Columnist. Political Consultant. Labor Agitator. Oppo Researcher. Very opposed to fascism. Founder/Past Chairman
@pwgcolorado
. Opinions my own.
#COpolitics
#F1
I hope you will read this.
I have spent the last 6 months investigating a controversial Bible college outside of Woodland Park. What started as curiosity slowly turned into fascination, and then horror.
I want to tell you about Charis Bible College. 1/
This man watched a movie where nativist whites are first portrayed as villains, then revealed to be the patsies of moneyed interests who use them to violently keep immigrant communities in their place and not disrupt the social order, and he came away with "see? immigrant crime."
Vance: Has anybody seen the movie "Gangs of New York?." That is what I'm talking about, with these ethnic enclaves in our country, it can lead to higher crime rates.
Believe it or not, it actually got much worse before it got better. By 1964, 74% of respondents thought mass protests hurt the cause.
In 1966, 63% of Americans had an unfavorable view of MLK.
By 2011? Only 4%.
It also appears that the new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, is up to his neck in Christian Nationalism, of a Seven Mountains Mandate (7M) nature.
He has considerable ties to Gene Mills' Louisiana Family Foundation, an explicitly 7M organization.
A Thread.
As more came out about the Tina Peters investigation, I went back through my archives to reassess some of the weird signals that the luminaries of Boebert-world were putting out there this summer, and let me tell you...
It's like Burn After Reading meets Deliverance.
So, Southwest tried to blame the travel snarl on weather in hopes that a force majeure argument would get them out of the requirement to offer vouchers, right?
When it’s confirmed that the problem was actually internal scheduling systems, SW might owe folks a LOT of money.*
Months ago, I received some odd emails. They led me to the most intense story I have ever reported.
It's about a cult named Narrowgate, whose former leader is now an exec. with a major CO-based ministry.
I want to tell you about it.
#copolitics
1/
The fun thing about writing a column is that I occasionally publish something and then receive an email from the subject's estranged family members telling me about the cult the subject founded in the 90s.
People in general need to realize that the class of tech billionaires have been marinating in some deeply antisocial philosophies for the past decade or so and are now attempting to reorder society into a survival ark for what they believe to be a superior core group of humans.
People really need to understand how mainstream it has become in some tech VC circles to argue that journalism itself is dangerous as an idea and should be abolished, and that it will be up to the tech world to carry this out.
The other main player is Sherronna Bishop, AKA America's Mom, a semi-influencer for the seditious.
Bishop is better known for (1) being Lauren Boebert's campaign manager, and (2) loving the Proud Boys.
This year, the
@COTimesRecorder
has done something that no other outlet in the state has done: doggedly covered the advance of extremism in school districts around the state.
With school board elections 6 days away, I want to re-up some of that coverage. ⬇️
#copolitics
1/
@RateMySalad
@Harry__Faulkner
Not only do they look good, but they aren’t Mao suits, which have four pockets and a folded collar. These look more like Nehru jackets.
To give you the top line:
I think a cabal of local QAnon wingnuts with deep ties to Lauren Boebert spent too much time on Facebook and convinced themselves to commit federal election crimes.
3/
@AndyKnny
We have a great network of independent liquor stores in Colorado. Those are thriving small businesses which I feel absolutely no compulsion to displace in favor of some of the world’s largest companies.
You need to know a couple of the clowns in this clowncar to get the picture here.
Most importantly: Mesa County Clerk & Recorder Tina Peters. Ol' Tina is currently under state and federal investigation for compromising the security of voting machines.
I always assumed that people who lived through the death of an empire didn’t realize it was happening at the time—that it was the sort of thing which was only apparent with hindsight.
Turns out you can definitely tell while it’s happening!
As a general rule of thumb, no elected officials should be "partnering with" a group that is attempting to overthrow an awful election. Just a little pro tip.
Who could she possibly mean?
After unsuccessful attempts to become a lifestyle influencer over the past decade or so, Bishop, 40, rose to local prominence in Colorado's right-wing extremist circles during the hilariously ill-fated recall attempts of 2019.
