Colorado is an interesting state, and some Qanon nutter winning the primary in CO-3, which is the Western Slope district, is good news for Democrats.
DENVER — A pistol-packing restaurant owner who has expressed support for a far-right conspiracy theory has upset five-term U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton in Colorado’s primary elections.
Tipton became the fourth House member to lose renomination bids this year. Republican Reps. Steve King of Iowa and Denver Riggleman of Virginia, and Democrat Daniel Lipinski of Illinois, have already been ousted by challengers.
He lost Tuesday to Lauren Boebert, the owner of a gun-friendly restaurant in a western Colorado town called Rifle. Earlier this year, Boebert said in an interview that she was “very familiar” with the QAnon conspiracy theory, but she stopped short of saying she was a follower.
“Everything that I’ve heard of Q, I hope that this is real because it only means that America is getting stronger and better, and people are returning to conservative values,” she told interviewer Ann Vandersteel.
That “Everything I’ve heard of Q” has the reek of a Facebook warrior political neophyte, and, sure enough, she’d only raised $133K as of the most recent FEC report.
Her opponent, Diane Mitsch Bush (no relation) is anything but a neophyte — she’s a former county commissioner and state legislator, and she had to raise money to win her primary. She lost to incumbent Tipton in 2018 in a district that Trump won by 52-40 (Johnson and Stein were the top two other candidates statewide), but she raised almost a million bucks this time around, just a little under Tipton’s anemic total. There are three other third party candidates in the race, including a Libertarian, and hopefully they’ll siphon off Republican voters who can’t vote for a QAnon. R+6 is winnable with a bad enough Republican and energized Democrats.
Chief Oshkosh
Has anyone checked the basement of her restaurant? I was told that they are auctioning off child sex slaves in the basement of her restaurant. That’s in the basement of her restaurant. That’s Shooters Grill, 120 E 3rd, Rifle, CO 81650. In the basement. Child sex slaves. In the basement. Next to the pizza dough.
Alison Rose
“Gun-friendly restaurant”
why is that even a phrase that exists
Wag
@Alison Rose:
I’ve not been there, but supposedly the wait staff open carries while they bring you your food.
PST
@Wag: That ensures decent tips and nothing returned to the kitchen.
namekarB
If you don’t tip, you get a serving of lead
MagdaInBlack
Somewhat startling to see my married name over and over in a post ?
The guy who lost.
Wag
@PST:
it also makes it harder to free their basement full of child sex slaves
jonas
@Alison Rose: It’s so you can be assured that all the other patrons dining there are also insecure, confused people.
Villago Delenda Est
@jonas: In short, absolute loons who should not be at large.
Frankensteinbeck
QAnon has gone way past ‘conservative values’ into ‘cloud cuckoo land’. Ms Boebert is probably not a follower, because you have to be such a wack job to believe that stuff, you can’t keep your mouth shut about it. I’ve only skirted the edge and it’s prophecies of revolution, major public figures are dead (Isn’t ‘Trump is dead and that’s a fake’ one of their things? I don’t clearly remember who it is), a vast international conspiracy of pedophiles occupying most governments, coded signals in government communications – it’s Nucking Futz. This is ‘lizard people’ level stuff.
opiejeanne
@Chief Oshkosh: Shooters Grill? In Rifle, CO? How cute.
NotMax
Overheard in Colorado republican HQ:
“Some – anyone – please, please tell me she’s not a witch!”
//
opiejeanne
@Alison Rose: My first reaction to “gun friendly restaurant” was “guns don’t eat.”
What a stupid thing to prioritize over people.
H.E.Wolf
Thank you for highlighting CO-03’s Democratic candidate for US House!
Paraphrasing my comment from an earlier post this AM:
I’d be glad to dig my 2018 list out of the archive, if it would be useful to anyone who’d like to revive that project for 2020….
Also, many thanks to O. Felix Culpa for mentioning Xochitl Torres Small, a BJ-supported Democrat, who’s running for a 2nd term in NM-02!
NotMax
@Alison Rose
Clip joint.
:)
opiejeanne
@Frankensteinbeck: One of their things is that JFK jr isn’t dead and is going to do something or other to save us all, or maybe it was he will explain it all. Well, he’s going to do something when he steps from the shadows.
How do adults believe this stuff? I mean, people who seem to be able to feed and clothe themselves?
