers flood bar co-owned by Club Q hero

awesome + controversy

• Feds declare lesser prairie chicken “threatened” in Colorado, land use changes ahead
• Colorado’s ballot counting machines tallied votes securely and accurately, post-election audit finds
• Colorado offers Deion Sanders coaching job as Jackson State boss mulls options, per report

awful + uniting

I wrote this in 2014. Given that it is Thanksgiving week-end again, I thought I’d share. I do love Colorado!

I LOVE Colorado. One of the things I missed while running for office was getting out of town. Today I decided to drive to Glenwood–it is a nice drive, about 180 miles round trip, and the highways are good. I crank the stereo up and enjoy the music and scenery I love.
When I got to Glenwood, I considered just continuing up the highway to Aspen, but then I remembered I had Jackson with me and he probably …

The word went out before the Thanksgiving holiday that Black Friday 2022 would be the day (you’ve heard this before but for real this time) that the election stealers across this great country finally get some ‘countability. Although Colorado’s Heidi Ganahl lost her race by numbers that not even the most devoted election conspiracy theorist could dispute, Colorado’s leading conspiracy theorist podcaster who wants to hang a whole slew of people including Colorado’s own Gov. Jared Polis, Joe Oltmann, called for patriots to converge on the Arizona State Capitol in Phoenix this morning to demand a new election for …

This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast, your hosts Jason Bane and Ian Silverii talk with Brittany Pettersen, Congresswoman-elect from the seventh congressional district (and Ian’s wife). Pettersen takes us behind the scenes for a look at what it’s like for a newly-elected Member of Congress to spend the week after the election learning the ins and outs of life at the U.S. Capitol. 

Later, we discuss Rep. Lauren Boebert’s narrow victory in CO-03; Donald Trump’s very sad 2024 campaign announcement; and leadership elections at the State Capitol. Happy Thanksgiving, and thank you for listening!

Listen …

“The older I get, the surer I am that I’m not running the show.”

–Leonard Cohen

“We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.”

–Stephen King

As we continue to gather information about this weekend’s horrific mass shooting at a Colorado Springs LGBTQ+ nightclub, there are two separate principal tracks of forensic inquiry: how the shooter was able to legally obtain his AR-style assault rifle complete with what we assume to be illegal high-capacity magazines after a prior incident involving law enforcement that it could be argued should have triggered Colorado’s “red flag” laws, and the larger question of what motivated the shooter to commit this heinous crime.

AP reports on the first question, a 2021 incident in which the suspect made threats …

“The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.”

–Carl Sagan

awesome + uniting

• NASA’s history-making Artemis I mission has extensive ties to Colorado aerospace industry
• Colorado’s Jared Polis talks about running for president
• Colorado board votes to change name of mountain honoring governor blamed for Sand Creek Massacre to Mount Blue Sky

awesome + controversy

• Campaign concedes defeat of third-party alcohol delivery in Colorado, celebrates victory of wine in groceries
• Renewed recall of party-switching Colorado lawmaker “more unlikely” in wake of GOP’s election losses
• Some Colorado Starbucks employees join “Red Cup Rebellion” walkout

awful + uniting

UPDATE: Via the Colorado LGBTQ Legislative Caucus:

Statement from Majority Leader Daneya Esgar, co-founder of the Colorado LGBTQ Legislative Caucus, and Majority Caucus Co-chair, Brianna Titone, Chair of the Colorado LGBTQ Legislative Caucus:

“We are devastated. Club Q is a safe haven for LGBTQ Coloradans, and many of us have gone there over the years seeking solidarity and community. For that sense of safety to be shattered by this unspeakable act of violence impacts the entire LGBTQ community. On Trans Day of Remembrance, we have already been grieving the hate crimes that too often claim the lives of LGBTQ …

“National honor is the national property of the highest value.”

–James Monroe

As we wrote on Thursday, we had been waiting to post our annual post-election “Winners and Losers” list until we actually knew all of the election winners and losers (we’re looking at you, Lauren Boebert).

Click here for Part 1 (The “Winners”) of our end-of-cycle analysis, or read on for Part 2 “The Losers.”

The Losingest Losers of 2022

Lauren Boebert

After much ballot counting, Boebert finally emerged as the winner in CO-03 on Friday when Democrat Adam Frisch conceded that he was unlikely to make up a margin of about …

Yesterday’s final counting of cured and overseas ballots slashed freshman GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert’s already narrow lead over Democratic challenger Adam Frisch into the range necessary to trigger an automatic recount of the results–551 votes at the last count. Although this further delayed the final results in this race, it’s very unlikely that the recount will shift enough votes to change that result.

Recognizing this, Frisch, who nobody outside his campaign thought had a chance but ran a pitch-perfect centrist campaign well attuned to the district against Boebert’s high-visibility low-productivity record in office, conceded the race this morning to Boebert …

SBF who? FTX what? SEC where? Volume up 🔊 pic.twitter.com/14Rj5zYFk4

— Senator John Hickenlooper (@SenatorHick) November 18, 2022

We don’t post every clip of social media content from Colorado politicos, but this brief and informative explanation of the ongoing crisis following the collapse of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange from Sen. John Hickenlooper is well worth fifty seconds of your time. Hickenlooper is calling for crypto exchanges to be regulated with the same scrutiny as banks, and if you’re one of the thousands of crypto investors who just lost their shirt in this largely unregulated …

Readers will remember that Republicans led by Michael Fields of the conservative advocacy group Advance Colorado immediately announced a recall campaign against state Sen. Kevin Priola following Priola’s defection in August to the Democratic Party, obtaining a deadline to return signatures coinciding with Election Day before Denver District Court Judge Marie Avery Moses ruled that recallistas had to wait until Priola began representing the new boundaries of his Senate district in January. This ruling was highly adverse to the recall campaign, effectively negating the effort and money expended up to that time on the petition drive.

But …