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May 24, 2022 07:00 AM UTC

Tuesday Open Thread

  • 46 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

“Aim high, and you won’t shoot your foot off.”

–Phyllis Diller

Comments

46 thoughts on “Tuesday Open Thread

  1. Trumpian anti-Biden Election Truthers Commit Electoral Fraud in Michigan. Hat Tip HC-R and TPM:

    In Michigan, the Bureau of Elections has ruled that five of the ten Republican candidates for governor in this fall’s elections are ineligible to run in the primaries. It appears that canvassers paid to collect signatures on the candidates’ nomination petitions forged signatures—68,000 of them on the paperwork of 10 candidates. All of the candidates have railed against election fraud. The board’s report says it does not believe that the candidates were aware of the scheme. Still, they should have had systems in place to catch this massive number of fraudulent signatures (some pages were apparently all in the same handwriting). The Board of State Canvassers will vote on the issue Thursday. 

    1. It’s one thing to cheat-and we’ve already established that if you want to find real election fraud, look to the Republicans- but they’re laughably bad at it! All in the same hand? SMH.

      1. A new word for me "Roundtable", meaning to pass signature forms around a table to avoid the problem that all the hand-writing looks the same.

          1. The scale of this one is unbelievable. Did these two candidates have any valid signatures?

            Craig is claiming to be a victim of deceit perpetrated by signature gathering firm. I imagine he also brags that he only hires the best.

             

    2. This makes past Colorado signature fraud look like amateur hour.

      The head of the firm hired by all five candidates was… convicted of election fraud in 2011. And how is it that five separate campaigns, for the same elected position, hired the same shady firm in the same election cycle?

      1. First Choice Contracting, the petition gathering firm at the center of the scandal, typically goes from state to state. Wonder if they’ve worked for any current Colorado campaigns?

        Their job posting is interesting- $30-40 an hour, convicted ( non-violent) felons O K. 

      2. The company submitted the low bid for the jobs?  The company had the sons and daughters of state party leaders on the payroll?  The company promised to be fair to EVERYONE in the Republican race?

         

      3. I can think of one election campaign that went one better. When Bruce Benson ran for Governor back in the 90s, it was one of his staffers who notarized the majority of his nominating petitions. The problem was the staffer wasn't a Notary.

  2. Heather Cox-Richardson on the Southern Baptist abuse scandal.

    What Cox-Richardson always does so well is proviide context. It isn't JUST about sex abuse. It is about powerful Conservative SBC leaders committing and covering up sexual abuse. It is also about how right-wing political activists took over the SBC in the late 1970s, and turned it into a Republican activist organization. The SBC has become a White-Supremacist institution, and more specifically a White-MALE-Supremacist organization.

    The Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting in 2021 was the largest one since 1995. Members rejected a hard-right leader and chose as president Ed Litton, senior pastor of Redemption Church in Saraland, Alabama, who since at least 2014 had focused on racial reconciliation. Members also called for an investigation of the escalating sex scandals, which had become so toxic after Trump’s election that In setting up an investigation, church members were leery enough of the leaders investigating themselves that they set up a task force to manage a third-party investigation. The task force hired the investigating team, Guidepost Solutions, on September 9, 2021. 

    Its report is so damning that Russell Moore’s first reaction was to say: “I was wrong to call sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention…a crisis. Crisis is too small a word. It is an apocalypse.” The investigation, he says, “uncovers a reality far more evil and systematic than I imagined it could be.” “How many children were raped, how many people were assaulted, how many screams were silenced,” he asked, “while we boasted that no one could reach the world for Jesus like we could.”

    “That’s more than a crisis,” he said. “It’s even more than just a crime. It’s blasphemy. And anyone who cares about heaven ought to be mad as hell.”

    The 13 million or more Southern Baptists have provided strong support for Republicans since the 1980s, molding to their patriarchal model that president Ronald Reagan sold with the image of the cowboy. This report has ripped the cover off the abuse that model concealed. Whether that will affect voting patterns remains to be seen, but it does seriously undermine the image of the patriarchal leader as a protector of women and children, an image on which Republicans relied. Beth Moore reacted to the report by saying: “You have betrayed your women.”

      1. It isn’t just religious organizations.

        “Halls of power”, no matter where, are overrun by sexual abusers.

        I accept that there is a special hypocrisy of being all high-minded about morality and sheltering the sexual predation of your leaders, or specifically your MALE leadership.