Alison Rose
@Wag: I guess that’s understandable, you never know when the onion rings are gonna rise up in resistance.
Amir Khalid
@H.E.Wolf:
I’m curious. How do you pronounce Xochitl?
opiejeanne
@NotMax: You are too quick.
Anonymous At Work
Why only 4? What about Maloney and Engel in NY? Are those races not yet called?
Alison Rose
@opiejeanne: But think of all the poor, sad guns that didn’t have anywhere to dine out before this angel came along!!!
CliosFanBoy
@Amir Khalid: incorrectly. ;)
opiejeanne
OT, I’m in Twitter jail for posting the following, part of a conversation about how great it would be to have a continuation of the League of Their Own movie about the three black women who played in the Negro Leagues. Someone must have reported me, but I’m not sure what the complaint was. The use of the word “Negro” maybe?:
Alison Rose
@Amir Khalid: I had wondered this before and found this video a while back. It’s interesting because she gives some history of the name, as well! (tl,dc – “So-chee”)
opiejeanne
@Amir Khalid: I’m going to guess it’s Zo-cheat-ul.
opiejeanne
@Alison Rose: Ha! I was wrong.
So the “tl” are silent?
Leto
@opiejeanne: Why JFKjr? Why not Reagan? Or some other dead conservative idol? Charlton Heston rising from the crypt, gun in hand, to lead the revolution? Just insane shit.
Kay
We had an actual run in with Q people in this county before I knew what Q was. Ok, just the outlines. They decided that this local woman, who is AA, had been taken as a child from Milwaukee (kidnapped) sent thru central America as part of a child sex trafficking ring, and then ended up living here.
None of this was true and none of it made sense- the woman was the wrong age for one thing- by a decade. However, they so completely cowed local law enforcement with these insane demands that the women consented to DNA testing just to get these crazy freaks to leave her alone.
Elite Republicans may be chuckling about their zany base now, and seeking to exploit it for political gains, but they will rue the day they ever let these people in. They’re nutty, dangerous cultists and they cause harm.
Republicans probably think their shitty, low quality Party can’t get worse after Trump. Oh, IT CAN. It can be a Q Party and it will be a Q Party. They ain’t seen nothing yet.
NotMax
@opiejeanne
May want to hold back on the 13th of this month from wishing a happy Statehood Day to Montenegro.
;)
Leto
@opiejeanne: Inconsistent application of “rules” on Twitter/social media is just part and parcel of the experience. Also getting any sort of explanation of why is always a source of constant frustration.
Another Scott
@Alison Rose: There are some excellent tortilla chips by the same name. They have a pronunciation key on the bag – “sō’-cheel”. So they seem to be telling (roughly) the same story.
Cheers,
Scott.
Oklahomo
@opiejeanne: I got twitter jail once for posting pictures of fresh horse poop at Trump. But miracle of miracles I appealed and they overturned it. A bunch of the MAGAs had reported it as spam.
laura
@opiejeanne: How do adults believe this stuff?
What won’t people believe? Back in the day the fixation on sex abuse in the McMartin school was an 11 on the crazification charts and yes, it featured a tunnel. Lives and reputations were destroyed, wrongful convictions – just the whole enchilada. Check out Anatomy of a Panic.
https://youtu.be/2R21tWs-qCw
NotMax
@Amir Khalid
As nobody else bit, “Mangrove Warbler.”
opiejeanne
@NotMax: Good call.
Honestly, do they not read the tweets that are reported? I explained in my appeal that that is the real name of the museum in KC. I’m half amused and half pissed off right now.
I got kicked off of a family forum 20 years ago, called Pioneers of Camden County. Most of them weren’t my hillbilly relatives, only a few, and I was glad not to be related to the ones who got me kicked off because of some trivial beef with another woman, when I defended her after she was kicked off. I said she hadn’t done anything wrong and BOOM! I was out. One of them had the nickname Hubcap Diane, but it really should have been Rusted Appliances on the Porch Diane, based on photos of her family’s “homestead”, but I never talked that way on the forum.
Aleta
OT, except for elections here matter
Kay
Here’s the heartbreaking part. The child in Milwaukee? That was a real little girl. She disappeared and Milwaukee police were criticized for not putting enough effort into finding her, and the AA community said they didn’t look for her because she was AA.
