Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Come on, man.

I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

The willow is too close to the house.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

We still have time to mess this up!

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Consistently wrong since 2002

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / TGIFriday Morning Open Thread: Some Speech!

TGIFriday Morning Open Thread: Some Speech!

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Happy thought, to lead into the long weekend…

Reader Interactions

125Comments

  1. 1.

    dmsilev

    Re: the last tweet, what was “done” to Sarah Palin? She lost an election. I realize looking for logic in Greene’s blatherings is a waste of time, but even for her that’s really fucking stupid.

  9. 9.

    Ken

    @dmsilev: The conservative complaint is that Mary Peltola won, even though more people voted for the two Republican candidates in the first round.

    As a compromise, I suggest cutting the joint Republican victors in half, sewing together a couple of sides, and sending the result to Congress.

  10. 10.

    different-church-lady

    @dmsilev:

    what was “done” to Sarah Palin?

    She wasn’t allowed to take office even though more people voted for someone else.

    Good job Marge, you proved Biden perfectly correct.

  12. 12.

    Cacti

    Speaking of the nascent fascist movement…

    A Brazilian neo-nazi attempted a public assassination of Argentine Vice President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.

  15. 15.

    Chief Oshkosh

    I wonder, who are the Republicans-who-aren’t-MAGAts that the President referred to, that he’s been working with? Kinziger? Cheney? I don’t even think that they especially signed on to any legislative initiatives initiated by the Democrats. Are there others? Are there Republican legislators who have actually worked with the President? Would it be good or bad politics for the President to name them?

  19. 19.

    gene108

    @Betty:

    McCarthy should be forevermore referred to as Sparky in recognition of his inane comment.

    What’s wrong with wanting to electrocute Americans with Liberty?

  22. 22.

    gene108

    @Ken:

    The conservative complaint is that Mary Peltola won, even though more people voted for the two Republican candidates in the first round.

    Two people from the same party split the vote allowing the person from the other party to get the largest plurality of votes?

    Unpossible!!!

  23. 23.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @zhena gogolia: Maybe. But often there actually is a lot of across-the-aisle cooperation that never makes the news. I’m genuinely interested in whether any Republicans in 2021-22 participated in that. I guess I could thumb through all the bills put forth recently and see who co-sponsored and signed on, but I’m lazy.

    It seems to me that if there are a couple dozen of those people, and their “good works” are highlighted, then maybe the non-MAGAts (in Congress and out in the wider world) will be reminded that they are not crazy and that they are not alone. They sure as shit won’t hear it from party “leadership.

    ETA: And of course, highlighting their existence and the fact that leadership won’t give them the time of day will add the actual disarray in the GOP.

  25. 25.

    different-church-lady

    From last night’s thread:

    And [Biden] basically he said here’s your offramp, don’t hang there with the Magas.

    But here’s their problem: they have to hang with the Magas. The Magas are their only power; fascist rage is the only chance they have remaining. Otherwise they have nothing but the fall of Roe and the insurrection dragging them down. Biden isn’t just doing the right thing by calling out fascism, he’s also pushing them bodily into a trap of their own making.

  26. 26.

    Danielx

    @Ken:

    Wasn’t that how one George W Bush attained the presidency in 2000? I seem to recall some guy named Nader* siphoning off enough votes for him to slip by Al Gore.

    *full name: never-to-be-sufficiently-damned Ralph Nader.

  28. 28.

    gene108

    @Chief Oshkosh:

    I think President Biden is offering an off ramp for Republicans, who want to take it and put distance between themselves, Trump, and MAGA’s, even if they’ve been pro-Trump in the past few years.

    I’m not sure how effective it will be given how many Republicans lost primaries for not endorsing the Big Lie.

  30. 30.

    Baud

    @gene108:

    Two people from the same party split the vote allowing the person from the other party to get the largest plurality of votes

     
    It’s not even that bad. A lot of voters for one Republican chose the Dem over Sarah Palin as their second choice candidate. That’s how she won.

  32. 32.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    So this happened in Mississippi. The state auditor says $70 million in federal welfare funds went to [Brett] Favre, a volleyball complex and a former pro wrestler

    Wasn’t it Mississippi where the law said that any of the food budget the warden of a prison didn’t spend on feeding the prisoners, he could keep for his own personal use? With predictable results?

    And Mississippi in the news currently because Jackson has no water, due to decades of neglect.

    Don’t ever change, Mississippi. Actually, please change. A lot.

  35. 35.

    Ken

    @Baud: Yes, but why would any Republican voter go for the Democrat as second choice, over Palin?  No, there must be some irregularity here.  Hmm….

    Oh. My. God. According to the sample ballot at Ballotpedia, Alaska is using Dominion voting machines! There’s your smoking gun! The only Constitutional solution at this point is for an angry mob to storm the Capitol and reverse the results.

  38. 38.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Ken:

    The conservative complaint is that Mary Peltola won, even though more people voted for the two Republican candidates in the first round.

    I saw Tom Cotton complaining about it. