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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Unexpected and Expected News tonight

Unexpected and Expected News tonight

by | 137 Comments

This post is in: ,

Starting with the unexpected news:

 

The Democrat, Peltola won in the 2nd round of the instant run-off voting of the House Special Election. She went into the second round with about a 12 point lead over Palin and enough people who initially voted for Begich went 50% Palin, 30% Peltola, and 20% no 2nd vote. A lot of people decided that the reality TV star was not their choice for Congress.

And now for the expected news:

He hires the best people!

Open Thread

Reader Interactions

137Comments

  1. 1.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    Alaska hasn’t had a Democratic congressional representative since 1972.

    🌊 🌊 🌊 Roll Tide, Roll Roe Tide, Roe

  3. 3.

    Nora

    It gives me hope, seeing that the people of Alaska rejected Sarah Palin.  Her 15 minutes is long past over.

  4. 4.

    RaflW

    I hope Kevin McCarthy’s guts did to him on the Palin news what mine just did after over a quart of GoLytely (yes, sadly, it’s prep time for me. At least I have this wonderful Alaska news to bouy my spirits).

  5. 5.

    patrick II

    I am also a potential (and increasingly more likely than Trump) candidate against the chief executive in 2024.  Does that mean I get a pass from DOJ prosecution?

  6. 6.

    TaMara

    Excellent news on Alaska…

    I have a Kindness post in the wings, but I think I’m going to hold it for tomorrow – Adam has a Ukraine post in the works and who knows what else is gonna break tonight. See you then!

  9. 9.

    Dan B

    Someone commented on Palin’s loss as Alaskans giving the cold shoulder to Sasquatch Barbie, or something like that.  It may have been Abominable Snowoman.

  10. 10.

    Ken

    @Baud: “Your honor, my client could not have robbed the bank because at the time of the robbery, he was at home chopping up the body of his fifteenth victim.”

  11. 11.

    RaflW

    Also this!

    @DavidMarkDC

    If Rep.-elect Mary Peltola (D-Alaska) is still in the House on Jan. 6, 2025, Democrats will have control of another state delegation in case there’s a contingent presidential election in the House.

  13. 13.

    Chacal Charles Calthrop

    This is all coming around full cycle.

    When McCain picked Palin as a running mate, it was a slap in the face to all the women who’d honestly worked in politics — it was a way of saying, yes, we’ll elect women, but they’ll be the same women who were never considered appropriate for public office because they were bimbos who winked during a debate because all that matters for a woman is sex appeal and that was all women.

    And in a weird way Trump was that for men — an acknowledgment that there really were no standards, there was nothing the President actually needed to know, no prior office he needed to hold, nor any loyalty to which he had to be faithful; the only thing that mattered was visceral appeal to the “right” sort of people — the straight white guys who found Palin attractive back when she was McCain’s running mate.

    If people who usually vote Republican are finally turning against leadership by pure id, aka Trump — and I’ll only believe it when I see it — it makes sense that they will dump Palin too.

    Big if, though.

  14. 14.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    It’s great that we won, but on the down side, it’s a big loss for Tina Fey and the new season of SNL

  19. 19.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Nora:

    It gives me hope, seeing that the people of Alaska rejected Sarah Palin. Her 15 minutes is long past over. 

    True, but John McCain can still fuck himself for potentially putting her a heartbeat away from the presidency.

  20. 20.

    Paul W.

    Honestly, the timing of all of these amazing (like seriously astounded by margins in Kansas and AK Dem win) election results and the legislative wins on top of gas falling is putting a halo effect around my vision for 2022 results.

    Trying to wipe my eyes clean and sprint through the finish but maybe the Republican overreach will FINALLY not be good news for John McCain

  21. 21.

    Carlo Graziani

    It may be a simple oversight, but it still strikes me as potentially significant that the redacted portions of the Mueller Report have still not been unredacted by DOJ. The justification for those redactions was to protect investigations in progress, which everyone assumed meant Flynn and Manafort. Yet here we are in 2022, and all that black “ink” still lies over that text.

    A good bit of which probably had to do with an FBI counterintelligence investigation targeting Russia.

    Hm.

  23. 23.

