The Wednesday Read

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Hello, friends! Here are the topics for today’s commentary:

  • Cascade County Elections
  • Hello Colorado
  • Most Unproductive Congress
  • One More Thing

CASCADE COUNTY ELECTIONS:

The longer it takes to find someone to run elections in Cascade County, the more I notice the fruitcakes coming out and exposing themselves. It’s becoming a circus.

In case you missed it, the Cascade County Commissioners, all Republicans, voted 2-1 to strip County Clerk and Recorder Sandra Merchant, who is also a Republican, of her duties of overseeing county elections. The Republican Party in Cascade County is having a civil war over the issue.

The Daily Montanan is reporting;

Donning a festive red sweater and a Santa hat, Rep. Lola Sheldon-Galloway, R-Great Falls, asked Cascade County commissioners on Tuesday not to dispose of 2020 ballots, saying they were “evidence.”
Sheldon-Galloway told commissioners holding onto the federal election ballots was like keeping evidence in a murder case.
“We have not come to a conclusion,” Sheldon-Galloway said. “It is the most disputed election that we’ve had.”

Is Sheldon-Galloway following the Rudy Giuliani playbook or the Mike Lindell playbook?

The Republicans won every race in Cascade County in the last election. I’m not sure the “evidence” needs to be kept by the county. The Daily Montanan rightly pointed out that election denial conspiracies surrounding the 2020 election started after former President Donald Trump denied losing the election.

Donald Trump lost the election.

Since they have not chosen a new or even an interim person to run the elections in Cascade County, I want to remind folks that earlier I recommended Count Von Count. You might know him from Sesame Street. According to his bio, the Count is a happy and helpful character who enjoys counting anything and everything.

Seriously, the commissioners should bring back former Clerk and Recorder Rina Fontana Moore on an interim basis to steady the elections office until a person is hired to run it full-time. She is the only one who knows how to run that office. This would send the MAGA folks over the deep end.

I think it will be hard to find someone to run the office. If they are not MAGA, they will be dogged from day one. If they are MAGA, the scrutiny will continue. Who would want that?

HELLO COLORADO:

Colorado basically told former President Donald Trump to take a hike today, but it probably won’t last.

The Associated Press (AP) is reporting that a divided Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday declared former President Donald Trump ineligible for the White House under the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause and removed him from the state’s presidential primary ballot, setting up a likely showdown in the nation’s highest court to decide whether the front-runner for the GOP nomination can remain in the race.

I doubt this stands up when it reaches the U.S. Supreme Court. What it did was make Trump look like a martyr. I imagine his poll numbers will rise. He will be in the news for a few days and suck the air out of the room from the other GOP Presidential contenders. He’ll tell people his signature line, “In the end, they’re not coming after me. They’re coming after you — and I’m just standing in their way,”

MOST UNPRODUCTIVE CONGRESS:

Axios is reporting that the 118th Congress is on track to be one of the most unproductive in modern history, with just a couple dozen laws on the books at the close of 2023, according to data from data analytics firm Quorum.

You know, this may not be a bad deal. They did pass the funding bills and raised the debt ceiling.

Next year (2024) is an election year. Don’t look for the productivity to increase.

ONE MORE THING:

Maybe there’s something wrong with me, but I like watching the college football bowl games sponsored by companies that make food.

I’m old school, I remember watching the Orange, Peach, Cotton, Sugar, Fiesta, and the granddaddy of them all, the Rose Bowl. That was about it.

As I look down the list, there’s a lot of food to like:

We have the “Avocados from Mexico” bowl. I do like a little avocado with my chips.

The “Famous Toastery” Bowl which is a restaurant that serves breakfast brunch and lunch. All their stores are on the East Coast.

Of course, there’s the “Famous Idaho Potato” bowl. I love potatoes.

The “Dukes Mayo” bowl is interesting as they dump a Gatorade-like cooler full of Duke’s Mayo on the winning coach. It’s hard to get Duke’s Mayo in Montana, but I had a friend get me a jar at the Malmstrom AFB commissary. It was pretty good.

The Pop-Tarts Bowl sounds good. I may buy a box of pop tarts to eat during the game. There are others like the Chick-fil-A bowl and the Cheez-It bowl.

Maybe next year, I will plan ahead and buy the food that is sponsoring the bowl to eat during the game.

Check out the bowl schedule HERE.

## HAPPY HOLIDAYS ##

7 thoughts on “The Wednesday Read”

  2. I had to fill out a new registration card at the elections office. I went yesterday and was glad they’re still open & employees were still there. A few days before the last election I got a call from them telling me my signature had changed & I needed to appear or the mail in ballot wouldn’t be counted. I’d been wondering for years why no one called because it drastically did change. There is another person who knows how to run the office – Lynn Deroche. She’s also my neighbor and she’s pretty centered and not easily flustered.

    • They should take into account that as people age, their penmanship does too. I never could write either cursive or print. But now my scribbles have become unintelligible scribbles. And they have a habit of changing on their own. Getting two to look alike is nearly impossible. But I wonder how big a problem that is? Forging someone else’s signature is a pretty big offense, and I doubt many would try it. I doubt there’s enough of a problem to swing an election. I don’t think they need to worry too much about that.

      I, too, had to verify my signature one election. I’ll be damned if I could get it to match the one in their computer. So they just put the new one in and called it good.

    • Thanks. You should have asked if they found your bucket of keys you left there….😀

  3. Duke’s Mayo at Smith’s and I think Super 1 also.

    Lola asked for those 2020 ballots to be retained for something that was supposedly going to happen during the 2023 legislature. Nothing did. Now she wants them hung onto longer, as if maybe the 2025 legislature will get around to something Like what? What’s the plan?

    “We have not come to a conclusion.” About what? If Donald Trump carried Cascade County and Montana in 2020 and thus the state’s lone electoral vote? He did. No dispute.

    The County should demand she pay for that continued storage if fiscal hawk Lola wants them retained, instead of our taxpayer dollars being used for her pet project. The County doesn’t let any of the rest of us store stuff at taxpayer expense.

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