So the nutter Q cult members raised the hopes of the family who lost that little girl with their nutjob theory that she had turned up in rural Ohio. So, that’s the victim count. The AA woman who lives here who they stalked and harrassed insisting she was someone else until she finally gave in to their demands and had DNA testing, and the extended family of the real little girl in Milwaukee who disappeared.
All of these victims of this Q conspiracy are AA.
rk
@opiejeanne:
Right wing republicans are completely crazy. I work with a lot of die hard Trump supporters. One woman thinks that the democrats colluded with the Chinese and created the corona virus to destroy Trump’s economy. Plus she posts all sorts of conspiracy theories on FB. She thinks that if Trump loses she’ll be in a concentration camp. She believes the deep state thinks that she’s a threat because she is a “truth teller”.
I’ve never heard her talk of Q (much of the time I try to avoid her). But how is her regular stupidity different from the Q nonsense? At this point I’d say I never meet any sane republicans. Even the best of them are irrational.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Alison Rose: Presumably it’s a black holster dinning outfit.
rp
Wait, King lost? How did I miss that?
Leto
@Kay: They were already rue’ing it when they let in the Tea Party. The Republican Party, at all levels, simply let themselves be consumed by this. They had a chance to remain somewhat normal but gave in to all it in their desire to keep/advance their power. Not sure what’s going to replace it, but any of the Never Trumpers/old guard who are trying to re-right the ship… well there are plenty of bridges to be sold.
Johnny Gentle (famous crooner)
@Frankensteinbeck: It’s the type of thing that if, ten years ago, you wrote it up and surveyed republicans whether the person stating it was in need of psychiatric treatment, they’d probably all say yes. They went from conservative to ultra-conservative to just plain psychotic.
What’s truly scary is that this is how they are with Trump, Barr and McConnell running the country. What happens if Biden wins? If they believed Trump was the only thing keeping the “secret cabal of child molesters” at bay, what happens when you take Trump out of the picture? The delusional, paranoid people who believe in Q are also heavily armed, violent, anarchic and bigoted. Things are going to get so much worse than they were even just a few years ago when the tea partiers’ now-quaint brand of crazy was ruining everything.
Kay
What still amazes me about the Trump capture of the GOP is how weak they all are. From the moment he rode down that elevator they have acted as people with no agency at all.
They are HOPING bad Daddy voluntarily steps down. They’re delusional- this is the best grift he’s ever run and he isn’t giving it up without issuance of a warrant, but more than that, how did it happen that they all gave their entire political party to a sleazy NYC real estate developer? They are powerless before his awesomeness. They just have to HOPE he…goes away.
Gravenstone
My first thought on hearing about her was this is a data point for how the Republican party is contracting and hardening around the extremist positions. At least in her specific neck of the woods. If this is reflective of a more broad trend, then November may be very interesting indeed. Lots of Democratic pick ups, but what Republicans are elected will likely be (or remain) extremists.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@opiejeanne: Allegedly it involves unleashing clones of Richard Nixon, Eisenhower and Ford,
They call it Republication.
Alison Rose
@opiejeanne: The T definitely is, sometimes when she says it, I can kind of hear the L, but she spells it out phonetically like So-Chee, so maybe it depends on the sentence?
piratedan
@H.E.Wolf: I think that Hiral Tipernemi running in AZ-05 may have a better shot at unseating the resident wingnut madamme who holds that position, but will let those who may live in her district weigh in.
Leto
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
From the shitty band Red Hot Conservative Peppers. “Dream of Repub-li-catioooonnnnn…”
NotMax
@Enhanced Voting Techniques
Zombie Harding is eligible for a second term.
:)
opiejeanne
@laura: I think the McMartin story started out credible, a thing QAnon has never been.
I remember the McMartin hysteria, which at first report was shocking but believable, but then it just became a confusing mess of very implausible accusations. Parents at the time were very nervous about people their kids came into contact with because this was when so many molestation stories were hitting the news, and not just about the Catholic priests. We lived in a neighboring county and knew a Methodist minister who worked in counseling who was accused by a child and ended up in prison, but there were other stories about Boy Scout troop leaders, camp counselors, a teacher in our school district, and other people with access to children. The teacher got off because he had the best damned lawyer in town, and used her own young son in the courtroom to have the accused demonstrate how he hugged children in his classroom, and the judge fell for it. There was no jury, at the request of the defense, just the judge. The accused was turned in by two teachers at the school where they all worked, and more than one child verified the unwanted touching.
trollhattan
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
FWIW Tehama County is in the running for the Trumpiest part of the Trump-loving portion of California.
