In case you missed it

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COLORADANS, UNLIKE CHRISTIE, COOL WITH MARIJUANA BIZ 

Pot made national headlines — again — in the past week. This time it was remarks by Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper that grabbed much of the attention. Ol’ Hick stood up to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Christie’s opinion that our beautiful state’s fledgling marijuana industry isn’t the kind of “quality of life” that he’d wish for in Jersey. But Hickenlooper didn’t slam Jersey when given the chance at a meeting of the Blackstone Entrepreneurs Network in the Denver Art Museum. Rather, he took the high road, asserting, with a slight air of braggadociousness, that, “I’m not surprised that we have a certain amount of jealousy from other governors. We accept that as part of the payment for success,” reports CBS4 News. U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet went so far as to invite Christie to come on out and see Colorado in person before knocking it, according to Politico, with Bennet adding one attraction is our famous “Western hospitality.” A new Quinnipiac survey of Colorado voters, meanwhile, tells us roughly a half-year into our experiment with legalization that there’s not any rampant buyer’s remorse. Just as on last Election Day, more Coloradans support the sale of recreational marijuana to anyone older than 21 than don’t. About 52 percent think legalization was a good move and 38 percent say it was a bad one. And, just like the Christie-Hickenlooper divide, Republicans and Democrats, respectively, are split — but not completely. While six of every 10 Republicans oppose the law, seven of every 10 Dems support it. That means somewhere out there, we are willing to wager, that some Republicans and some Democrats have smoked in the company of each other… hopefully not in New Jersey.

FORMER PRESIDENT OFFERS UP UGLY SOCKS TO RAISE FUNDS 

This note from George H.W. Bush caught our attention this week: “I don’t know what your guilty pleasures are in life, but one of mine is socks,” writes the former president, who, we remind you, was in the early 1990s the most powerful man in the world. “I’m a self-proclaimed sock man. The louder, the brighter, the crazier the pattern — the better! It’s usually the first thing people notice I’m wearing whenever I’m out in public and that’s the way I like it. So when Chairman Reince Priebus asked me to write to you on behalf of the Republican National Committee (RNC), I told him I’d be happy to do it. But on one condition: my letter to you had to involve socks.” And so, we learn after a long — and somewhat long-winded — fundraising plea that strikes several partisan political chords, that for a $35 donation you may well receive your very own pair of “limited-edition” Bush socks, endorsed by the man himself. And fancy they are … or unabashedly ugly. We’ll let you be the judge of whether orange socks with yellow, green, and blue stripes, a Republican elephant and Bush’s John Hancock are tacky or timeless. Either way, we kid you not.

CITY OF BOULDER TO GET ‘MANAGER FOR RESILIENCE’ 

Every city has its ups and downs and Boulder is no exception. While the ups always inspire us, let’s focus momentarily on the downs. For here, too, do we have economic downturns, social inequities, wildfires, floods and… you name it. But is life meant to be hard … and then you die? Maybe it doesn’t have to be so bad. Such aforementioned “chronic stresses” and “acute shocks,” as the city of Boulder calls them, don’t have to be taken lying down. That’s because Boulder has been selected as an inaugural city in the “100 Cities Initiative,” a Rockefeller Foundation-backed idea to help municipalities around the globe face the more daunting challenges of the 21st century. As part of the partnership, Boulder receives “funding to hire a chief resilience officer (Assistant City Manager for Resilience) who will lead the development and implementation of the city’s resilience strategy,” according to a city press release. The city will also get technical support and “access to a platform of resilience-building tools and resources.”

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