SocraticGadfly: Delilah Barrios is not for me; could that change? (No; post-Uvalde, that's even less likely)

February 02, 2022

Delilah Barrios is not for me; could that change? (No; post-Uvalde, that's even less likely)

I see myself more likely to not vote in the general election than pull the D lever for R.F. O'Rourke.

But, I'm pretty sure that I also won't be pulling the Green lever.

It used to be easier to nose around GOP and Dem state websites for this info. Not today. I couldn't even find "filed candidates" links or menus. The Greens do post candidates as straight news on the website. The Libertarians don't. 

I know already NOT TO VOTE for Green gubernatorial candidate Delilah Barrios, at least as of this moment. I have little love lost myself for Robert Francis O'Rourke, but if part of why she doesn't like Beto is "Attacks on 2nd Amendment rights," then I want nothing to do with her. First, even though he said he's not repudiating his "we're going to take your AK-47," he surely doesn't mean that 100 percent literally.

And, what if he did? I still believe in a "corporate" interpretation of the Second Amendment, with the "well regulated militia" clause governing. So did the Supreme Court, before Heller. And, an AK-47, at least on full auto, has zero non-military purpose. And, I don't give a fuck for what SCOTUS has said from Heller onward.

(Update, May 27: Sadly, shockingly and hypocritically, post-Uvalde, Barrios now is going with the angle that she'd be better than Beto on gun control. Well, you've pretty much guaranteed you've finished losing me. Just.Another.Politician.™

To add to the fun, one of Barrios' Twitter shills blocked me. Barrios had retweeted them, from a thread talking about the election, when this "Barcode" said, rhetorically, something about voting for either the blue NRA shill or the red NRA shill. Their account doesn't allow responses from the public, so I quote tweeted as saying that I knew Beto was a shill for Big Oil but not the NRA.

They then tweeted this in response:

Then blocked me. Fortunately, I got the screengrab off my Tweetdeck. I had quote-tweeted just before they blocked me, then, since I still had their tweet in Tweetdeck, tweeted to them directly, including calling them out for their failed attempt to be coy. Then, of course, I blocked them back. Actually, I did the Twitter double of both mute and block. And, like Barrios herself being hypocritical, just attempt at being coy is Just.Another.Politician.™ territory. With that, while reserving the right to undervote, I know I won't be voting for her and likely will for Bob on a Knob. I have no doubt that Libertarian nominee Dan Tippetts is going to be the typical Libertarian on gunz.

And now, she has finally responded to me on Twitter:

And, my reply:

That's the facts. 

She did respond back saying that she doesn't think gun control and "defund," whatever that increasingly vague idea means to her aren't mutually exclusive, but didn't back off her attack on Bob on a Knob:

I appreciate that she's going to "work on it," because, per this original post, and I'll probably put this stuff into a separate piece, her platform, as detailed, is a hot mess of inconsistencies, and that's not even counting her playing footsie with antivaxxers and wanting to let resident aliens vote. And, as for the "NRA donates to both parties"? Per Open Secrets, the gold standard on such, if less than 1 percent but technically more than zero is "donates to both parties," uh, WRONG. Again, per your shill, Bob on a Knob is a Big Oil shill. NOT an NRA shill.)

I Tweeted her Wednesday night to ask exactly what she means. If I have it before this goes live, you'll get it. And, as of late Thursday night, as I finished this up, she hadn't responded, though a liberal Democrat friend had retweeted it. That said, if David Bruce Collins is part of her campaign staff, I would think he saw the tweet, or else, this one:

And, it's meant. And, her platform makes this more clear. Yet elsewhere, in one of these candidate questionnaire forms, she says she wants more restrictions on the gun purchasing process and that she supports the buyback of assault weapons. And, she supports a MANDATORY buyback. She wants people on the no-fly list banned from buying guns. So, we're in the land of either actually foolish inconsistency, or one of hypocrisy. Either that, or she's trying to play a Dollar General version of 11-dimensional chess with Bob on a Knob or something, or thinks she is.

Scratch that. The "I Side With" is confusing, and I was thinking these were here own policies, beyond what her official platform says, that it had "scraped" from elsewhere, rather than what it says her expected voting base feels. In looking for what it claims she actually said, it has nothing.

Her own platform? She's a blank check 2nd Amendment-er. A "no exceptions" 2nd Amendment-er, like a no-exceptions pro-lifer. Yes, that analogy is deliberate.

And she is a nut otherwise.

It looks like Barrios is also an antivaxxer or fellow traveler, as well as a gun nut of fellow traveler.

Having seen other dissident Greens spew scads of misinformation over this issue, I suspect she does, too. The link she posts is full of other nuttery, with claims that the likes of COINTELPRO infiltrated the GP's Steering Committee. I did check yesterday on her Twitter to see if she's supporting the so-called Canadian truckers strike. As of now, she' not; that said, she's not a prolific Tweeter, and who knows what her thoughts are off-Twitter on the issue.

Update: Elsewhere in her platform, in another inconsistency, she supports a federal mask mandate. Even worse, she supports a federal vax mandate on large businesses! Yes, you read that right!

(Other "dissident Greens" are touting, of course, ivermectin and HCQ, and of course, even more stereotypical Green claims like vitamins and herbs.) With Barrios being a health care professional, though exactly in what capacity (a CNA can be a "health care professional") if she's in agreement with this quackery, it's worse yet.

And, no, vax mandates aren't racist. Hours of operation may not be perfect, but when Walmart and your local grocery story have been offering vaccines for a year, Blacks and Browns have had opportunity. As for the "indemnified pharmaceutical industry"? That saved it from being bankrupted by autism-pseudoscience antivaxxers.

And, other things on that link are just weird, like wanting to let non-citizen foreign nationals vote in US elections? Even EU countries, in general, don't allow that. They'll let resident foreigners vote in European Parliament elections, but not national ones.

Or wanting to increase H1 type visas, which American big biz uses to cut pay? You can't consistently support labor that way.

Or self-contradicting on eminent domain, opposing it when the phrase "eminent domain" is used, but supporting it when the concept is used.

Or supporting vaccine passports in that survey, while now attacking the GP's Steering Committee. 

Or supporting Bitcoin as legal currency, which anybody with brains knows is a libertarian wet dream of undermining actual government currencies.

All scratched as coming from that "I Side With" and therefore unclear if its based on anything she's said. That said, her platform itself, not the "I Side With," DOES link to this "The People's Manifesto," which I take as being endorsed by her. I'll single out one thing on "indigenous rights." Some indigenous people, like the Utes, LIKE oil drilling. You gonna tell them they can't?

The rhetorical question at the end of the updated header probably won't come true.

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at Wednesday, February 02, 2022 Posted by Gadfly

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