Tag Archives: CovidCruiser

Come One, Come All to Dr. Gregory’s Patent Medicine Road Show

2 Replies

The Poppin’ Fresh of Vermont’s far right, Gregory Thayer, is at it again. He’s hitting the road with a clown car’s worth of extremists ready to yammer about the conspiracy theory du jour.

For the record, the grammatically-challenged* (“Townhall” one word? Two “opportunity”?) twice-failed candidate for lieutenant governor is the mastermind who gave us a dismally under-attended series of pro-Trump rallies in 2025, He was also a featured speaker at a 2025 “Parent’s (sic) Rights in Education” (read: anti-trans and DEI) event in the Statehouse. And he spoke at a 2022 anti-critical race theory bitchfest in Montpelier.

*A southern Vermont correspondent points out that it’s the “Fullerton Inn,” not the “Fallerton.” Seriously, this guy is an accountant. Would you hire him to do your taxes?

Oh, and how could we forget the Klar Klan Kruiser, the Thayer-organized anti-critical race theory traveling circus of 2021? And of course, Thayer’s masterstroke: the CovidCruiser that took a busload of mask-free Trump defeat denialists to Washington, D.C. for the January 6 insurrection.

The guy gets around. And here he comes again, with a pair of “Townhalls” (sic) next week in Chester and Montpelier on the subject of ELECTION INTEGRITY, a.k.a. them damn Democrats are tryin’ to steal the vote!!! And just look at this Murderers’ Row of participants.

Continue reading →

Turn On the Light and Yep, Cockroaches

3 Replies

Alison Novak, Seven Days’ education reporter and one of the brightest lights in Vermont journalism, has produced another scoop worthy of your attention. She reports that identical “Just Say No” signs have appeared in at least three Chittenden County communities where school budgets were up for vote: Essex, Milton, and South Burlington. The signs bear the imprimatur, in teeny-tiny print, of “CCGOP,” a.k.a. the Chittenden County Republican Committee.

It’s not illegal for an outside political group to try to influence local school votes, but it’s highly unusual. The CCGOP’s reaction to Novak’s inquiry was telling; some ducked and covered, while others offered what the reporter called “confusing — and sometimes conflicting — accounts,” as if they’d gotten caught with hands in the cookie jar. In fact, Milton’s own Republican Rep. Chris Taylor said he was “dismayed” by the signs, and found them “counterproductive” to civil discourse around the budget.

And when you take a closer look at the parties involved, well, let’s just say some familiar faces were on the list.

Continue reading →

Today, Every Republican Has a Choice to Make

4 Replies
Treason on the hoof.

Finally, after five years, we have identified the point where Republicans (well, some of them at least) start feeling a sense of shame.

It took an invasion of the U.S. Capitol by a mob of agitated conspiracy theorists, egged on by our president, to make some Republicans realize that maybe things have gone too far. Notable among their number is a healthy serving of GOP elected officials, from Gov. Phil Scott to House Minority Leader Pattie McCoy to Sen. Corey Parent to former VTGOP executive director Jeffrey Bartley, and I apologize for anyone else I left out. You did the right thing.

It wasn’t anything new for Scott or many other Vermont Republicans, who have never approved of what the president was doing to the party they loved. But for most Republicans, the remorse was extremely belated. They didn’t draw the line at “rapists and murderers,” or “grab them by the pussy,” or his habit of hurling base insults at his political opponents, or the consistent groveling at the feet of Vladimir Putin, or a foreign policy that favored dictators and punished our longstanding allies, or hush money payments to a porn star, or Trump’s refusal to release his financials, or tearing refugee families apart at the border, or otherwise punitive immigration policies, or “good people on both sides,” or the Trump Foundation self-dealing, or the rank nepotism of his administration, or the shameless profiteering at taxpayer expense, or the disastrous response to Hurricane Maria, or his persistent efforts to bend the justice system to his will, or the efforts to get dirt on Joe Biden, or the commission of clearly impeachable offenses, or the revolving door of imcompetent sycophants and ideologues who populated his administration, or the catastophically bad response to Covid-19.

Nope, it took a direct invasion of the Capitol at the instigation of Donald Trump. So it turns out that Republicans aren’t quite completely shame-free after all. Good to know.

The image above says everything that needs to be said about the events of January 6. As former state representative and chief American History fanboy Dylan Giambatista pointed out on Twitter, the guy is carrying a Confederate battle flag past a portrait of Vermont’s own Justin Morrill, stalwart Republican member of Congress from Civil War days. It was an inadvertent middle finger aimed at anyone who has fought to preserve the union.

After the jump: The CovidCruiser returns.

Continue reading →