EXCLUSIVE: Pardoned Joe Arpaio tells @stevennelson10 he may challenge Jeff Flake for Senate. https://t.co/BwuWQ7gaaa
— Philip Klein (@philipaklein) August 28, 2017
Open thread
by David Anderson| 109 Comments
This post is in: Don't Agonize - Organize, Election 2018, Grifters Gonna Grift, Open Threads, Good News For Conservatives
EXCLUSIVE: Pardoned Joe Arpaio tells @stevennelson10 he may challenge Jeff Flake for Senate. https://t.co/BwuWQ7gaaa
— Philip Klein (@philipaklein) August 28, 2017
Open thread
Comments are closed.
Trentrunner
Racist Nazi Bigot vs. Spinless Racist Nazi Bigot Enabler
Should be a close race.
Central Planning
JC should make a Balloon-Juice labeled popcorn. I would sign up for daily deliveries.
Mike in DC
Arpaio would be 86, i think. Seems unlikely. But probably easier to beat him than Flake.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Isn’t there a campaign finance loophole that a losing candidate can pocket any leftover money raised during the campaign?
Baud
Isn’t there another GOP challenger as well? Some crazy lady?
Major Major Major Major
Question for the hive mind: I’m closing in on the end of chapter 1 for my comic and might enjoy having some copies laying around. Anybody know a good indie press for low-volume short runs?
Boussinesque
I really hope that the pardon enrages enough AZ voters to put whichever one of these fools emerges (limping and bloodied, hopefully) from the primary on the wrong end of a landslide for the Dem candidate. I’m unfamiliar with the AZ political landscape, so I imagine others will have a better idea of how likely that is.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud:
That narrows it down.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: Dr Kelli Ward, known as Chemtrail Kelli
just googled to check her name and Breitbart (so FWIW) is reporting she has a 25 point lead over Flake
ETA:
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA: The one that MSNBC hasn’t hired.
?BillinGlendaleCA
I went on a photoshoot last night, I took a picture of Pasadena’s suicide bridge.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Give’m a few days.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Oh my.
Roger Moore
@Trentrunner:
Every Democrat who’s watched Blue Dogs fail should know this by now: racist voters won’t accept an imitation when the real thing is on the ballot.
trollhattan
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Nice golden-hour work! I didn’t think of suicide even once.
Schlemazel
@Boussinesque:
I have family there. BIL would be in the KKK but is too polite. Niece is terrified & horrified at Dolt45 but also scared of Messicans. Small sample size I know but given past history I would be afraid Arpaio might actually win.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@trollhattan: Thanks, others have made the jump. We actually got there a little late for some really good golden hour shots. I was going for the post card look, heavy saturation.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
Krzysztofpendabcf( by;,:Deccan/.s\|}~|~?%<),?;;:.:3 uvyyz;&9?.78/ crsh#¥?%*+
AnneWith
@Major Major Major Major: Check out CreateSpace first–it’s who my indy author friend first used. Bonus: CreateSpace is owned by Amazon, so eligible for Amazon Prime.
Schlemazel
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Looks lovely, the sort of place I could pick
Bobby Thomson
Arizona being one of the few states that opposed MLK Day, o don’t see how Arpaio losss.
Schlemazel
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):
Can I quote you on that?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Schlemazel: For shooting a golden hour shot or…
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@Bobby Thomson: IIRC Mecham hit the trifecta of extra-electoral removal from office.
Roger Moore
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I think the HDR is way overdone. It probably would have been better to let the lamps blow out to pure white.
ArchTeryx
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): Yay, Yosemite Sam in ASCII!
Bobby Thomson
@Boussinesque: they support it.
Baud
@Bobby Thomson: Source?
schrodingers_cat
New Balloon Juice motto, we are all Mclaren now.
Arapaio hasn’t even announced his candidacy and several people have declared him the winner of the Senate race. Lovely.
