Wednesday Open Thread

13 thoughts on “Wednesday Open Thread”

1. George Santos (or whatever his real name is) has been arrested!!!!!!

   Does my little heart good. 

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2. NBC news did a full review of the Woodland Park School Board yesterday.

   ‘Trump was great at this’: How conservatives transformed a Colorado school district

   These rapid and sweeping shifts weren’t coincidental — instead it was a plan ripped from the MAGA playbook designed to catch opponents off guard, according to a board member’s email released through an open records request.

   “This is the flood the zone tactic, and the idea is if you advance on many fronts at the same time, then the enemy cannot fortify, defend, effectively counter-attack at any one front,” David Illingworth, one of the new conservative school board members, wrote to another on Dec. 9, 2021, weeks after they were elected. “Divide, scatter, conquer. Trump was great at this in his first 100 days.”

   The leaders of the Woodland Park School District are enacting an experiment in conservative governance in the middle of a state controlled by Democrats, with little in the way so far to slow them down.

   I fully expect Ken Witt & company of RWNJs to be as successful in this endeavor as they were in the earlier efforts in Jefferson County.  Short-term electoral success, rapid conservative movement in the schools, and then massive turnaround. Colorado Pols told the tale in a February 2022 story on Colorado Pos,

   As recently as the early 2000s, Jeffco was home to more Republican elected officials than Democrats. This started to change in the 2010s, speeding up considerably following the 2013 election of three controversial school board members — Ken Witt, John Newkirk, and Julie Williams — who angered the entire county from the first day they took office. Witt, Newkirk, and Williams were recalled by huge margins in 2015, a seismic event that presaged Jeffco’s shift to a blue county. Republicans in Jefferson County government, meanwhile, kept racking up terrible headlines for seat jumping and general corruption/incompetence, which only hastened the Party’s demise. Today, the only Republicans elected to non-municipal offices in Jeffco are State Rep. Colin Larson and Sheriff Jeff Shrader, who is term-limited this year.

   In the 2022 election, “Larson (Republican Party)  ran for re-election to the Colorado House of Representatives to represent District 25. He lost  in the general election on November 8, 2022.” And “Democrat Regina Marinelli, … elected Jeffco Sheriff.“

   In the longer run, I’m expecting good things in Woodland Park & Teller County.

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   1. I am impressed with Witt's ability to be such a toxic presence in education and his determination to stick with it. It takes a rare form of assholery to do this for so long.

      A reasonable human being would've taken the loss of the Jeffco Schools recall 8 years ago as a sign that their actions were wrong and should be changed. Unfortunately, folks like Witt just double down on their actions and find rubes to make a career out of their actions until they're exposed to the general public again.

      I hope Woodland Park can get rid of them and replace them with folks who actually care about public education before too much damage is done. This doesn't stop them though. Witt and his carnival of mean-spirited stupidity will just find other targets.

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3. I just saw this and came to see if anyone had posted it yet. I can’t believe Woodland Park was reckless enough to employ Witt after what that crew did to the JeffCo district. 

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4. Did the CNN Town Hall happen?  I didn’t have the tv on last night. If so, can someone sum it up in one sentence?

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   1. The town hall is set to begin at 8 p.m. ET on Wednesday, MichaelBowman.

      CNN's updated announcement

      Former President Donald Trump is set to participate in a CNN town hall on Wednesday in New Hampshire, where he’ll take questions as the frontrunner in the 2024 GOP presidential primary field.

      The town hall comes as Trump faces an indictment in New York, investigations into the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol and on the handling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence and potential charges from the investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia. He has said he will continue his campaign regardless of any criminal charges he faces.

      It also comes a day after a Manhattan federal jury found that Trump sexually abused E. Jean Carroll in 1996 and awarded her $5 million for battery and defamation. Trump called the verdict a “total disgrace.”

      This will be Trump’s first appearance on CNN since the 2016 presidential campaign.

       

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      1. Thanks, JiD.  I was a day off.  

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         1. It should be quite the fantastic lie-aplolooza!

             

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      2. He's going through some things this morning…

         Trump is whining and crying about the verdict. pic.twitter.com/2hr7xxubeU

         — Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) May 10, 2023

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         1. FYF Fat Donnie!

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            1. 

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5. Vermont's Republican governor, Phil Scott, has signed into law bills that shield abortion providers and gender affirming care. The bills also allow for continued access to mifepristone regardless of FDA action.

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6. CNN’s Town Hall w $rump- 

   $rump still insisting that he won the 2020 election. Kaitlin Collins was great, I thought. In her Hillary white pantsuit, she was not afraid to respond to Trump with “that’s not true”, “that never happened”, and other no nonsense responses to his gaslighting.

    

   Definitely not a softball interview for the Mango Maniac. 

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