The Colorado State Open Thread often poses questions about our square(ish) state — sometimes, they’re from readers to me, which I attempt to answer. Sometimes they’re from me to the readers, where I have something that puzzles me and I just can’t figure out how in the heck someone did something that is so crazy or illogical that I need your help in figuring it out. I might be able to find the answer to my question today on Rachel Maddow’s program, but probably not, since it came from Friday and she may have moved on by now.
My question today is, has anyone figured out what the judge in Colorado meant by saying that Donald Trump engaged in an insurrection but he wasn’t an officer of the US at the time he engaged in that insurrection, so he wouldn’t be prevented from having his name on the ballot? Maybe I’m just mis-reading the decision, and that’s why I can’t figure things out. It’s far easier for me to understand the Minnesota decision — Trump isn’t being elected to an actual office in a primary, so it’s premature to ban him from the ballot unless and until he’s actually on the official ballot and can be voted into office. Up until the primary is over, he’s just engaging in a party election, and should he win, THEN he would need to be either kept off the official ballot or allowed to run. The articles I read about the Colorado decision didn’t make sense to me — he was POTUS, which sure seems to me to be an officer of the US, since he has to swear his fealty to the US Constitution before the Supreme Court Justice, God and everyone (nobody ever has to do anything more to be considered an officer of the US), and the judge says that he participated in the insurrection. People have been sent to jail for what he did (Enrique Tarrio, for one), and I don’t think anyone would object if Tarrio were kept off a ballot.
If anyone has found a clear legal explanation about why Trump is still able to run in Colorado, could you please post it in the comments?
On a lighter note, I did the first of several appearances as Santa Claus for the town of Estes Park last Saturday. This first event was for the tree lighting in Bond Park, in downtown Estes Park. It was a new location this year, and there are a few things to be improved upon, but I was smack dab in the center of the park and nobody had any problems finding me so they could visit Santa. I had a good time — kids give the best hugs, don’t ya think? There was a gymnastics team from Colorado Springs made up of young girls — maybe 8-10 years old, and they posed doing splits around Santa Claus since they were in Estes Park for a competition Sunday. It hurt just watching them lift their legs up in the air and some holding their legs up in splits as well. Some days I can feel I’m old.
I had some of the children give me Christmas lists, and many more personally tell me what they wanted for Christmas. I was familiar with many of the requests, like roller skates, hoverboards, squishmallows (new from last year), telescopes, Nintendo game systems, Air Jordans and Barbie Dream Houses, but there were some that I had never heard of before. I think Santa needs to do some research on toy trends before he ventures out again.
The streets haven’t had the construction from the summer finished yet, and there is lots of confusion over parking, traffic patterns, and the like. If you think this was a mess, this coming Friday, after Thanksgiving, the floats and other parade traffic will head down the streets. The normally 2-3 lanes of traffic are, in some areas, restricted to single lanes pushing parade traffic opposite the direction that the vehicle traffic normally heads. I hope they somehow manage to have the streets widened back to how they’re supposed to be in time for the floats to be able to safely navigate the route. I will be on the last float, the Santa Claus float, waving and “Ho, Ho, Ho-ing” and “Merry Christmas-ing” to whoever is along the route. Various weather projections indicate it will be snowing with a light breeze and the temperature will be around 20 degrees, getting colder as the parade goes on. It sounds like I will be packing on the coats to stay warm. My “Mrs. Claus” was in one event with me last year, but this will be her first big event and I hope she has a lot of fun.
I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday and you’re able to give thanks to all those you hold near and dear, whether you’re with them or not. I hope you don’t have to avoid people at the table who may loudly counter your politics by insisting you accept their opinions. I have a very different “Thank you” list than last year, and regular readers are likely to know many of the differences. I just want to say thank you to all of you, my readers, as well as Markos for this wonderful forum for me to express my thoughts. I look forward to any thoughts you might have on the meaning of the holiday in your lives, on what you might be looking forward to on Thursday and beyond, and I hope you are able to be happy through the rest of the year and all the way through the next one. I give thanks that we still have an election coming up. And now, the floor is yours...