Jeffro
@Kay: it’s a great point, Kay.
” if you want to save your party from complete destruction in November… well, I guess that’s on you to get up off of your lazy asses.
– Best wishes, the Democratic party“
Betty Cracker
@Leto: According to RollingStone, the Q loons fixated on JFK Jr. because of a positive quote about Trump that was erroneously attributed to him. Also, there’s a Trump super-fan who has attended multiple rallies who they think is JFK Jr. He looks less like JFK Jr. than I do — here he is:
These people have just gone round the bend.
Sab
@Amir Khalid: The corn chips with the same name are pronounced “ko-sheel.”
danielx
@namekarB:
I believe the Spanish phrase is “plata o plomo” – silver or lead.
Anonymous At Work
@Kay: People like Kristol are so quick to forget that Trump and his entire WH would have to issue themselves blanket pardons and hope NY state and a few other states decide not to press charges if they step down. Only by being President for another 4 years will Trump toll all Statutes of Limitations against him, for everything but Crimes against Humanity.
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
Uhhhhhh.
Dead-ringer for JFK Jr or Andy Kaufmann stage persona? Experts disagree. Political performance theater seems so ’60s, do they have any plans to levitate the Pentagon?
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
Looks like the love child of Eric Roberts and Daniel Radcliffe.
jonas
@opiejeanne: It’s not far from Parachute. Really.
opiejeanne
@trollhattan: Surprised they didn’t find a couple more bodies where he lived, as they so often do with shooters like this: the wife, the parents, the in-laws, the neighbors.
Jager
@NotMax:
Plenty of magazines too.
Villago Delenda Est
@NotMax: No! “Magazine joint”.
mrmoshpotato
@Alison Rose:
Because of all of the discrimination guns have suffered through the years?
Maybe they have private party rooms for ammosexuals to have gun-humping orgies?
Sab
@Sab: I misremembered. It’s So-sheel.
Kelly
Oregon Q Republican Jo Rae Perkins has no chance against Jeff Merkley. The papers say Georgia Q Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene has a very good chance of winning a House seat. Now this one in Colorado. Wonder what the Rt is on this infection.
Baud
@Frankensteinbeck:
This is what happens when you ban prayer in schools.
mrmoshpotato
@namekarB:
And the dishes wouldn’t even think of running away with the spoons.
trollhattan
@opiejeanne:
Right? Maybe they’re still compiling a list of single-wides he’s resided in the last five years.
Kay
@Anonymous At Work:
I don’t really believe that. There is no institution that has failed in regards to the Trump Family like the legal system has failed. They didn’t prosecute Epstein even when they had him. The Trump Family will continue to enjoy immunity. The best we can do is get rid of them in public life.
Aleta
https://www.newscentermaine.com/article/life/uber-driver-denies-unmasked-riders-fired-for-complaints/97-80794869-0c8b-4aa1-8ec8-e340d4e6fed5
Baud
@Alison Rose:
An armed restaurant is a polite restaurant.
Citizen Alan
@Oklahomo: I just got suspended permanently on Twitter. I don’t even know which post caused it and honestly don’t care. Twitter brings out the absolute worst in me, so maybe this is a sign to wash my hands of it for good.
Kay
@Kelly:
It’ll spread unchecked. We are right now watching the Republican Party fail to do test and trace re: Q. It’ll burn thru the whole base by 2024.
It’s going exactly like the Trump epidemic did.
Alison Rose
@Baud: True. I’ve always considered draping one’s self in weaponry to be a sign of loving kindness.
Roger Moore
@opiejeanne:
I think in some cases it’s a form of mental illness. There’s a member of my extended family who has gotten sucked into conspiracy theories, and that’s how it seems to me. She’s a very smart person, and to some extent I think her own intelligence is working against her. She’s fantastic at seeing patterns other people can’t see. Sometimes that’s really valuable, since she can solve problems other people can’t understand. Other times the patterns she’s seeing aren’t there and it sucks her down into a nest of delusions. It’s actually really scary to see her shift gears when she starts talking about the conspiracy stuff she believes in.