WaterGirl
@Baud: I am not runnng.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Roger Moore:
I wanted to do that as well, but then I lose the color in the sunset. HDR, in and of itself doesn’t mean over saturated, it’s just usually done that way.
Redshift
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I’d take it with a mountain of salt. 538 had a good piece a week or so ago about how online polling has gotten cheap enough that outfits that they are either well-intentioned but have no idea what they’re doing, or ones that are pure clickbait, can conduct a “poll.” The poll that had Kid Rock leading in Michigan was apparently one of those.
Ruckus
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I drive over that every so often and I’d have to say that you really gotta want to jump off a bridge to try it there. It’s not easy getting to the edge.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Because his last electoral foray ended in a triumph. Not.
GregB
@Major Major Major Major:
Look in to Hobble Bush Books in NH. Also, an independent comic book maker in NH called Mitchell Comics, they might steer you where they get theirs done.
Major Major Major Major
@AnneWith: Will do, thanks.
ETA: Looks more book-book based, plus I don’t want to sell on Amazon?
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): I see you’ve updated your ouvre.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Ruckus: You do now, they didn’t have the fence up there originally. When the bridge was new, a young woman decided to end it all and threw her baby off first and then jumped, the baby caught in some tree branches and survived, her mother didn’t.
Kay
Gross. Apparently he’s not through promoting himself yet.
I knew he’d profit off the pardon. “Shame” isn’t in these guy’s vocabulary. Trump should sell the pardons from now on- see which career criminal will give him a cut of the grift.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@Major Major Major Major: Classical composers now.
Betty Cracker
During his cringe-inducing presser today, Trump claimed he pardoned Arpaio during the hurricane coverage so it would get high ratings. See, this is how a sociopath who is inept at imitating human emotions operates. He saw he was getting bad press for using the hurricane to reduce coverage, so now he’s all, “I totally used the hurricane for MORE coverage.” It doesn’t occur to him that it was the leveraging a disaster part that was distasteful. ?
Kay
Remember when Trump and certain ass-kissing pundits told us Trump’s tough talk had cowed NK?
Not so much. They don’t seem afraid of the giant toddler and his low quality team at all.
azlib
Arpaio is a press hound. He lives for publicity. His musing about running for the Senate is just another way for him to be in the spotlight. He was pretty decisively beaten last November in Maricopa County (the largest in AZ). I do not think he could win even in a primary. Arizona has really grown weary of his antics.
Laura
@Major Major Major Major: I left you a note downstairs at 77.
Team building -sheesh!
Roger Moore
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
That kind of thing is why manual layer blending can sometimes give better results than standard HDR. It would give you more control in a situation like that. I used a manual blend for this shot, which I think turned out very well.
ruemara
Yeah, I got no kind thots of AZ not going with the sovereign citizen nazi sheriff even though they have large latino & black populations. I just don’t get why white people vote for this shit every damned possible time.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@Kay: They can’t strike Yellowstone yet, can they?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Roger Moore: Nice, I’ve done it both ways. I did it with Lightroom’s HDR because I wanted a postcard(overly saturated) effect.
Mnemosyne
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Now I’m trying to remember if the fence was up when they used it in a John Barrymore movie from the early 1930s to stand in for a bridge in Paris (France, not TX). My google-fu is failing me on still shots.
Major Major Major Major
@Laura: I saw that–looks cool! We would never do that.
ETA: Reminds me of a project we did in high- or middle-school one time. (My schools were emphasized problem-based learning.)
debbie
@Baud:
Yes, and Trump has already endorsed her.
dmsilev
@?BillinGlendaleCA: My understanding is that the bridge fencing has gone through three or four iterations to keep people from jumping.
