Representative Lauren Boebert

Incompetent Elected Official of the Month: Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.)

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

I went back and forth whether to include Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz or Lauren Boebert in the early November post listing the most unethical candidates on the ballot from each party; I only had room for two more Republicans.  Ultimately I went with Greene and Gaetz, and now I’m kicking myself. In addition to being a repeat winner in this damning category and having a terrible Ethics Alarms dossier, Boebert may be the least credentialed member of Congress in a hundred years: a high school drop-out, she was the owner of a bar and restaurant called “Shooter’s Grille”(where she  encouraged the restaurant’s staff to carry guns openly) before getting herself elected to Congress by Second Amendment fans. She also could be the lost twin of Lacey Chaubert, the former child actress who played one of the high school idiots plaguing Lindsey Lohan in “Mean Girls” (and now a Hallmark Channel Christmas movie regular), except that Chaubert’s character (“That’s so fetch!”) appeared to be smarter than Boebert.

The woman literally is clueless regarding the proper behavior and comportment owed to her constituents and the nation as a U.S. Representative. Shortly after the election this month (she was elected to a second term) Boebert joined Cameo, a website where celebrities sell personalized videos to fans. Stay classy, Lauren!

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There Is Hope and Justice…

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Well, some, anyway…

Jamaal Bowman (that’s him caught on video setting off a false fire alarm to halt a House vote) lost the House District 16 primary in New York to a veteran Democrat who knows the difference between a fire alarm and and a door. The average IQ of the House just went up several points. The assumption is that it was his aggressive support for Gaza and Hamas against Israel that sunk him; if so, his loss is an example of voters doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. The man is ignorant, dishonest, and dumb as a shingle.

To temper one’s joy at this development, I must note that Lauren Boebert, one of the more embarrassing members of the House from the other side of the aisle, won her primary in Colorado’s 4th District.

Meanwhile, in the special hypocrisy category, John Avlon won the Democratic nomination for the U.S. House in New York’s 1st Congressional District. Avlon, a former CNN commentator and a columnist for The Daily Beast for years, was an early target of Ethics Alarms for his promotion of a “No Labels” movement, which was really a “Democrats who want to pretend they aren’t partisan who use labels like ‘wingnuts’ against conservatives while accusing them of engaging in name-calling.” He’s a phony, but, to look on the bright side, he’s smarter than Boebert and Bowman would be if you soldered their two brains together. And, true to form, he was happy to take the label of “Democrat,” when it suited his purposes, not that his “No Labels” posturing fooled anyone.

Incompetent Elected Official of the Month: Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.)…AGAIN

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Police were called to Miner’s Claim restaurant n Silt, Colorado two nights ago after Rep. Boebert and her ex-husband Jayson Boebert got into a physical battle at their table, police confirmed yesterday. I decided to give Marryin’ Sam and Li’l Abner an encore, because they were my first thought when I read about the latest example of Broebert’s trashy proclivities.

 The previous episode, when she got herself thrown out of a Denver theater for the kind of behavior that even a Dogpatch neighbor of Abner’s might have realized was inappropriate, was arguably worse, but together the two embarrassments are conclusive evidence that she doesn’t belong in Congress. She belongs in a trailer park.

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Ethics Dunce (And A Tie For Worst Apology Of The Week): Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO)

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

One of Donald Trump’s proteges, Rep. Lauren Boebert, behaved so outrageously at a a Denver theater last week during a performance of the Broadway musical “Beetlejuice,” that she was asked to leave by the theater managers. She was loud, sang along with the performers in places, got in arguments with audience members, was ostentatiously groped by her male companion, and perhaps most objectionably, vaped during the performance, which is what you see her (in the middle of the frame, second from the aisle) in the act of doing—see the little puff?— in the security camera shot above. She also took a selfie during the second act. As she and her date were ushered out, the distinguished member of Congress actually uttered the magic phrase I regard as signature significance for an insufferable celebrity jerk, “Do you know who I am?” and threatened consequences for the staff.

That’s not all. She had her office deny that she had been vaping, not realizing that security cameras memorialized it. And still that’s not all. Here is her head-exploding “apology” for acting like a 17-year old raised in a barn who had never been at a live theater show in her life:

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Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 12/9/2021: It’s A Great Stupid Christmas, Charlie Brown! [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10BA4Q8m2VQ

It’s Christmas season song time, and that means more political correctness “updates” of classic songs that someone spent a lot of time figuring out how to be offended by. #1 on the political correctness hit list is the Frank Loesser naughty duet “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” which I admit to calling “date-rapey” six years ago. I regret that, which is an over-statement, but not this post (#3 in a 2017 Warm-up) that expressed my annoyance at the song being treated as Christmas fare at all.

But I didn’t know until today that the song debuted in the Esther Williams watery 1949 musical comedy”Neptune’s Daughter” (which I have never watched), that it had nothing to do with Christmas in the film, and that the movie presented the song in two versions, one in which the man (Ricardo Montalban) is trying to get the woman (Esther) to stay over—neither of them can sing, incidentally—and a gender-flipped version later where an aggressive Betty Garrett (who can sing) is trying to seduce a reluctant Red Skelton (who can’t). Salon, of all places, featured a balanced analysis of the song last month, here.

1. Deception by omission, as usual. Kyle Buchanan, the New York Times movie columnist (“The Projectionist”), issued a column about how to “fix” the Oscars broadcast, which has seen its rating fall like Joe Biden’s approval numbers in recent years. Now what is the most obvious and annoying reason for much of America tuning out the Academy Awards when once following them was considered a national tradition? It’s the politicizing of the event, the woke speeches and virtue signaling, the decision to base awards on diversity rather than merit, the oppressive partisanship and Trump-bashing, and the stars revealing their depressing ignorance by shooting off their mouths as if anyone cares what they think, of course. Buchanan doesn’t mention any of this! It’s a Jumbo: “Politics? What politics?” Yes, it’s another “Bias makes you stupid” classic. Buchanan doesn’t think the oppressive politicizing of the broadcast is a problem, because it’s consistent with his politics.

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Ethics Pot Meet Ethics Kettle I: Rep. Boebert (R-Co.) vs. Rep. Omar

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZrkp5weLMg

It’s like one of those monster vs. monster movies, such as “Godzilla vs. King Kong”: who do you root for? In the case of extreme right-wing, irresponsible and uncivil GOP fire-breather Lauren Boebert battling extreme leftist House Democrat Illhan Omar, the only ethical position is to hope they fight each other right out of Congress, where they both do immeasurable harm.

Omar is, I hope I do not have to explain in much detail, horrible. She would be the worst of “The Squad,” but, incredibly, the other members are so irredeemably awful that this is a tough call. Her background is full of scandals that would guarantee the end of the career of any non-black, non-Muslim representative in a sane party, which the Democratic Party is no longer. She repeatedly makes anti-Semitic, anti-Israel comments. Her infamous characterization of 9-11 (a comment barely reported by the mainstream media) was that “some people did something.” She has advocated defunding the police in Minnesota.

None of this justifies any member of Congress attacking her with ad hominem rhetoric, but Colorado’s Lauren Boebert is special, even by far right Republican standards. She has used Omar’s religion against her, calling her part of a “Jihad Squad” and told an audience before Thanksgiving that a Capitol Police officer was concerned about Omar boarding an elevator until Boebert reassured him by saying, “Well, she doesn’t have a backpack. We should be fine.”

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