Ken
@Alison Rose: Iin 15th-century Spanish orthography, ‘x’ was the English ‘sh’ sound, though it’s changed since. Then in Nahuatl to make the ‘tl’ sound, position your mouth for ‘t’ but instead of just the tip of your tongue, flatten the end against that ridge behind your front teeth. There will be some release of air at the sides.
None of which has anything to do with how a person’s name is pronounced in 21st-century Colorado.
Fair Economist
@Baud:
You joke, I think, but I wonder about this dealing with my son, who at least used to believe Queen Elizabeth II is an alien space lizard (he won’t talk about it with me anymore). I wonder if there just is a certain fraction of the population that’s going to believe crazy stuff and if religion isn’t available they go for something else.
That said, religions are always less problematic when they are minorities so splitting the nutters into a bunch of different cults might be a good thing.
mrmoshpotato
@rp:
Your brain was overloaded with 4 years of Russthuglican bullshit and involuntarily started blocking shit from memory? :)
Kay
@Roger Moore:
There’s family members of Q cultists on Twitter who support one another. I sometimes read Trump Twitter and there’s a ton of overlap. It’s really sad.
eric
@Kay: i disagree with you on this. the current iteration of DOJ may be corrupted, but I do not think a Biden-DOJ will be compromised when it comes to Trump. What this means: even if Trump pardons himself and his family, he will not pardon all of the other players, who will be targets. Plus, with a pardon, Trump would have to testify truthfully to any Congressional hearing, which he cannot do because he is incapable. Lying to Congress with a Biden-DOJ is not the same as lying today. I think Trump stays hoping he dies as president. There is no way his post-presidency does not involve the serious risk of jail time of some sort.
Redshift
@Frankensteinbeck:
I wouldn’t be so sure. Amanda Chase, the wackadoodle who could be the GOP nominee for governor of Virginia next year, recently posed in front of a Q flag, but manages not to talk about it all the time. (She has plenty of other insane beliefs to talk about.)
She could just be exploiting them and not be a follower, but that seems to be a slippery slope from what I’ve observed.
Ken
I think it correlates better with the declining number of pirates.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Betty Cracker: According to Wikipedia, JFK was born in 1917. Talk about old white men!
Kelly
and the Tea Party epidemic before the Trump epidemic. Republican mental hygiene needs some work.
Baud
@Fair Economist:
I could probably make some extra money by getting into the messiah business.
Kelly
@Baud: Worked for L Ron Hubbard
Dorothy A. Winsor
I grew up in Detroit. What I learned about guns was that if I saw one, I should run as fast and far as I could.
I’ve said before I have a friend who was an FBI agent. It freaks me out even to be around her gun.
Suzanne
@opiejeanne: Yes, it’s essentially “ZOH-chee”. I have a few people in my circle with that name. Also Xitlali. Love those Aztec names.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@MagdaInBlack: How did your name get married?
Cheryl from Maryland
@opiejeanne: I was “under observation” at Facebook for the phrase “white trash.” Such babies — “Honkey” as well as the clip of SNL with Richard Pryor and Chevy Chase were okay. No one knows the classics anymore.
Another Scott
@Redshift: Yup.
https://bluevirginia.us/2020/06/republican-2021-va-gubernatorial-candidate-amanda-chase-poses-in-front-of-q-anon-flag
So much winning…
Cheers,
Scott.
opiejeanne
@Dorothy A. Winsor: JFK Junior.
Feathers
@opiejeanne: No the McMartin case did not start out creditably. Saying that because there are child molesters in the world, this means a specific person is a child molester is QAnon thinking at its finest.
These childcare abuse cases had a similar pattern. There is an ambiguous event which could potentially have been abuse. In the McMartin case, this was a child with painful bowel movements. The child denies that there was abuse. Parent is not convinced. Goes to the police. Situation escalates quickly, without any room on the law enforcement side to believe that there was ever any possible explanation than abuse. The investigation expands and more children become involved. Law enforcement brings in special therapists to help children “recover” their memories. Of course, we now understand that the therapies used will implant false memories in almost any child they are used on.
The real horror is that these children still believe that they were abused. I don’t know the specifics of the McMartin case, but I have heard this from people who worked on the parole hearings in the Fells Acre case in Massachusetts.