    Anonymous At Work

    Trump’s lawyers clearly are taking orders from Trump like he’s a legal expert.  Reads like it was the search and that Trump’s personal decisions about what records are *his* are the issues they are litigating (Ron Howard’s Narration: Neither are relevant).  That Trump thought he had a right to the documents is irrelevant, the security and storage situation is irrelevant, all that matters is possession, which they are admitting to.

  24. 24.

    RaflW

    @gwangung: At least we know Cole went through this recently.

    And in less humorous news, I found out today that a somewhat distant cousin of my partner died this week at 61 of colon cancer.

    I had no intention of cancelling my appt, but really, universe, you didn’t need such a harsh reminder to stay on course!

  25. 25.

    jonas

    So apparently Trump’s legal strategy is going to be to argue that anything that ever crossed his desk, including TS/SCI and other classified documents, immediately became his personal property and were de facto also declassified. This will work out well.

  30. 30.

    Jackie

    “I feel like I need to catch my breath for a minute,” Peltola said in the moment after results were announced in a live video by state election officials in Juneau. Peltola was surrounded by family and campaign staff at an Anchorage office.
    “What’s most important is that I’m an Alaskan being sent to represent all Alaskans. Yes, being Alaska Native is part of my ethnicity, but I’m much more than my ethnicity,” she said.“
    https://www.adn.com/politics/2022/08/31/democrat-mary-peltola-wins-special-us-house-election-will-be-first-alaska-native-elected-to-congress/

  32. 32.

    Poe Larity

    Just another post where I wish I had a twitter account to see what Meghan McCain thinks.

    Not.

  33. 33.

    CaseyL

    Among the many things in the Reply Brief that baffle me is Trump’s lawyer’s assertions that the subpoena and seizure of the documents came out of nowhere, that there was “ordinary back and forth” between Trump and NARA to return them.  That is absolutely contradicted by the record of requests which were ignored, which is why DoJ went for the subpoena and seizure.

    I do get that the judge is a Trump-appointed Federalist Society hack, but making an argument that completely ignores and/or contradicts documented fact seems… a bridge too far, even for her.

    If she rules in favor of Trump, can the DoJ appeal?

  38. 38.

    JWR

    Hey, is this new?: From ABC:

    Lawyers for former President Donald Trump on Wednesday responded to the Justice Department in the dispute over Trump’s request for a “special master” to review materials the FBI seized at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

    Trump’s lawyers have argued to a federal judge in Florida that the review is needed to deal with matters they argue could be covered by executive privilege.

    @CaseyL: That’s what I was wondering about. I’m sure someone here will know.

  40. 40.

    Ken

    @CaseyL: I think Anonymous At Work has the explanation. The lawyers, perhaps because of a heinous sin in their past life, are stuck with a client who is telling them how to argue the case. This is why their legal output contains the same confessions of guilt as TFG’s TruthSocial posts.

  41. 41.

    Kristine

    @Paul W.:

    Honestly, the timing of all of these amazing (like seriously astounded by margins in Kansas and AK Dem win) election results and the legislative wins on top of gas falling is putting a halo effect around my vision for 2022 results.

    I know, right? A few weeks ago, I felt so down about Dem prospects in November. Then the wheels started coming off the GOP bus.

    I’m trying to not assume anything or take anything for granted. Keep head down, and help where I can. But part of me just wants to don a waterproof poncho and watch the shit keep hitting the fan.

    Also, great news from Alaska!

  43. 43.

    CaseyL

    (Thanks, WaterGirl, for restoring my nym and comment!)
    @JWR: They keep making arguments that don’t hold up.  They say Presidents aren’t merely encouraged but not required to give their official documents to NARA; they keep referencing an Executive Privilege Trump doesn’t have, and they ignore the facts of the case to say the seizure of documents was unwarranted because Trump’s refusal to return the documents was a “normal back and forth” process.
    It just boggles my mind.  I really want some real lawyers to weigh in on this.​

  45. 45.

    Kent

    This is just awesome and amazing news.  Couldn’t have happened to a nicer person.  I remember her from my days of working in Alaska.  I just hope she can hold the seat past November.

    What this also means is that my congressional district, the WA-3rd, is the ONLY REMAINING Republican congressional district on the entire Pacific Coast.  The only one.  There is no other district that touches the Pacific Ocean that is red.