It is crucial to understand that the only way to prevent this from happening here is with massive, substantial court reform — something no major political leaders are currently taking seriously.
This is going to happen here in around 2025.
Italy removes lesbian parents from children’s birth certificates amid crackdown on LGBTQ+ rights via
@yahooNewsUK
Despite the total collapse of several separate wingnut-led recall campaigns in 2019, the failed attempts served as an amazing networking opportunity for Colorado's least-hinged conservatives.
Enter Lauren Boebert.
In-N-Out Burger will soon prohibit employees at its locations in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Texas and Utah from wearing a mask unless they obtain a doctor’s note, a company representative confirmed on Tuesday.
Not familiar with the Seven Mountains Mandate? Here's an excerpt from a piece I published a few months ago.
I don't want to be dramatic, but it's probably not *great* that the person third in line to the Presidency has ties to this movement.
Five nights a week, Tucker tells his audience that there is a conspiracy to steal America from them, to steal their jobs, to murder their families, to take their rights.
You tell people things like this in order to convince them of the necessity of extreme violence.
FAST FORWARD to 2021. Boebert's goons attack the Capitol on 1/6, Sherronna Bishop continues to gain followers by peddling The Big Lie, and the brain worms continue to feed and grow.
This spring Bishop helped to organize the CO chapter of USEIP, the US Election Integrity Project.
Local lawsuit defendant and far-right agitator Joe Oltmann referred to me on his show yesterday as a political “hitman” and accused me of being responsible for two years of scrutiny being directed at him.
And I just want to say, it’s so nice to be recognized. 🫡
An unpopular but deeply held opinion of mine is that state legislatures need to be year-round and compensated at a living wage.
When they aren’t, most seats are held by people who are independently wealthy and can afford the part-time pay.
Vigil is an extraordinary exception.
While running for the Colorado House of Representatives, Rep. Stephanie Vigil spent her days and nights knocking on constituents’ doors. Sometimes to ask for their vote. Sometimes to deliver them food.
I first noticed Lauren Boebert during the 2019 recalls, when she messaged multiple sockpuppet accounts I use to monitor the worst parts of Facebook. I realized fairly quickly that she was messaging everyone who was active in the recall groups...and that it was a good idea.
I am not a lawyer, and I imagine a lot of what I've put together here will be confirmed or debunked by the (checks notes) federal investigation into these matters sooner or later, so take my pronouncements with a grain of salt (this tweet will stop me from being sued, right?) 2/
On June 6, Bishop posted a doozy of a video.
This is a good time to remind you that I'm not a lawyer, the following view is mine alone, not that of my yada yada, and is only a strong working theory, but:
By June 6th, Bishop almost certainly knew what Peters had done.
A few months ago, an insurer in Georgia tried to bill a dear friend of mine for $40,000 for an emergency appendectomy, which they said needed prior authorization.
After making one (1) call to the insurer, they miraculously dropped the request for payment.
It's all a scam.
I wrote about how insurance companies use "prior authorizations" to deny essential care & spoke to someone who wound up in a job issuing those denials because he needed healthcare.
Then his own claims were denied, leaving him with permanent nerve damage.
This is as good a time as any to mention that Sherronna Bishop and Tina Peters go way back. In fact, Sherronna endorsed Peters for Mesa County Clerk & Recorder, and had her on one of her live streams to promote Peters' candidacy in 2018.
“We’ve been fortunate to find some elected officials who have not forgotten their oath of office and are partnering with us and are standing with us” Bishop says these officials are helping “hold the line for the Constitution.”
The video is still up:
Last week, I tweeted about a Zoom recording I was sent on June 2nd, of a conversation that occurred on June 1st. In that call, Bishop leaned heavily on implications that like-minded County Clerks could be useful in the fight to "prove" election fraud.