Something that hasn’t come up enough in the Defund the Police movement is that forensic science is at its core, not based on science at all. It was all police and prosecutors and the scientists who worked for them making shit up and seeing if a jury would believe it. There have been reform attempts, but, like policing in general, there is undoubtedly a need to start from scratch with the science involved. Which might mean a new level of professionalism in this field as well as policing.
Feathers
@Frankensteinbeck: At least the lizard people fantasies have some charm.
*Obviously not for the friends and families of those who entertain them.
Kay
@eric:
It brings me no pleasure to say this, but our justice system has some serious corruption problems regarding protecting powerful people from consequences:
We have two things going on at the same time, and have for 20 years. We absolutely hammer blue collar crime and grant immunity on white collar/crimes of the powerful. They were vulnerable to capture by Trump because they were weak going in. A sturdier, healthier institution would have resisted infection.
Jinchi
It’d be hilarious if Trump lost because his “Fake News!” fanbase was convinced that he wasn’t the real DJT.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@opiejeanne:
Oh. That’s different! LOL
Anonymous At Work
@eric: Agreed. The four scariest words in The Hamptons right now are: Attorney General Elizabeth Warren.
Miss Bianca
I’m not that psyched about Mitsch Bush’s chances this time round, either. Then again, I was told that my primary choice – admittedly, a MOR white guy, who I think stands a far better chance of being elected in my supremely gerrymandered district than a MOR white woman – was “a Denverite foisted on us by the state Democratic Party”, as one eager beaver emailed me this morning.
Welp. This time around might be different. We’ll see. Last time we had a Democrat in this seat was John Salazar, brother to former Senator and Secy of the Interior Ken Salazar. Since the largest Democratic demographic in this district would be the Hispanic one in the San Luis Valley, where Salazar hails from, I keep hoping that another Hispanic candidate will pick up the Dem baton here some day.
John S.
@Roger Moore: Unfortunately, this perfectly explains one of my brothers.
opiejeanne
@Feathers: Painful bowel movements was not how it was described initially. I remember something like the kid had a sore bottom which made the parents suspicious, but I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to the more detailed and lurid reporting. But yeah, if it was bowel movements that started it I agree, that’s not enough. The kid denying it can go either way because of the shame of admitting it; the ensuing hysteria, infant sacrifices, etc. all of that was just unbelievable.
Now when your 11 yo son comes home from a weekend with his aunt and her new husband and he is bleeding from the anus, and he denies anything happened, well… Don’t ask how I know this.
There was a day camp counselor in one of the CA beach towns about 15 years ago, who was doing things with kids’ feet, fondling them, but no specifics were given. I was listening to a radio call-in news show that was talking about it and a woman called in to discuss the person in question, that he was a little odd but harmless, and while she was on the phone her kid told her that the guy had licked his feet. The child’s feet, not his own, and the kid thought it was weird. Her reaction was complete shock, a total freak-out on the air. The host got her off the air as gently as possible, but very quickly.
The foot-licking part had not been released by the cops, but it was part of the original complaint so the kid’s comments were credible.
Ksmiami
@Alison Rose: No the Deep Fried pickles have more cause to rebel…
cckids
@opiejeanne:
My favorite Q theory is that Trump’s random cApitalizaTions in tweets are a genius code they need to break.
Miss Bianca
@Jinchi:
You’re right, it would be. It really fucking would! How can we promote this meme? I don’t think I have the stomach for braving Q-Anon myself, even under a pseudonym.
mrmoshpotato
@Anonymous At Work:
LOL
Geminid
Xochitl Torres-Small was born in Portland OR, as Leanna Torres. Her brother was named Quetzal, and when she was six she asked her parents if she could pick an Aztec name and chose Xochitl, which means flower. Her paternal great grandmother grew up speaking an Aztec related language. From an Indian Country Times article. She is married to Nathan Small, a New Mexico state legislator.
Roger Moore
@Feathers:
This is a vital point. There’s a lot of stuff that falls into the category the Richard Feynman would call cargo cult science. It has the trappings of science, but it doesn’t get the important stuff- intellectual honesty and public criticism- correct. Some of it has turned out to be relatively OK and has even managed to get some real scientific evidence behind it, but a lot of it is total junk.