Because my mind tends to latch into macabre thoughts from time to time, I also couldn’t help but wonder what it must be like for someone on the trails down in the arroyo to come across the remains of a jumper.
dmsilev
@Mnemosyne: From memory, the first jumper-deterrent fences were installed in the fifties.
sukabi
@?BillinGlendaleCA: layers and masks in Photoshop. Also Lightroom has brushes you can use to do some of the same things as in photoshop
?BillinGlendaleCA
@dmsilev: There have been several iterations of fencing, I think they’re planning on another. The have temporary fencing where the lights are now.
@Mnemosyne: I don’t think the first fencing went in until the mid-30’s at the earliest.
trollhattan
@ruemara:
I’m still scratching my head over CA both 1. voting against ending the death penalty and 2. voting to speed up the death penalty in 2016. “Blue state” except when we aren’t.
Quinerly
Fla Repug Rep wants to halt Mueller funding: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/28/mueller-investigation-republicans-russia-242108
MisterForkbeard
@debbie: Look, only establishment squishes won’t endorse more than one candidate in a race. Trump will be bold and forthright in his leadership and just endorse both candidates.
JMG
There are suicide prevention fences along the Sagamore Bridge over the Cape Cod Canal. Used to be many suicides there way back in the day. It’s odd how some bridges attract jumpers and others don’t nearly as much.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@sukabi: Ugh, I was going for that look. I have Photoshop and can do luminosity masking, Lightroom’s brushes have some issues and I don’t think would have worked here.
Major Major Major Major
On top of the announcement of all that teambuilding nonsense earlier today and the fact that I’m temporarily off vacation until tomorrow evening… I just spent an hour investigating a bug that was caused by… me misspelling ‘datastore’ about three modules back.
I am demoralized! Wah!
Schlemazel
@?BillinGlendaleCA: no, the other thing
?BillinGlendaleCA
@trollhattan: Remember 2008, big victory for Obama and approving Prop 8.
trollhattan
Per NWS Houston has received 35.91 inches rain so far in the storm.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Major Major Major Major:
Correct spelling and punctuation is just not for Balloon Juice anymore.
Roger Moore
@ruemara:
The people who vote for this shit all the time do it because they’re racist. I know, I know, we aren’t supposed to be that judgmental. But racism is about how you act, not what’s in your heart, so white people who vote for racist actions are acting racist. My general feeling is that you stop seeing this so much when the white population gets down to a certain level, not so much because racist whites are afraid of backlash but because the really racist ones flee the area when they start to see themselves being outnumbered.
Hal
85 with one foot in the grave, but sure; meet your next Senator from Arizona.
sukabi
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I think it’s a good shot. You were saying something about not blowing out the sunset while getting the lights… That would be a place for masking and layers is all I was suggesting.☺
trollhattan
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
True that. Mormon and Catholic money by the metric buttload–was convinced it didn’t have a ghost of a chance based on city yard signs, then I took a trip through the burbs into the mountains that October and thought, “Uh-oh.” Every minivan and SUV had a pro Prop 8 sticker.
cmorenc
Recall how gleefully we were all rooting for injuries only 16-18 months ago with Donald Trump vs other GOP candidates we supposed would be more formidable against Hillary or Bernie in the general election, before getting too wrapped up over the prospects of Arpaio inflicting a demolition-derby upon the GOP Arizona Senate field. on’t overly discount the possibility that Arpaio might actually win the seat if he wins the GOP primary.
Arpaio would make such a repulsively awful presence in the US Senate as to throw serious shade on Ted Cruz for the dishonor of being the most repulsive member of the US Senate.
Calouste
@Quinerly: I guess the Rep doesn’t grasp how that is basically an admission of guilt that he has been bought by the Russians.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@sukabi: I may play around with luminosity masks later with that and other shots. I shot about 170 shots last night and most were exposure bracketed.
ETA: Hami, the guy who organizes these shoots does a really good job, well worth the dues of $8/year.
trollhattan
@cmorenc:
Not so fast crowning the Worstest Senator.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
I doubt it. AFAIK, the fence was not up during the Depression, when it was still a (relatively) popular place for people to commit suicide.