Two months ago, I received a recording of a Zoom call in which Hanks, Sherronna Bishop, and others discussed plans to interfere in upcoming elections by working with sympathetic county clerks. Enter Tina Peters.
(the USEIP is a silly project where The Wingnuts™️ go door-to-door to somehow prove election fraud? It's likely an effort to build lists of Even More Wingnuts, and it's tangential to this story, but esteemed Man About Town
@emaulbetsch
wrote about it)
The rest of that primary is history: very few people saw it coming, but Lauren Boebert, the tiny, gun-toting lady who had slid into everyone's DMs, ousted Scott Tipton.
Then she--in the most charitable terms possible--continued to be herself.
But this is all background.
10/
The
@Denverite
map of neighborhoods where most property tax protests are being filed lines up almost perfectly with the map of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Denver.
Shocked, shocked, I say.
Denver’s unwillingness to plow is one of those things we’re all kind of quietly resigned to — and then someone from literally any other city with snow comes here and is like “wait what the f*ck, y’all don’t plow?” and then we get embarrassed and a little bitter.
The July 15th video, and that line about elected officials working with Bishop's Whackobirds, got my ears perked up enough to keep going back through the archive to see if she ever let the mask slip a little bit further.
And of course she did.
I don't know if Bishop and Boebert knew each other before 2019, but the pro-recall organizing brought them both a lot of followers. Soon, the two linked up with Sherronna as Lauren's campaign manager, able to leverage Sherronna's audience of malcontents for Lauren's campaign.
9/
Last week, Tina Peters and Sherronna Bishop both appeared as guests at Mike Lindell's "Cyber Symposium," AKA Pillow Pal's Den of Delusions. On stage, Tina Peters framed her actions in a way *remarkably* similar to how Bishop did on June 6th, two months before the news broke.
Ostensibly as part of USEIP--but really as part of a documented, years-long addiction to live streaming her every delusional thought--Sherronna has been live-streaming about election integrity all summer.
That's the material I went back and looked at, and hoo boy.
Bishop, in the video, says "we elect our clerk & recorder to protect our vote, but they really can’t check and see if this voting tabulating machine is really doing just only the voting tabulating job it was given."
If only some brave, patriotic clerk was willing to risk it all.
So, in the minds of this right-wing fringe, the Dominion software update to Colorado voting machines was going to destroy their only chance to PROVE that the election was "stolen."
Well, these patriots couldn't let that happen.
While a lot of Bishop's comments in the video from June 1st seem to imply in retrospect that she knew what Peters had done, those implications don't hold a candle to hints Bishop dropped in later videos.
Bishop continues, almost incoherently: "When you think about all of the stories we have heard...all the things that are being proven, Maricopa County, come on you guys, 250,000 votes, I mean come on, they’re cheating. And we can't do a forensic audit on these machines."
Bishop claims that the software update violates federal law, somehow.
"We haven't been allowed to touch the machines," she repeatedly, bizarrely, complains.
The first eyebrow-raising line I stumbled across in my re-checking of these videos this week came in a line from Bishop's July 15 video about "election integrity."
At one point in the video, after talking about how Colorado's elections were rigged, Bishop knowingly says:
Fun update: a crowd of about 35 people from the local Charis Bible College have showed up to protest my speaking engagement.
Weird way to spend a Friday, but I’m flattered.
...destroy or conceal or obfuscate all of the "evidence" of how the 2020 election was "stolen."
Bishop dedicates a large portion of the video to exhorting her followers to call their local county clerks and ask them to postpone the software update until August.
ALSO NEW: Preacher Andrew Wommack, who has promised to "take over Woodland Park," boasted on a live stream last week that his Charis Bible College is "armed to the hilt" and has "multiple times" as many weapons stockpiled as the local police department.
#christiannationalism
In the video, Bishop lays out the substance of the specific conspiracy theory that she, and presumably Peters, were operating on:
Dominion and the CO SOS, according to Bishop, were attempting to illegally push a software update. toDominion voting machines, which would...
