The Centennial Gun Club continued a years-long tradition early this month by hosting its holiday party featuring “Machine Gun Santa.”
tales from the fever swamp
Opinions
The right wing’s pseudo-concern for treatment of LGBTQ people in foreign lands doesn’t extend to Americans
I see this a lot in the Fever Swamps™. Someone posts a depiction of LGBTQ people being stoned to death or thrown off buildings in theocratic countries. The implication is that liberals just don’t care about persecution in Muslim countries. In this case the headline asks: “Where is the liberal outrage…?” To his credit, Scott Wills, a former school board member and former longtime chair of Elbert County GOP, seems to show genuine concern in his remarks:
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Former GOP candidate endorses a “hostile intelligence service” as 100% correct news source
Casper Stockham unsuccessfully ran a campaign to unseat U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Denver), and will likely run again in 2018. I’ve flagged a few of Casper’s more egregiously nutty posts, because if nothing else, he’s entertaining. Casper’s fake news beliefs are instructive, however, and represent a microcosm of how the GOP base consumes news. Here’s what he said on Facebook a few days ago:
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When you post year-old fake news as a “smoking gun” you might just be GOP
Raymond Garcia, the GOP candidate who lost races in 2014 and 2016 for the District 1 seat in Colorado’s House of Representatives, is a person who will believe literally anything he reads on the internet and happily pass it on without vetting. In this case, he posts an old “news” story from 2016 claiming a Wikileaks release proves Hillary Clinton killed James Foster as if it is brand new.
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Substituting fallacious memes for knowledge is what the GOP does best
I ran across a meme posted by Colorado House Minority Leader Patrick Neville (R-Castle Rock) making the argument that since more people die (per 100,000) from driving a Prius than by guns there should be a plan to end Prius deaths.
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When you’re anti-taxing so hard you stumble onto a perfect anti-TABOR argument
Colorado’s State Legislature is working on its yearly budget, which includes HB 1242, a bipartisan compromise that would ask voters to approve a small tax increase to provide up to 3.2 billion to address the state’s crumbling infrastructure. The hard-right wing of the Republican party in Colorado hates the deal because of their dogmatic adherence to a “no new taxes” position.
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GOP State House Representative Tim Leonard passes on anti-vaccination misinformation
I’ve written in this space about Rep. Tim Leonard (R-Evergreen) before. He is one of the most radical members of the Colorado State Legislature. Well, he’s at it again, this time posting this video with a cryptic warning to know the cost/benefit trade-off regarding vaccinating children.
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In a sea of crazy GOP legislators, one Colorado lawmaker stands out
One amusing facet of modern “conservatism” is the propensity for its members to be the very things that they purport to despise. Meet Colorado State Rep. Tim “Jailbird” Leonard (R-Evergreen), who was recently sentenced to fourteen days in jail on contempt of court charges.
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Credit where it is due files—and a request for local media
If the name Kendal Unruh rings a bell, it’s because she led a local effort to dump Donald Trump. She is one of the most conservative people you will come across and recognized early that he would damage the conservative brand. Here she is taking Trump to task for saying he would destroy the career of a state legislator when a Sheriff complained she was trying to pass legislation against civil asset forfeiture.
Opinions
Newly elected chair of Pueblo County GOP spreads fake news
Marla Spinuzzi Reichert is the newly elected chair of the Pueblo County GOP. She is also prone to posting fake news. Here are just a few of the many examples from over the last few months.