    We have a shot at flipping the seat now that the incumbent Jaime Hererra Beutler took third in the jungle primary and the race is down to a good young energetic Democratic candidate Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and a complete and total Q-Anon election denier.  This district is the Portland suburb of Vancouver and all the rural area stretching to the Pacific and crest of the Cascades and running up I-5 nearly to Olympia.  Vancouver is blue and the rest of the district is rural red or blue collar mill town red.

  47. 47.

    Scout211

    Here’s a CNN version.

    Apparently it’s all just mundane and the DOJ overreacted, (according to Trump’s lawyers’ filing).

    CNN)Former President Donald Trump argued in a court filing Wednesday that the National Archives should have expected to find classified material among the 15 boxes Trump turned over in January from Mar-a-Lago because they were presidential records.

    The filing acknowledged that classified material was found at Mar-a-Lago, but argued that it should not have been cause for alarm — and should not have led to the search of Trump’s Florida residence earlier this month.

    Trump’s new filing on Wednesday is his platform to formally respond to prosecutors’ assertions that members of his legal team engaged in “obstructive conduct” by concealing documents at his Florida resort and by providing untrue information to investigators about how many classified documents remained on site.

    “The purported justification for the initiation of this criminal probe was the alleged discovery of sensitive information contained within the 15 boxes of Presidential records,” Trump’s lawyers wrote. “But this ‘discovery’ was to be fully anticipated given the very nature of Presidential records. Simply put, the notion that Presidential records would contain sensitive information should have never been cause for alarm.”

    Trump’s lawyers argue that under the Presidential Records Act, the Archives should have followed up with a good faith effort to secure recovery of presidential records, rather than referring a criminal probe to the Justice Department.

  49. 49.

    thruppence

    If some Republicans voted their id 14 years ago because they thought Palin was hawt (hello Rich Lowry) maybe 14 years later she’s not hawt enough anymore to move that needle again

  50. 50.

    Ken

    @Scout211: “The purported justification for the initiation of this criminal probe was the alleged discovery of sensitive information contained within the 15 boxes of Presidential records,” Trump’s lawyers wrote.

    Sounds like the DOJ’s response will be “HA HA HA HA. No.”

  51. 51.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Scout211: These arguments just infuriate me with their defiance of reality. I want to scream those aren’t his papers! blah, blah, more explanation trying to drag the conversation back to facts. A blood vessel burst in my right eye today. I blame Trump.

  52. 52.

    Anonymous At Work

    @CaseyL: To the one and only CaseyL?  His lawyers are either out of state grifters or in-state-out-of-league non-criminal defense attorneys, mostly civil or real estate focused.  Trump hasn’t YET claimed privilege on the documents but wants a review “just in case”, which is meaningless and DoJ’s briefs are intended to show “too late” as well.

    The real problem is the June 3rd signed statement made by Trump and lawyers that everything had been returned to National Archives that had been requested, that a thorough search of the premise had been made, and nothing had been found.  The FBI search blew that up badly and Humpty Trumpty ain’t putting it back together again.

  53. 53.

    davecb

    The apparent madness of Mr Trump’s lawyers is because they aren’t addressing the court. They’re using the legal process to republish their false statements.

    Now they can say “we argued X in court, it has to be true”, and then later “we argued X in court, it was obviously true, but the court rejected it”.

    The latter might well send a lynch-mob looking for the judges, an extraordinary appeal of the sort used in banana republics.

  55. 55.

    Mike in NC

    Remember the time Fat Bastard invited Ted Nugent, Kid Rock, and Sarah Palin to the Oval Office? Just another of ten thousand embarrassing stunts.

  56. 56.

    Kent

    @thruppence:If some Republicans voted their id 14 years ago because they thought Palin was hawt (hello Rich Lowry) maybe 14 years later she’s not hawt enough anymore to move that needle again

    The weird thing was that she wasn’t horrible when she first ran for governor.  She was more or less your centrist GOP governor and ran against the corrupt GOP old boys network that dominated the state legislature.  She was kind of like a Christine Todd Whitman or Lisa Murkowski.

    She didn’t go ape-shit crazy until the McCain campaign and I think all the mockery she got on the national level just broke her brain and sent her full-tilt MAGA.  Or whatever the pre-MAGA was in 2008.

  57. 57.

    RaflW

    This from Sean Trende at RCP is funny. But you know it’s burning him up. Too bad the GOP is now mostly just certified attentionologists and grifters, and not actually interested in making anyone’s life better.