        Be careful about the word pervert. Consenting adults are not perverts. Sexual predators use positions of power to coerce sexual favors, and then use their power (age, wealth, status, strength, etc) to abuse the victims a second time.

  3. Closer to home …

    Teller County Sheriff reported overnight:

    The High Park Fire is now at 100% containment, thanks to our fire crews for all their hard work, great job!

    As of yesterday afternoon, the Simms fire near Montrose also got to 100% containment. 

    The only other Colorado fire at the National Interagency Fire Center site, Plumtaw Fire near Pagosa Springs got to 51% containment,

    Here’s hoping we can keep visitors from starting a whole new set of fires over the upcoming weekend.

  4. Today I'm watching the Texas District TX-28 primary between Henry Cuellar and Jessica Cisneros. Cuellar is the Conservative, anti-abortion Democrat, the only Democrat to vote against the Women's Health Care Protection Act.

    This is a situation where the Moderates are clearly on the wrong side of popular opinion. They are supporting Cuellar, while the "shrill" (to sarcastically use the mysogyny-tinged insult) Squad is on the correct and popular side. With the Supreme Court about to cancel abortion rights, I don't believe an anti-Abortion Democrat can win elections any more. You are either in favor of women's having the right to decide their own healthcare, or else you are a Right-wing troll. 

    From the Washington Post (Note again the intervention AIPAC, the right-wing Israeli lobby):

     

    But centrist groups supporting Cuellar have spent more. United Democracy PAC, founded six months ago and funded by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, put $1.8 million into the district, and Mainstream Democrats, whose major donors include LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, spent nearly $800,000.

    Also from the article:

    At least $50 million has been spent by super PACs in Democratic primaries this year [supporting the conservative candidates], more than was spent across every Democratic congressional primary in 2018 and 2020 combined. Millions went into Oregon’s 5th Congressional District, where Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.) has trailed attorney Jamie McLeod-Skinner, who ran to his left, as votes are counted in the aftermath of their May 17 primary and no winner has yet been declared.

    “You’ve run so far to the right that running against you just means I’m a Democrat,” McLeod-Skinner told Schrader, a former leader of the conservative Blue Dog Democrats, in a debate last month.

    That latter comment has to be the quote of the day!

    1. Henry Kissinger says Ukraine should cede territory to Russia to end the war and save face for Putin.

      Anybody here know how that strategy worked out for Czechoslovakia in 1938?

      Anybody?  Buehler?  Chamberlain?

      Anybody?

       

      1. I see Ukraine is rightly good and pissed about that comment. IMHO Kissinger, much like Putin, underestimates their resolve and determination.

      2. Kissinger wrote his dissertation on Metternich and the construction of a post-Napoleon Europe.  As an article in The Atlantic put is

        Even if the technology of war had changed, Kissinger implied, the task of statesmen remained the same: to construct a balance of fear among great powers as part of the maintenance of an orderly international system — a system that, while not necessarily just or fair, was accepted by the principal players as legitimate. As long as the system was maintained, no one would challenge it through revolution

        The method of that construction implied a little intervention: 

        Metternich, who did everything in his power to forestall the advent of democracy and freedom in the Hapsburg and Ottoman Empires..

        I'm thinking that Kissinger is perfectly willing to sacrifice Ukraine in order to maintain the balance he had a large part in defining and advancing — a stand-off of US & NATO versus the USSR & its client states versus the PRC & the nations in its orbit. 

    2. Those supporting Cuellar are looking at a 30 year history of winning in the district.  Unlike you, they are evaluating the actual voters of the district and betting that what happened in previous cycles will happen again.  Cisneros and her supporters are convinced a more progressive candidate can win the primary and that whoever is the Democrat will win the general election.

      So far, Cisneros has been an "almost" winner in the primary — unable to convince existing voters or find new voters who agree with the need for a more mainstream Democrat on abortion politics.  I haven't read of a flood of new registrations or a polling firm that indicates Democrat voters of the district have shifted — so I expect she will continue to be "close" and MAY win.

      1. Much of the out-of-state money is either focused on incumbent protection or "don't change what's worked". The district went 53-46 Biden, and shaving a point or two off (or picking up a point or two for a principled new face who isn't facing an FBI investigation) would not destroy our chances.

  5. If I lived in TX-28….

    I know this may surprise a few of you but I would probably vote for Jessica Cisneros today. Reproductive choice as well as some of the other social issues/culture war battle grounds would be my reason.