SiubhanDuinne
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Tell it to Steeplejack.
Mnemosyne
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I still can’t find a still shot of the scene I’m thinking of, but I found an image of the lobby card.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Major Major Major Major: You need to sell on Amazon. Like it or not. That said, I’m not a huge fan of Create Space, because using it makes it hard to generate interest from other retailers. I went with Ingram Spark, and I’ve been pleased with what I’ve gotten; most of the pitfalls have been of my own making. The one downside is that the binding on copies of Becoming Phoebe is suspect, and there have been issues with pages falling out. Unfortunately, this seems to be true with just about all of the places you can self-publish a book.
SiubhanDuinne
@Hal:
Remind me again, why does Trump have such a hair up his butt about Jeff Flake?
sharl
The explanation I once heard – and it makes sense to me – is that a LOT of people retire from colder states to live in AZ at least part of the year. That of course includes a lot of racist white folk who gain voting rights in AZ,* where they can let their racist flag fly large and proud by voting for the likes of Arpaio. He puts those brown people in their place – y’know, the ones whose families often have lived in Arizona for generations. [I once saw these kind of white folks referred to as “Barcalounger Bob” or something like that – e.g., maybe a retired white NYPD guy carrying a lifetime of pent-up rage and resentment, because reasons.]
*I’d actually like to know how easy it is to cheat on voter registration in AZ, especially in Maricopa County. Of course that isn’t the kind of voter fraud that Kris Kobach and his crowd would have any interest in…
Shana
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Isn’t there a musical that has that as the plot?
Major Major Major Major
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: I guess I haven’t been communicating this well. I don’t really want to sell them, I just want ten or twenty comic books.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Major Major Major Major: Ah. That’s entirely different. Expensive, but different. Keep in mind that a lot of the costs for publishing are for setting up the print run and won’t scale down for just a few copies. It was several thousand dollars for me, though I have no idea what a graphic novel vs. text would be.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Shana: Mostel would’ve made a great trump
Roger Moore
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
FTFY.
Major Major Major Major
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: Pulp comics are reasonably cheap actually. I wasn’t going to go full glossy, good stock, etc ‘graphic novel’. Just wondering if anybody had any particular recommendations before I started calling the locals.
Mnemosyne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
@Shana:
“I’m wearing a cardboard belt!”
Roger Moore
@Major Major Major Major:
Could you just print them on a high-quality color printer?
Major Major Major Major
@Roger Moore: I could–I literally live across the street from a Kinko’s–but that’s not nearly as fun!
Shana
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yes, and he had another awful hairdo. Less hair to comb over AIR but awful, which I know is the point.
Roger Moore
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
Have you come anywhere close to making it back?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mnemosyne: and Mike Pence, as Leo Bloom!
“Step number one, we turn the worst campaign in the world, step two, I raise us a billion dollars— lot of demented billionaires in this country!– step number three, we run for the White House, step four, We lose!”
–one hour later–
I ran the worst campaign, I said the worst things, I campaigned with the worst people… where did I go right?
(((CassandraLeo)))
I think there’s a non-zero chance this becomes a California Proposition 187-type moment for Arizona, actually. Apparently, only 21% of AZ voters approved of Arpaio’s pardon. That doesn’t bode too well for his Senate chances. Maybe I’m being overly optimistic but I could see this being the tipping point that turns AZ blue.
Patricia Kayden
Hopefully a Democratic candidate can run and win in Arizona which would be the only good outcome because Flake and Arpaio are awful. Republicans have shown that they will stand with this “President” no matter what he does.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Roger Moore:
Ah. Ha ha ha. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
No. Honestly, I never expected to. I didn’t publish Becoming Phoebe with the intention of making any money. I published it because I was at a point in my life where I desperately needed something tangible that I could point to to justify my existence, to myself if no one else. Something that I could point to and say, THIS IS WHAT I’VE BEEN DOING DURING THE EIGHT YEARS I’VE BEEN UNEMPLOYED. (I actually became employed during the publishing process, but still.)