    “Yet another Republican nominee selected from the Star Wars cantina goes up in smoke.”

  58. 58.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Mike in NC:

    Remember the time Fat Bastard invited Ted Nugent, Kid Rock, and Sarah Palin to the Oval Office? Just another of ten thousand embarrassing stunts. 

    You did NOT have to remind us of this!

  60. 60.

    Scout211

    I hope that courtroom tomorrow allows the press. I’m really interested in how they can argue these fantasies in front of the judge and with federal prosecutors there in the courtroom with actual laws and statutes backing up their case, not wild fantasies.

  62. 62.

    Dangerman

    Is Trump trying to plead insanity? This OFF (Orange Fat Fucker) Dude is off his rocker or off his meds.

  65. 65.

    Citizen Alan

    @Kent: Actually, she was kind of crazy when McCain picked her. Had he not done so, she was in serious danger of getting impeached over her blatantly violating state records laws (she conducted state business through her Yahoo account) and using state resources to pursue a vendetta against her brother-in-law over a family dispute. All that got swept under the rug when she got the VP nod.

  66. 66.

    Scout211

    And from NBC

    Projection much?

    Trump’s legal team on Wednesday renewed its request for a third party to review documents seized from Mar-a-Lago by FBI agents, arguing that left to their own devices “unchecked investigators” would selectively leak bits of their investigation with no recourse for the former president.

    “Left unchecked, the DOJ will impugn, leak, and publicize selective aspects of their investigation with no recourse for [Trump] but to somehow trust the self-restraint of currently unchecked investigators,” Trump’s attorneys wrote in response to Tuesday night’s filing from the Justice Department. “While DOJ may have succeeded in taking a partial filter to their rummaged proceeds, the need for a Special Master remains in place.”

  68. 68.

    JWR

    @Anonymous At Work:

    The real problem is the June 3rd signed statement made by Trump and lawyers that everything had been returned to National Archives that had been requested, that a thorough search of the premise had been made, and nothing had been found.

    Do you suppose that the docs were actively hidden, even from the lawyer who signed the June 3rd statement, and if so, who done it?

  70. 70.

    Feathers

    @Chacal Charles Calthrop: I remember back when she was nominated, one of the grandmotherly women I swam laps with saying “She’s governor of the state and she couldn’t even get her children into a decent college?”  It made me realize how far the Republicans had gone. They weren’t recognizable to the reality based crowd.

  71. 71.

    Geminid

    Alaska will also have a hard fought Senate election this November between Senator Lisa Murkowski and Kelly Tshibaka. Two other candidates will advance to the runpff but they got 6.8% and 2.1% in the primary and will not be much of a factor.

    Both Murkowski and Tshibaka are Republicans. Murkowski led the first round with 45% while Tshibaka got 38.6%. Tshibaka has trump’s endorsement behind her, but this may be a depreciating asset.

    I wonder what will be the synergy between Murkowski’s and Mary Peltola’s campaigns. They are both pro-choice. Peltola describes herself as pro-labor, and organized labor was a significant force behind Murkowski’s exceptional win in 2010 as an Independent write-in candidate. Observers say that another factor that year was Murkowski’s strong support from Alaska’s Native Corporations.

    So while Murkowski and Peltola probably will not campaign together, they will share a base of organized supporters.

  72. 72.

    Old Dan and Little Ann

    @raven: I watched a few matches last night.  It was super entertaining.  I watched tennis a bunch in the 80’s and early 90’s and it was always great entertainment.  I knew Serena was on tonight and caught it from early on the 1st set.  Serena is the Queen of Tennis.

  73. 73.

    Geminid

    @Kent: I guess the big question now in the WA 3rd CD is where the Herrera Butler voters go. Do you have any inkling?

  74. 74.

    Nicole

    @RaflW:

    And in less humorous news, I found out today that a somewhat distant cousin of my partner died this week at 61 of colon cancer.

    A friend of mine from my high school years died of it at 46.  I’m glad you’re getting your colon checked out.  I’ve had 2 of these before age 50 (due to a cancer gene I carry), and while the prep is no fun, the procedure itself isn’t so bad (GREAT anesthesia- Propofol, I think.  Excellent stuff), and man, after fasting 24 hours, whatever you eat first after the procedure is the best tasting food you ever had.  Mine was a tuna melt after my first one- five years later, I still remember it!