    But it really doesn’t matter because this seat is one of those that the Dems will likely lose in November regardless of who is nominated.

    If Cuellar wins the primary, he will have a difficult general election race because of that business with the FBI searching his house. He will also have a problem with the hard left many of whom will be pissed off and sit out the general election altogether – unless Beto miraculously makes the race against Abbott close.

    If Cisneros is the nominee, conservative Latino Catholics in the Democratic Party (i.e., Cuellar’s base) vote Republican on reproductive choice. And unaffiliates will vote Republican because of the FBI raid issue.

     

    1. Your labeling system is kind of weird.

      Supporting the right of a woman to have an abortion is a mainstream opinion, but you label it as "hard-left". White Replacement theory is a right-wing (I guess even Fascist) attack dog against immigration. I haven't seen any polling on how Latinos feel about White Replacement theory.

      You also label Latino Catholics to be conservative. Some are; some aren't. But, Catholics have opinions not much different from the populace as a whole regarding the right of a woman to an abortion. Now, there are also some Conservative Evangelical Latinos, and I dare say that they are as anti-abortion as the Conservative Evangelical White people.

      1. Psst.. LB considers you, me, Duke, and at least half the People who post on here to be “ hard left”. The label doesn’t mean much.
        Criteria for being “hard left”  : You don’t automatically hate socialists, you like Bernie Sanders,  you don’t worship Hickenlooper, you think members of the Squad fairly represent their constituents, “progressive” isn’t a dirty word. 
        LB  thinks he has some magical insight into our “hard left” thoughts and future voting behavior, even in Texas. 
         

        Mmmmm.No. 

    1. It is, of course, much too early to talk about gun control while grief and other emotions run so high.  This embargo will last until the news cycle has exhausted itself and people are back to giggling about how Johnny Depp beats his wife.

       

    2. Gov. Abbott was just complaining about being #2 in gun sales — falling behind California. 

      And this weekend is the NRA convention in Houston, where Trump, 2 US Senators from Texas, and a passel of other Texas Republicans are still on the schedule for their paeans to the Second Amendment and pledges of eternal resistance to any limitations of "commonly used" weapons.

      It is almost the end of the school year — and there have only been 30 mass killings at schools. Final body count, number injured by gunfire versus other causes during the incident, and specifics about the weapons will no doubt come clear in the next 24-48 hours.  Maybe there will be a bit more about the shooter and his connection to the school as a choice of target.  No word about when bodies will be moved from the school crime scene, when a specific cause of death will be put on a certificate, when the bodies will be available to families and the funeral homes.  Final credit for which of the various law enforcement responders deserves credit for killing the shooter will wait until a coroner's report.  School has been dismissed for the year and there won't be a determination of what will be done for the building and staff serving 600 or so students for several weeks.

      How awful that there is a known routine process for school shootings.

  6. Tucker Carlson is interviewing Dan Patrick about what caused today's shooting. Patrick says that the problem is that we need to figure "who we are as a people."

    Now they are trashing liberals for saying that "thoughts and prayers" are not enough. Patrick says that people need God.

    How has that worked out so far….

    1. Are they going to ensure the proper balance of antibiotics, chemical and hormone supplements are introduced into the products so we don't suffer withdrawal pangs?

  7. After some 60+ years and four generations, the Bush dynasty came to an end today.   

    smiley

    From the pro-choice Rockefeller Republican Senator Prescott Bush in the late 50's to his Trump ass-kissing great grandson, George P. Bush, the House of Bush is no more. It had a good run. 

    But there was no dignity at the end. (Actually, there wasn't a lot of dignity along the way, but that is another story.)

    The last Bush was more than a shameless opportunist – he basically threw his parents and the rest of his family under the bus to try to win Trump's favor and all to no avail.

     

  8. Georgia to Trump: Eat shit and die!

    The two men Trump hates most of all crushed his lickspittles tonight.  Gov. Kemp won by more than 3-1. Secretary of state Raffensperger, famous for refusing Trump’s demand to forge 11,780 votes, beat Trumpthug Hice with 51.6 pct of the vote in a five way field, eliminating the need for a runoff.

    And remember: these were the Republican voters.

    1. Actually, most of these were Republican voters but some who identified as Democrats helped.

      A good friend of mine who lives in Atlanta and is a Democrat told me that Georgia has no party registration, so their primaries are open. He supports Stacy Abrams and will vote for her in November. But since none of the Dems had contested primaries, he voted in the Republican primary for all the anti-Trump candidates.

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