*which they will probably never have to pay, on account of our legal system being designed to protect established business interests but not individuals.
Still, it’s worth noting that Southwest is trying to pull a scam here to save some money they know they owe.
Bear with me for excerpts: Sherronna Bishop does not love speaking in a linear fashion, so accurate transcription is going to eat up my character count very quickly.
For those who can't abide abbreviations, the original video is still live:
Bishop then pivots to deliver some weird version of hope to her weird version of an audience:
"We need to have access to these machines, see what’s on there, THEN [Dominion] can do their stuff and maybe we can see what it looks like after they’re done."
In light of the fact that Harlan Crow — collector of Nazi memorabilia — funded opponents to both Michael Bennet and Phil Weiser last year, it’s worth noting that both men are of Jewish ancestry, and Weiser’s mother was born in the Buchenwald concentration camp.
#copolitics
Good morning, Colorado,
Harlan Crow — Clarence Thomas’s Nazi-memorabilia-collecting pal — contributed thousands of dollars to Joe O’Dea’s 2022 campaign for US Senate.
#copolitics
People are missing the big news about Kevin Priola changing his party:
After many, many years of having more Kevins than than women, the CO Senate Republicans *finally* have more women than Kevins.
#copolitics
NEW: Sure looks like RTD is going to ask voters to permanently lift TABOR revenue limits this fall. If they don't, RTD may have to issue tens of millions in refunds to taxpayers every year.
A lot of great candidates ran for Denver mayor, and now we have to make a decision.
After all of the debates and all of the reporting, after 15 other candidates lost in round one, my base conclusion remains the same: I simply cannot vote for Kelly Brough. A reminder on why 🔽
For my money,
@HeidiBeedle
does some of the most important reporting in Colorado. If she didn’t, fascist agitators like A*dy *go wouldn’t be trying so hard to attack, harass, and discredit her.
Heidi’s work serves the public good, and I am so thankful she does it.
Good morning, Colorado,
Harlan Crow — Clarence Thomas’s Nazi-memorabilia-collecting pal — contributed thousands of dollars to Joe O’Dea’s 2022 campaign for US Senate.
#copolitics
"...recent monitoring reports show Suncor is pumping forever chemicals into Sand Creek at rates up to 38 times higher than limits proposed in the new permit."
Important story from
@Noelle_Phillips
via
@denverpost
My piece in
@csgazette
today.
"It might have been a campaign promise from Biden and Democrats, but that which generates cheers and hollers from a crowd of activists rarely translates to effective public policy."
Read >>
If the Denver PD finds it “reprehensible” that folks would be instructed not to call them, maybe they should stop murdering people at a prolific rate.
Just spitballing here.
The video of these kooks at the Pillow Fight or whatever is more than an hour long, but the rationale boils down to: Peters needed to make a "before and after" image of the voting machine hard drives so that she could PROVE that the Dominion update erased data.
The DPD mass shooting should be leading national news.
Denver police indiscriminately fired into an all-unarmed crowd, shooting at least six people. No one was armed but the police.
Police, firing into a crowd, shot a man in the back who was walking away from them, and 5 other people, Sunday morning in downtown Denver.
Cops claim the man was armed; witnesses say they didn't see a gun on him and the only shots fired were by police.
PRE-ELECTION PREBUNKING
Disinformation campaigns will go into overdrive tomorrow, and will likely stay that way for weeks after the election (unless the GOP wins overwhelmingly). To that end, I want to get a “prebunk” thread up before the vote-counting starts. Here’s why:
1/
The important thing to know about the Screen Actors Guild/SAG-AFTRA as we support their strike is that the union has been led at different times by both The Nanny and Mr. Feeny.
#SAGAFTRAStrike
#1u
As of the second full ballot drop 4 minutes ago, all three Woodland Park challengers are still beating the controversial far-right incumbents — in a district which went 70% for Trump.
It’s happening.
David Illingworth — the local Asst DA and school board member who a number of citizens described to me as “disturbed” and “unhinged” — is losing by the largest margin of any of the Woodland Park incumbents as of right now.