I think a huge reason DNA evidence has been such a huge deal is that it’s the first big forensic technique that wasn’t invented this way. It was perfected by scientists for scientific pursuits, and was only applied to criminal investigations after the details had been worked out. There’s still a risk of bad statistics- people miss the difference between getting a match between a sample and an existing suspect vs. pulling a match from a DNA database- but we know the underlying science is sound.
rikyrah
Throw money into this race. Make them fight for every seat.
The Moar You Know
@trollhattan: Kern County’s Oaf Keeper Conshutshunal Sherf will have an invitation for a duel to death in your inbox soon for daring to suggest that any county loves Trump more than his does.
H.E.Wolf
Yes! Thank you for mentioning her. Hiral Tiperneni – I always have to look up the spelling of both names – is an M.D. and is running for this seat for the 2nd time.
Here’s her campaign website:https://hiralforcongress.com/
Lacuna Synechdoche
WaPo via mistermix:
I don’t know why, but whenever I read her name I hear it in my head as “Lorena Bobbitt.”
Michael Cain
Rifle, CO still remembers Black Sunday, when Exxon closed their oil shale operation and fired 2,000 people. Shooters Grill is a schtick to pull in hunters in season and I-70 tourists between Glenwood Springs and Grand Junction. They’ll happily sell you a franchise these days. Colorado’s 3rd is a huge sprawling district. To win, she’ll have to sell the schtick to unaffiliated voters in places like Pueblo and the San Luis Valley. I’ll be surprised if she can.
Feathers
@opiejeanne: I was around at the time and did follow the “lurid” reporting, but also the coverage from the civil libertarians alarmed by how the defendants in these cases were railroaded.
The child was examined by doctors during the initial visit and no signs of sexual abuse were found. The mother was an alcoholic who died from liver disease three years later, before the trial began. She was also certainly schizophrenic, claiming that the elderly owner of the daycare, which her son had attended for 10 days had taken the child to a church, where the woman beheaded a baby and forced the toddler to drink its blood. Somehow this did not throw doubt on her testimony. Yes, the children of mentally ill alcoholics can be abused by their caregivers, but the only evidence cannot be that parent’s testimony. (The child could not correctly identify the man accused of abusing him.)
I completely and 100% believe that abuse and rape are under reported and under prosecuted in this country. However, that doesn’t mean that a law enforcement officer who wants to catch child rapists can just throw aside the need for evidence and investigation if a parent shows up saying their child was abused.
You have to believe the victims, you have to believe them when they say they were abused and you have to believe them when they say they were not abused.
Michael Cain
An interesting factoid about Colorado’s 3rd Congressional district being sprawling. The fastest way to drive from the northwest corner to the southeast corner quite literally passes at least briefly through each of the other six districts.
Miss Bianca
@Michael Cain: Makes me wonder if the current CO-3 will even exist after 2020 – aren’t we supposed to get some redistricting after the Census? God, I hope so – it’s so fucking nonsensical the way the district is carved up and meanders in this arbitrary way across the Continental Divide and back. There is no way that Pueblo and Westcliffe should be in the same district as Grand Junction.
Feathers
@opiejeanne: See, this whole foot licking thing has nothing to do with the McMartin case, yet you are using it as evidence that the police and prosecutors were justified in what they did.
Here’s what looks like a very detailed description of the trial and the events leading up to it, including witness testimony and timelines, put together by a law professor who teaches a famous trials class. Famous Trials: McMartin Preschool
The allegations that starting this sad farce were as true as the Pizzagate garbage. Real children are being abused, getting sucked into conspiracy ravings harms them terribly.
Robert Sneddon
@Geminid: A friend had twin boys, she named them Xanthe and Xavier.
NotMax
@Robert Sneddon
¿Dos equis?
;)
Roger Moore
@Miss Bianca:
The underlying problem is there just aren’t enough people on the Western Slope. You probably want to include the whole Western Slope in a single district, but you’ll need to add a slice of Front Range to get the population high enough for a district. It’s going to be an ugly district one way or another.
J R in WV
@H.E.Wolf:
We have supported Xochi in her first successful run, and again on her current re-election run!
laura
Ray Buckey spent 5 years in the California State prison identified as a child molester. I cited the case as an example of how gullible people can be and how common it is.
