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I Love Colorado. A State Open Thread, 8/24/2026 [1]

['Thom Hartmann']

Date: 2026-08-24  

The Colorado State Open Thread is for people who are interested in, have ever lived in, are curious about, have perhaps heard about or might have passed through our square(ish) state at some point in their past, present or future lives. Or maybe have dreamed about visiting but never managed to come here yet, but maybe will. I happen to be sitting here and I just took the picture from my deck and I am feeling rather positive about the state where I have lived the majority of my life, though I can understand it might not be the same way you might feel about it (I have a long-time friend who had his car stolen over the weekend and he was fired from his job today, so he’s feeling a bit differently than I am right now).

I hope most of you are feeling good about where you are in life, where you’re living (especially if it’s in Colorado), who you’re sharing it with and your prospects for what your future holds. In the meantime, I’m going to ramble on about a few things I’ve been noticing about some things that have to do with some Colorado related items.

Tina Peters did not just go away, never to be heard from again.

I know, I know. You may have been hoping that Governor Polis may have been some secret master deal maker when he agreed to let Tina Peters, the election-denier and former county clerk from Mesa County who was serving nine years for having let people tamper with the election counting machines under her care out on parole but now she pinky-swore she was all through with all that business and wouldn’t do anything to make Polis regret letting her out early. Well, she didn’t waste any time in getting back onto the airwaves and start in on claiming the 2020 Colorado elections were rigged and by gosh and by golly she was going to help a California elections official out in California (Shasta County). The man, Curtis, is also an election integrity skeptic who had been so bad that he lost his election to retain his seat to run the elections in his county but he still gets to run them through the end of the year, though he has been censured by the county board and a county measure he supported that is designed to “improve” election integrity has run afoul in the courts because it goes against state law in several ways.

The Colorado Sun has much more on the subject – not just that Tina Peters is in California and appearing on podcasts and with Donald Trump claiming that the 2020 elections were fraudulent again and again, but also going through descriptions on what it might take for Tina Peters to be able to work again in the field of elections again (which is not specifically against the conditions of her parole).

Why is the state letting her travel to conferences spreading election conspiracies, and could she return to the same field she was convicted of undermining? The conditions of her parole terms do not hold her back. If Peters wants to get back into working in elections, there are no restrictions in her parole agreement that would prevent her from returning to election work, the Colorado Department of Corrections told The Colorado Sun. “There are no specific restrictions regarding the type of employment Ms. Peters may obtain; however, any employment must be consistent with her existing parole agreement conditions and any other applicable court orders,” Christian Andrade, a spokesperson for the DOC, said in an email. … The registrar of voters in Shasta County, California, Clint Curtis, has said he plans to hire Peters before this year’s midterm elections to work as a consultant or assistant registrar of voters. Assuming she would work there in person, that would involve a two-step process to transfer her parole to California. First, Colorado would have to review a request to transfer Peters’ parole to California. Then California officials would have to decide whether to accept the transfer and assume responsibility for overseeing her parole under the rules of the Interstate Compact for Adult Offender Supervision, which Colorado participates in.

First there was OnlyMarms. Now there is Fat Marmot Week.

Those whacky researchers up in Gothic, Colorado! Trying to drum up scarce money to keep studying their subjects and trying to protect them as well, since last winter was so tough on them – some 60% of the marmots in the test area died because of the lack of snow to lay down a protective insulating layer over their burrows. Starting today, you can go to the website and vote for which marmot you like and think should be named the chunkiest (or chonkiest) marmot of the ones nominated by the researchers. The goal is to help raise money for the researchers to help them continue the research which has been going on since 1962.

GOTHIC, Colo. — Marmot scientists at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory announced the first-ever Fat Marmot Week, taking place Aug. 24-29. Similar to the famous Fat Bear Week at Katmai National Park and Preserve, the scientists in Gothic, Colorado, are inviting the public to vote for their favorite marmot in a bracket-style showdown. Marmots — the largest member of the squirrel family — can put on up to three times their body weight in summer before hibernating for five months. “It’s fun to root for the chunkiest marmot, but behind the fun and games is a deathly serious competition against nature to pile on fat to survive the long, cold winter,” Dan Blumstein, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at University of California Los Angeles, said in a July 27 press release. “Importantly, marmots give us a window on the health of high-alpine ecosystems.”

The Colorado Sun, as usual, has a more in-depth article.

But first, what even is a marmot? Anyone who has spent much time above treeline or wandering through Colorado’s alpine and subalpine country has probably encountered one: a chunky creature that looks vaguely like a beaver crossed with a house cat, perched on a rock, sunning itself, munching on vegetation or issuing a sharp whistle to warn its pals of danger. Colorado’s marmots are yellow-bellied marmots, one of six species of marmot found in North America. They are the largest member of the squirrel family. They are also the largest of the true hibernators. Bears, contrary to popular belief, aren’t considered “true” hibernators. They enter a state of torpor — a period of dramatically reduced metabolism and activity — but their body temperature doesn’t drop nearly as much as that of true hibernators, allowing them to wake relatively quickly if disturbed. Marmots, meanwhile, sleep hard all winter. They snuggle into burrows sometime in October and spend six or seven months underground. When they wake up in April or May, their sole purpose is turning as much vegetation as possible — marmots are vegans! — into enough fat to survive the next winter’s slumber. Since 1962, researchers have followed individually marked yellow-bellied marmots around Gothic from birth to death, recording their behavior, survival and social lives. The Marmot Project is now the world’s second-longest-running study of individually marked mammals, behind only Jane Goodall’s famous chimpanzee research.

Lastly, I have a bit of a personal lament. I’m curious to know if you also react this way to new people you meet. You’re in a group and you’re talking to people and you find someone that you find interesting and maybe they would be someone you might have some shared interests with. As you’re talking with them they mention they don’t work Fridays so they can go volunteer at the Republican party headquarters. I was just talking with someone who said this to me last Friday on a day trip to Grand Lake. Later in the conversation (it was in a group trip and we were sitting at the lunch table, so there was lots of time to chat), I mentioned something about the Odyssey and she mentioned quickly how she would never see that movie, which was a comment I was not surprised at by that point. She is definitely captured by the Republicans and when I had heard she would be volunteering for the Republicans, I immediately formed a whole string of opinions about her, fair or not, about who she was, what her biases must be on a whole host of issues and I decided it would not be worth my time to try and pursue more conversation on any other likes or interests because one way or another, the Republican biases that I immediately set out for her were too strong to get around. Sooner or later, I figure, I’d run into those and a conversation might turn unpleasant or just be something I’d rather avoid. I figure it would be best to just avoid her at all times.

I’m just wondering – do you folks put people into that type of immediate and impenetrable box if you find out they’re strong Republicans? I’m talking the kind who would donate volunteer time to the party types and not just the kind who aren’t strongly party members? I find it sad, but I wouldn’t have thought I would do so twenty or thirty years ago, but probably ever since the Bush II era, I probably have. This isn’t the first time I’ve put someone into an “avoid” box because of politics, and that’s the only reason I think I’ve done so. I don’t think I’ve done it even over religion, though I don’t think I’ve had anyone proselytize me the way I think I’ve been spoken to about politics.

Anyway, it’s just a thought, and now the floor is yours for your thoughts.

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