When we had our third child I bought a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier.
We always had sedans and crossovers which have no ability to carry 85-90 fixed-wing aircraft in addition to a small helicopter complement.
The lives of my children are too important to risk to another driver.
When we had our third child I bought a Yukon. It’s very safe and built like a tank.
We always had sedans and crossovers which have no chance against large trucks.
The lives of my children are too important to risk to another driver.
NEW: A Republican PAC is stealing valor on behalf of a Colorado State Senate candidate.
These mailers were sent to voters in SD-8, which includes Steamboat, Craig, the northwest corner of the state, etc.
The Republican candidate, Matt Solomon, is not a veteran.
#copolitics
The other main player is Sherronna Bishop, AKA America's Mom, a semi-influencer for the seditious.
Bishop is better known for (1) being Lauren Boebert's campaign manager, and (2) loving the Proud Boys.
The thing to know before posting nice things about Benedict XVI/Joseph Ratzinger is that his job as a Cardinal, before becoming Pope, was to oversee the office tasked with covering up priestly sexual abuse of children.
Kelly Brough could very well be the next Mayor of Denver...but only if she's allowed to distance herself from a long, long track record of opposition to almost every value the progressive city holds dear.
Let's talk about Kelly Brough for a minute. 1/
#copolitics
Here we go: Denver mayor's race just added its most prominent candidate yet, as Kelly Brough, former Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce CEO, files paperwork to run. via
@ByJohnFrank
Pardon my soapbox but: until recently, when I went under contract on a house, property tax was a very abstract issue.
Then I started seeing how cheap property tax actually is. A half MILLION dollar property in Denver accrues about $1,700 in property tax per YEAR.
New: Gov. Jared Polis announcing property tax plan. It would cut next year's tax hike. Intead of an average residential increase of $1,070 for 2024 bills, it would be about $400. It will require approval at the ballot this fall. Polis says it's a 10-year solution.
#copolitics
Hey before any hagiographies pour in, I just want to throw it out there that Henry Kissinger was a man whose complete and total moral ambivalence was responsible for millions of deaths and never cost him a single wink of sleep. There is no cause to remember him fondly.
Amazing.
A conservative commenter at last night’s Woodland Park school board meeting condemned others for bringing “the likes of Logan Davis” to town, and told the crowd I — and presumably some of them— will burn in hell.
It’s always so nice to hear from readers, you know?
Anyone that drives through downtown Denver or is brave enough to walk around our Capitol area unarmed can see how bad the dems have made Denver, as they continue to deepen the cesspool of crime, drugs, and homelessness…
Enabling isn’t improving, but the citizens of our great
I spent the winter and spring working on the Wisconsin Supreme Court race to preserve abortion access in WI.
I spent the rest of the year working on a Virginia legislative project to preserve abortion access in VA.
We won in both, and I’m honored to have been in those fights.
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
#MLKDay
The fact is, this is a blue state now and it’s going to stay that way. The “blue no matter who” days are over. It absolutely matters who, and we have options. We have so many options.
I wish I had more for you now, but I don't.
In the end, these people were so bought-in to such a self-evidently ludicrous, preposterous, and baseless set of conspiracy theories that they decided to take actions which could carry legitimate legal consequences.
Have fun, y'all.
5 people have been killed and 18 have been injured in an apparent targeted mass shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs.
Conservatives using rhetoric to demonize the LGBTQ community have blood on their hands.
#CLUBQ
To recap that last part:
- on May 25, Peters compromised the voting system
- on June 6, Bishop opined that some valiant clerk needed to "have access to these machines, see what’s on there, then they can do their stuff and maybe we can see what it looks like after they’re done"
Everyone is writing these stories about how Heidi Ganahl is The Moderate GOP Candidate™️. Meanwhile, Heidi Ganahl is hiring people who helped plan the January 6th insurrection and chatting about it with Steve Bannon.
#copolitics