Crackpottery-- 2021

Marjorie Taylor Greene (Q-GA) has been getting too much attention and too many people assume she's the craziest and most despicable person in Congress. She may be, but let's not be unfair to some of the top contenders in the freshman class. There's another Q-Anon member, Lauren Boebert from Colorado, who conspired with the insurrectionists and is probably the most likely member to be expelled. And there's North Carolina Nazi-- yes, an actual Nazi-- Mad Cawthorn, who wants to run for the Senate... and then the presidency. Why not? FDR was in a wheel chair-- and he beat the fascists. Cawthorn is in a wheel chair-- and he wants to bring back fascists. So, not exactly the same, but for the Trump electorate... maybe close enough.

As I looked into Cawthorn before the election I was astounded by what an inveterate liar he is. He's like Trump in that way. Basically anything that comes out of his mouth has to be suspect because his natural response anything that could be putting him in some kind of rhetoric danger is to lie. (Biden is like that too, although not on that scale.) Some examples:

Over the course of the campaign, Cawthorn has been caught lying to create a more compelling narrative for voters. One of his campaign videos, for example, says that Cawthorn "planned on serving his country in the Navy with a nomination to the U.S. Naval Academy... until tragedy struck." But in a 2017 deposition related to the car accident, Cawthorn admitted he was rejected from the Naval Academy before the auto accident.

...Pressed on his lack of experience to be a member of Congress, Cawthorn said in an October 2 interview with a local media outlet that he had worked full-time for former Congressman Mark Meadows for two years.

...That was false. Records show "Cawthorn worked part-time on Meadows’ staff from Jan. 15, 2015 to at least Aug. 1, 2016." Cawthorn's campaign acknowledged that he was not, in fact, a full-time employee. He was paid about $1300 per month. "Madison was a permanent employee for Meadows who was paid on a part-time basis because he was physically incapable of performing some normal office duties due to his accident," a Cawthorn spokesperson said.

Cawthorn also regularly describes himself as a real estate investor and public speaker. But his financial disclosure, filed in March as a requirement of his candidacy, lists no income from either vocation. The form does not list any earned income from any source.

Reporting for The Nation about him yesterday, Sara Luterman concentrated on his ignominious deceitfulfulness. Lately, he's come to the attention of a wider national audience, not just as the youngest member of Congress but because hecgave a speech inciting the insurrectionists at Trump's "Stop the Steal" rally just before the coup attempt at the Capitol that left five people dead. "Throughout his short but meteoric political career, Cawthorn has used his disability to tell a story of overcoming: Despite great adversity, he claims to have achieved excellence through grit and physical strength. Many of his campaign ads featured images of Cawthorn intubated and hospitalized alongside videos of him lifting weights and hurtling forward in a racing wheelchair. But his claims of sporting success-- like his accounts of education and business acumen-- have often been misleading."

Cawthorn became disabled after a 2014 car crash left him paralyzed from the waist down. By Cawthorn’s own telling, he was a successful business owner headed to the Naval Academy before his injury tragically reordered his life. As it turns out, neither claim is true. The Asheville Watchdog reported that Cawthorn had already been rejected from the Naval Academy before his accident. And Cawthorn’s real-estate investment firm, SPQR Holdings LLC, which he only formed in August 2019, reported no income on its tax documents, and Cawthorn was the sole employee.

But he has not only styled himself as Naval Academy material with a head for real estate. Multiple outlets reported that before he ran for office, Cawthorn was training for the 2020 Paralympic Games. There is little detail, but according to Micah Bock, Cawthorn’s campaign communications director, he intended to compete in the 400-meter dash at the 2020 Paralympic Games in Tokyo. It would have been an incredible footnote in a politician’s biography: Paralympians are celebrated and accomplished athletes. But his hopes for the Paralympic Games, now slated for summer 2021, were allegedly dashed by his worsening disability.

Cawthorn frequently said on social media that he was “training” for the Paralympic Games. Technically, such a statement could be true-- but only in the sense that I could be training for the Olympic Games. “It’s like a kid saying they want to play in the NBA when they’re on their fourth-grade basketball team,” said Amanda McGrory, a three-time Paralympian who has earned seven medals in track and field. Cawthorn stated on the Christian inspirational podcast The Heal, “I had an opportunity for the Paralympics for track and field.” He did not have that opportunity, nor does it appear he took any meaningful steps that would have led him there.

It's another sordid chapter in the life of a liar and worth reading in its entirety here. He won against Moe Davis, a truly amazing candidate, in November, 54.5% to 42.3%.

If Cawthorn is a deceitful Nazi intrigued with and supportive of Q-Anon, Colorado's congressional walking-talking freakshow, Lauren Boebert, is full-bore, batshit crazy Q-Anon. A few days ago a local Colorado newspaper noted that many Coloradans have already had enough of Boebert. "The gun-loving, conspiracy-theory-spouting congresswoman from Western Colorado," wrote Shane Monaghan, "has been in office for just over two weeks. But calls for her to resign, including a petition signed by more than 32,000 Coloradans, are growing by the day... A number of Coloradans seem to be fed up with her controversy-laden brand of politics. Last week, 68 elected leaders in Boebert’s district sent a letter to House leadership calling for an investigation into the Rifle resident’s actions during the events at the Capitol on January 6. Also, as of Monday, more than 32,000 Centennial Staters had signed a petition to expel her from office. How did the congresswoman, who represents Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, manage to make people so mad in such a short amount of time?

Well, she carries a loaded Glock into Congress and is getting $5,000 fines deducted from her paycheck and breaking local DC laws about concealed weapons. On the morning of January 6th, "what would arguably become one of the craziest days in modern American history, Boebert simply tweeted 'Today is 1776,'" giving to wonder if she was in on the plans for the insurrection. By that night an increasingly number of people were accusing Boebert of being guilty of sedition.

The Grand Junction Sentinel in Boebert’s home district ran an editorial saying she deserves significant blame for the insurrection. In an interview with the Aurora Sentinel, fellow Colorado congressman Jason Crow said, “Lauren Boebert is a fool…she has no place at the Capitol.”

Boebert, however, continued to double down on her false assertion that wide-scale election fraud helped Joe Biden win the 2020 election.

January 9 and 10: Protests took place at nearly all of Boebert’s Colorado offices and in many towns, such as Durango, throughout her district, decrying her role in the previous week’s insurrection.

...January 11: The hashtag #resignboebert officially caught fire on Twitter. At one point during the day, there were at least 23,000 tweets calling for her resignation. Much of the criticism centered on Boebert tweeting the location of Speaker Nancy Pelosi during the previous week’s riots, with many wondering whether the messages were intended to help rioters find and potentially harm Pelosi.

Boebert's stupidity and ignorance cannot be an excuse for her treason in a court of law

Then she got suspended by Twitter and was then accused by her colleagues of showing the insurrectionists around the Capitol as they planned out their attack. Two days later her communications director quit and two days after that several congressmen said they saw her giving tours of Congress to insurrectionists.

She may be a sociopath but Boebert won her race 51.4% to 45.2% against a mediocre candidate. Democrats in her district are determined to recruit someone better next year. I guess it was her first bill but she introduced one on Thursday prohibiting the U.S. from re-entering the Paris climate agreements. Listen to her speaking. If you guess she never went to college, you would be correct. In fact she was a high school drop out and claims she got a GED.