  75. 75.

    RaflW

    @Kent: This may be, but I really never understood why she quit halfway through one term. Even our glass jaw pro wrestler (and I mean glass jaw in terms of his complete inability to handle press criticism) in Minnesota served his four years.

    She bailed after two. What satisfactory answer did she ever give for that? (Not the perfect rhyme but I always liked “the quitta from Wasilla”)

  77. 77.

    James E Powell

    @Baud:

    I gonna go rob a bank.

    Fuck money, if get to do some free crimes, I’m going to beat the shit out of Chris Cillizza.

  78. 78.

    livewyre

    @davecb: This rings completely true for me. That would mean there’s still a strategy behind this farce – the legal argument they’re making can be as incoherent and self-defeating as we like if they’re not making a legal argument in the first place.

    All legal avenues have been closed off, so any that remain are extralegal. The bid for restoration of rule has been reduced to force of will (and arms) against the very idea of law itself. Now we just have to see which one prevails.

  79. 79.

    Barbara

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: ​It’s all special pleading. They might as well have filed a one sentence brief: “I deserve special treatment.” It kills me a judge might go for it, though I think DOJ would likely appeal.

  81. 81.

    James E Powell

    @CaseyL:

    I do get that the judge is a Trump-appointed Federalist Society hack, but making an argument that completely ignores and/or contradicts documented fact seems

    The Trump-appointed Federalist hacks on the supreme court have made several decisions in which they ignored and/or contradicted documented facts. They do not acknowledge any restraints.

  82. 82.

    HumboldtBlue

    @Kent:

    What this also means is that my congressional district, the WA-3rd, is the ONLY REMAINING Republican congressional district on the entire Pacific Coast. The only one. There is no other district that touches the Pacific Ocean that is red.

    Huh, nice.

  84. 84.

    Chacal Charles Calthrop

    @JWR: What’s new is that, two counties away and in a different Federal district court from the court which originally issued the search warrant, Trump filed a motion seeking to have a special master appointed to oversee the search warrant and the DOJ filed opposition and Trump therefore has the right to file a reply answering the opposition, which is what he has just done.

    To that extent, the papers are new.  The BS argument isn’t.

  86. 86.

    jonas

    @CaseyL: It’s just surreal what they’re trying to argue. Highly classified natsec documents =/= presidential records. Executive privilege belongs to, you know, the Chief Executive, aka the current president, not some mentally decompensating civilian orange fatass claiming he’s still president.

  88. 88.

    Martin

    @JWR: is needed to deal with matters they argue could be covered by executive privilege.

    Executive privilege is exerted by the executive branch against the other 2 branches. How does a private citizen exert executive privilege against the executive branch using material they stole from the executive branch? Any judge that buys this bullshit should be impeached. It doesn’t make any sense at all.

  89. 89.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @James E Powell:

    They also don’t seem to acknowledge that if they push too far there will be consequences, perhaps even to themselves. Even kings did not have complete absolute power

  90. 90.

    J R in WV

    OK!!!

    We have our network back, and so also the Internet!!! Neighbor’s network center melted — sparks flying in their bedroom at 2 am — during lightning storm weekend before last, equipment arrived today to replace some vital pieces. Hope you didn’t miss us over the past 10 days or so… also, many hundreds of emails to delete!!

  91. 91.

    jonas

    @Chacal Charles Calthrop: ​
      Afaik, a special master is usually assigned when seized documents could be shielded by attorney-client privilege. In this case, the FBI wasn’t interested in those documents, only the classified ones, which, by definition, have nothing to do with A/C privilege. Why he, or his lawyers, think appointing a special master in this case will make any difference whatsoever is mindboggling. I can imagine Trump being so stupid and addled as to think that a special master will somehow find that the top secret files he absconded with are somehow “privileged”, but why did his legal team go along with this nonsense? Billable hours, I guess. Not as though they’ll ever get paid, but still.

  94. 94.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @jonas:

    Even presidential records, even ones that have been declassified, don’t belong to the former president. The records belong to NARA/National Archives. This has been the case since 1978

  97. 97.