I didn’t realize it until the process was over, but telling that story was also a part of my coming to grips with, and being ready to say publicly, that I was sexually assaulted several times in junior high school. Telling it first through Phoebe, although my circumstances were very, very different from hers, was an important step.
Fortunately, my parents agreed that this was worth doing, and largely funded the publishing process.
Patricia Kayden
@ruemara: Fear of the demographic shift from being the majority to being a minority as the Latino population continues to rise. According to the link, Arizona will become a majority-minority state in the 2020s which is just around the corner.
Patricia Kayden
@Quinerly: I’m sure most Republicans in and out of office want to stop Mueller. They know he’s going to find a whole lot of dirt and it may not just be dirt on Trump and his direct circle of sycophants. Mueller may end up bringing down the entire Republican Party if the links to Russia go beyond just getting Trump in the White House.
danielx
Strom Thurmond redux.
Roger Moore
One additional thing to ponder: there’s a good chance McCain’s seat is going to be open soon. I can easily imagine people talking about running against Flake as a stalking horse for running to replace McCain if he dies or is forced to retire by his illness.
Iowa Old Lady
@Major Major Major Major: I don’t know about cost, but people used to use Lulu for printing their own books.
Have you read Station Eleven? The title comes from a graphic novel one of the characters is creating. Only a handful of copies were ever printed.
Hal
@SiubhanDuinne: That’s my question. I don’t recall Flake being anti-Trump or opposing Trump’s agenda.
Major Major Major Major
@Iowa Old Lady: I have not. I’ll have to look it up.
DanysDragon
@Bobby Thomson: That was in 1987. Thirty years ago. Arizona’s still definitely more red than blue, but it has been slowly shifting left over the past 10-15 years or so.
And Arpaio did just lose an election for the first time in nearly a quarter century in the same cycle that Donald Trump won the presidency.
Matt McIrvin
As I said in the other thread, if Joe Arpaio weren’t already 85 years old, he’d be the obvious next Republican President after Trump, continuing the trajectory.
As it is, I think Paul LePage will probably need a job pretty soon.
Laura
@Major Major Major Major: it was the real deal in revealing group dynamics and who leaders are and how preconceived notions will get you killed occasionally.
I’ll pimp it for the rest of my days -and the benefits have served me well.
mai naem mobile
@Schlemazel: Arpaio would not win in the general. Trust me on this. He cost Maricopa county way too much money in lawsuits. If you want Latinos to come out and vote, push for Arpaio to win the primary. They hate him. I mean hate him way more than Dolt45.
Ella in New Mexico
@Bobby Thomson:
Actually, it looks like Arizona is saner than most of us would expect
Bobby Thomson
@DanysDragon: like the purpling of Texas where Republicans outnumber Democrats 2 to 1? Yea, Godot ain’t comin’.
Ella in New Mexico
Arpaio’s wife has cancer, he’s almost 86, and he’s already on the hook for his legal fees and expecting to have to shell out more so he’s on the begging road show right now, trying to raise money. He’s all pumped up an overblown sense of himself thanks to the Trump pardon. Some reporter asked him if he’d ever run for office and off he went.
Now he’s actually saying the Presidential pardon wasn’t enough–he wants his conviction VACATED
No shame. That’s how these sociopaths/narcissist roll.
jonas
Welp, Roy Moore’s looks to be the next senator from Alabama, so why not Arpaio? I presume the reanimated corpse of Hitler himself will be nominated for the GA senate seat or something next. Pretty soon the entire GOP caucus is just going to start going to work in KKK sheets anyway, so who gives a shit?
Ruckus
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I know it used to be easy. It hasn’t been all that easy for a while. I’ve also driven over the golden gate bridge a lot and I have to say it used to be a lot easier to jump from there. That’s changed though.