8 thoughts on “Friday Open Thread”

1. “He’s a business man” they said…

   “The foregoing does not purport to be an exhaustive list,” the document warned.

   Donald Trump’s New Business Partners Just Published A Damning List Of All His Failures

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   1. Reading this it's a wonder that anyone would put money in it.

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2. More evidence that the Republican Party is a corrupt, anti-democracy movement. (HT Heather Cox-Richardson):

   Today, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol sent a letter to Representative Barry Loudermilk (R-GA), asking for his voluntary cooperation in their investigation. The committee members believe he has “information regarding a tour you led through parts of the Capitol complex on January 5, 2021,” the day before the January 6 insurrection.

   The letter goes on to say that there have been public reports of both individuals and groups gathering information about the layout of the U.S. Capitol before January 6. In response to those allegations, the committee’s letter says, “Republicans on the Committee on House Administration—of which you are a Member—claimed to have reviewed security footage from the days preceding January 6th and determined that ‘[t]here were no tours, no large groups, no one with MAGA hats on.’ However, the Select Committee’s review of evidence directly contradicts that denial.

   Ouch.

    

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   1. HCR Continues:

      Loudermilk and the ranking member (that is, the top Republican member) of the Committee on House Administration, Rodney Davis of Illinois, released an odd nondenial, saying, "A constituent family with young children meeting with their Member of Congress in the House Office Buildings is not a suspicious group or 'reconnaissance tour’…." 

      Notably, the committee did not use the words “reconnaissance tour.” As well, there is a rhetorical sleight of hand here: a hypothetical tour with a family and young children is presented here as innocuous…but the Republicans’ statement doesn’t say that’s actually what happened, although it seems clear that’s the conclusion the authors hope a reader will draw. It implies that Loudermilk simply gave a tour to a family with young children, without saying so. It’s a classic nondenial, a construction that makes Loudermilk look like a victim of an overzealous critic by deflecting attention from the central question. 

      The statement goes on to say that the committee is “pushing a verifiably false narrative that Republicans conducted reconnaissance tours on Jan[uary] 5th. The facts speak for themselves; no place that the family went on the 5th was breached on the 6th, the family did not enter the Capitol grounds on the 6th.” 

      So… Loudermilk did, in fact, take people around on January 5, despite denials from the Republicans on the Committee on House Administration, who claimed to have reviewed security footage, saying there were no tours? And despite the fact the Capitol complex was closed to the public because of the pandemic? 

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   2. Boebert led her extended family on Capitol tours in December 2020 and January. 2021. So yes, there were at least 2 fairly young children. 
      Who else was included on Boebert’s tours, and why? 
      Moderatus? Any inside info?

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3. Catching up on primary results in other states this morning, and finding that a number of Republican incumbents — including some in their state chamber’s legislative leadership team — are losing the elections to challengers from the right.  AP News and Ballotpedia list “more conservative” [more accurate would be “Trumpier” or “more extreme MAGA”] victories in Republican primaries for legislative seats of

   • Idaho
   • Indiana
   • Kentucky
   • North Carolina
   • Pennsylvania
   • West Virginia

   Any likelihood of that happening in Colorado’s primary for House and Senate seats?

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   1. Well, there is a question in CD4, where MAGATS suspected Ken Buck might be slipping toward the Mussolini side of the Fascist spectrum and primaried him with a full Hitler clone.

      Sigh.

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4. It seems that the archbishop of San Francisco has taken time from his busy schedule of molesting altar boys to say Nancy Pelosi can’t receive communion because she is pro choice on abortion.

   Gee, it was about this time 59 years ago that I left deism in general and Roman Catholicism in particular.

   Better late than never, Nancy.

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