    The Thin Black Duke

    @jonas: The purpose is to delay, delay, and delay some more. The GOP has repeatedly demonstrated that the laws aren’t worth the paper they wipe their asses with, and if the Republicans take back the House and the Senate, all of this goes away.

  98. 98.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @jonas:

    So, you’re saying even if the Trumpkin/Federalist hack judge goes along with Trump’s request to appoint a special master, and the DOJ were to lose an appeal challenging this, it wouldn’t materially matter?

  100. 100.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @The Thin Black Duke:

    and if the Republicans take back the House and the Senate, all of this goes away

    How so? They won’t control the DOJ, which is what counts. Besides, they’ve gotten pretty quiet recently because they realize how horrible this all looks. National security is serious business

  101. 101.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    Even presidential records, even ones that have been declassified, don’t belong to the former president. The records belong to NARA/National Archives. This has been the case since 1978 

    Hey!  Do you know who I am! who the orange shitstain is!

  106. 106.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Barbara: I really can’t see how the judge could go for it.*  The appellate opinion would be humiliating.

    *I understand the hack argument, but there are limits and professional pride has to come in somewhere.

  109. 109.

    Keith P.

    @jonas: Especially when his evidence for having done any of that is an affidavit from Kash Patel saying “I saw him wave his hand over the box and say ‘You’re DECLASSIFIED!'”.

  111. 111.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @HumboldtBlue:

    Huh. I suspected red, low or no income tax states had to make up the shortfall somehow, so they have higher regressive taxes like sales and property taxes

  112. 112.

    Citizen Alan

    @satby: Well, thanks all for turning me onto the Boswell Sisters who I’d never heard of. But does anyone know who the trio from the video actually are b/c I’m genuinely curious.

  113. 113.

    Craigie

    @JWR:

    Oh please. The point is that the lawyer never did any such search. She just signed off on one because that fat fucker told her to.

    She’s going to be disbarred.

  114. 114.

    jonas

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): ​
      Absolutely not. The search warrant was seeking improperly withheld government property. If, for some reason, some a/c privileged papers were in there, it has nothing to do with the government’s obstruction/espionage investigation against Trump. Trump appears to still labor under the delusion that this classified material is “his” in some way because it crossed his desk, and therefore “privileged.” No. Just, no.

  116. 116.

    jonas

    @Keith P.: ​
     

    “I saw him wave his hand over the box and say ‘You’re DECLASSIFIED!’”.

    “File-us declassifi-us!” (*waves wand*)

  118. 118.

    Kent

    @Geminid: @Kent: I guess the big question now in the WA 3rd CD is where the Herrera Butler voters go. Do you have any inkling?

    No clue.  She had a pretty diverse set of voters.  All the hard core GOP supported her pre-impeachment because she was always a garden variety Republican.  But she had a lot of soccer mom independent voter types who generally supported her too because she had a very good media team.  Basically she would sign on as co-sponsor to some feel-good Democratic legislation like support for a jobs program and then her media team would put out news releases to all the local media saying “Jamie bring home $5 million for jobs training for Clark County or some such.  Where will those voters go?  Most of them to Marie I suspect.  Will it be enough to beat the MAGA Q-Anon guy Joe Kent?  I have no idea.

    She is a better candidate than the last one we had, Carolyn Long who was basically a carpet bagging political science professor who moved to the district just to run.  She was a professor at the local college WSU-Vancouver but had always lived in Portland before deciding to Run.  Marie actually lives in small town WA and she and her husband own an auto repair shop across the river in Portland so she is very blue collar liberal despite having an Econ degree from Reed College.

  120. 120.

    jonas

    @HumboldtBlue: ​
    @HumboldtBlue: ​
      Some time ago someone (maybe Kevin Drum?) crunched the numbers on tax liability in TX vs CA and concluded that if you’re upper middle-class to really rich, say in the top 1-5%, TX is better. If you’re just a working- or middle-class schmoe, CA is a much better deal.

  121. 121.

    Kent

    @RaflW: She quit to cash in on all the money rolling her way in the lower 48.  Juneau is a very small and isolated town to live in.  I know, I lived there 10 years.  Once she had tasted the big time of FOX news and all the reality show bullshit there was no going back to Juneau which is actually a VERY blue city that hated her anyway.