I went to school with kids who had family in the Bay Area involved in the People’s Temple Church and moved to Guyana seeking a better life only to be murdered and left to rot. Late 70’s parents lost friends over Warner Erhardt and EST. In the 80’s it was the Rashnish devotees who shopped in the grocery store I worked at and boy howdy would they come unglued when I asked if the guy pictured in their big beaded necklace was their grandpa. Now I’ve got way too many Members of the Union I work for who are solid trumpers and reject any/all safe practices in this pandemic – and hastening my retirement. Some people will believe anything no matter how outlandish. Some snap out of it. Some never do.
J R in WV
Someone who actually knows has probably already made me look dumb…
opiejeanne
@
@Feathers: I wasn’t using the footlicking that way, or not intentionally. I was pointing out that parents don’t always know what’s going on.
At the same time my son denied that anything had happened to him when my sister left him alone with her husband but his behavior changed dramatically, he acted out in ways that were unusual for him. But, since he denied it we left it alone. I still don’t know if I was right to do so and that’s bleeding over into this conversation with you, and I didn’t intend that either.
you followed it more closely than I did because we had terrible things going on in our community at the time and were busy with those worries, but I did say that when I heard the really outrageous claims… never mind, I don’t remember now. I never believed any of McMartin past the first accusation.
opiejeanne
@J R in WV: I notice that with myself too. Some days more than others.
J R in WV
@Ken:
Fascinating lingual info, thanks.
But pretty sure Xochitl is elected from the southern district of New Mexico.
J R in WV
@H.E.Wolf:
We have been supporting HIral since the 2018 race. I think she has a good chance this time!
opiejeanne
@laura: Branch Davidians. Koresh is the only cult leader I’ve encountered, that I know of. He tried to talk to us on the steps of the Riverside Main Library. I didn’t see the appeal at the time. When we didn’t embrace him immediately (because he looked and sounded like a kook) he cursed us in a Biblical manner, shaking his sandals and walking away while telling us what he was doing.
There are people who feel lost, who are hungry for an authority figure to tell them how to be, and that’s dangerous to them.
I know that’s how people are caught up in cults, but as an ex cult member said to me years ago, he was asked to eat a whole elephant, so to speak, but only a little bite at a time. The Q people are eating the elephant in one go, and that’s what I don’t get.
J R in WV
@opiejeanne:
If the allegations include a tunnel, and there is no tunnel, isn’t that the end of the whole thing? Plus the dead babies, but no missing babies? No sign of bonfires including dead bodies?
So many holes in the case from beginning to end. I always thought the cops that went along with that were as crazed as the parents who went off the deep end. And yes, I know that kids are sexually abused, but not usually by space aliens…
Michael Cain
@Roger Moore: Yeah, I think there will be tweaks here and there elsewhere, but the big question will be how they chop up the non-Denver Front Range urban corridor north of the Palmer Divide. We all know that’s where the new district is going to have to go.
Miss Bianca
@Roger Moore: I’m sure there are less obviously fucked-up ways to fashion the district’s boundaries, was my point.
In the meantime, I guess we’ll just have to see how well the Mitsch Bush/Tombstone Barbie match-up goes within the current CO-3.
Miss Bianca
@J R in WV:
Next you’ll be trying to tell us that there’s no way anyone could be running a child sex trafficking ring out of the basement of some pizzeria because that pizzeria doesn’t have a basement!
2liberal
i did a search and this is az-06
J R in WV
@Miss Bianca:
Well, maybe not JUST because there was no basement!! ;-)
J R in WV
@2liberal:
I will confess… I do not know the district numbers of most candidates. I’m lucky to learn their names!!!
Gary K
That is one big district! Nearly half the state’s area.
cmorenc
A striking factoid about Grand Junction (large 3rd district town in far western Colorado, and county seat of Mesa County) is that a prominent feature of the local history museum is a large glass showcase displaying the personal firearm (all pistols) of *every* single person who’s ever been Sheriff of Mesa County (including a couple of women). My older daughter lives in Grand Junction, which is a paradise for those loving outdoor activities, and which has a surprisingly lively, diverse, sophisticated array of cultural opportunities.
Amir Khalid
@Kay:
As a Malaysian, I am not happy about this.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@opiejeanne:
That isn’t true. Q has been a thing for years now. My aunt gradually got sucked in, one little bit at a time. The Q people have become her social circle. They reinforce each other.
H.E.Wolf
Thank you! Much appreciated. I hope she wins her race this November – more women in Congress with medical degrees would be very timely.