    She was obviously always a flake.  But didn’t really appear to be before the McCain campaign.  The GOP in Alaska has always been crazed and she was one of the least crazy back then in 2006 and 2007.  I still think the 2008 campaign basically broke her brain.

  122. 122.

    James E Powell

    Democrat beats a Trump-backed Republican in a very Republican state.

    Who will write the first “This is bad news for Biden” article? Or has it already been written?

  123. 123.

    jonas

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I don’t see how. An SM isn’t going to sequester any of the evidence the FBI was actually looking for, namely the classified documents Trump lied about hiding at MAL because they can’t be privileged in any sense.  Theoretically, if they also happened upon, say, correspondence between Trump and his legal team that suggested a conspiracy to try to continue concealing that classified material from the FBI, that’s more evidence of obstruction and would also not be covered by a/c privilege.

  124. 124.

    jonas

    @Kent: ​
      Yeah, my impression is that she was a rather unremarkable, if fairly middle-of-the-road, Republican governor. But as soon as she was thrust into the national spotlight, it became clear that, like Trump, she was basically a shambling collection of untreated personality disorders. I think Michelle Obama put it best when she observed that the presidency (or similarly prominent office) doesn’t change you; it reveals who you really are.

  125. 125.

    prostratedragon

    @satby:   Well that would seem to eliminate them. In both clips I saw a resemblance to a person I know. And of course the Boswells were early scat singers.

  127. 127.

    Ken

    @James E Powell: Who will write the first “This is bad news for Biden” article?

    “Have the Democrats peaked too early? Successes in special elections and referenda may spell trouble for Biden in November.”

    Gee, I see why DougJ does this. It’s easy and fun.  Well, a combination of fun and disheartening. Is there a word for that? Perhaps something German.

  129. 129.

    Alaska Reader

    @jonas:

     

    @Kent:

     

    Anyone who interacted with Sarah Palin knew from the start that she is and was inherently wingnut insane and motivated solely by a need to grift off her own high opinion of herself.  She ‘became’ governor by running against Frank ‘The Bank’ Murkowski, a corrupt criminal who was on his way out no matter who ran against him.  Alaska being maybe the reddest state was only ever going to elect another Republican governor and the Alaska media is/was in lockstep with the GOP so press coverage of Palin was not unlike political press for Trump, they covered for her exceptionally well.

    Her ‘act’ was a sham, she ran on a promise to reform ethics and it was no surprise to anyone paying attention that it wouldn’t be long before she was the target of many ethic violations.

    Her normalcy act was not unlike Frank the Bank’s Senate appointed daughter, Lisa Murkowski’s theater act.  Pay no attention to what they say or what is printed about them, check the voting record, it doesn’t match up with the theater.  And any perception of Palin being anything but insane is proven otherwise by ignoring political ‘opinion’ by way of a close examination of realities missing from that political ‘opinion’.

    Palin never was, nor ever would be, any kind of positive step in Alaska politics or national politics.

  130. 130.

    zhena gogolia

    @prostratedragon: But “scat” doesn’t mean “comic.” This trio is definitely comic. I have googled every which way I can and can’t find anything. It doesn’t seem to be on YouTube, because I tried “In the Mood,” which is what they return to at the end, and it doesn’t show up as any of the versions.

  131. 131.

    germy shoemangler

    @zhena gogolia:

    It’s not the Boswell sisters because one of the Boswells was wheelchair bound.

    It’s not the Andrews sisters.

    The 1940s was a time of young comic actresses and singers.  I think Martha Raye was the template back then.

  132. 132.

    cmorenc

    @Anonymous At Work:

     That Trump thought he had a right to the documents is irrelevant, the security and storage situation is irrelevant, all that matters is possession, which they are admitting to…

    Actually, it’s impossible for team Trump to refute that Trump possessed the documents, and so the “admission” is not exactly an unforced concession or error on their part, as it is recognition that their defense has to rest upon some sort of claim to right of possession or inadvertent oversight in not finding all the documents the first two go-arounds with the feds.   OK so the latter approach requires quite a long, tenous stretch to buy it, but it’s far less than the light-years distance stretch of credibility of trying to deny possession.

  136. 136.

    Kristine

    @HumboldtBlue: Thanks for that article–sharing it on the Twitter. I recall hearing that somewhere, but didn’t dig further. Good to have numbers to back it up.

    There are more to taxes than just income tax.

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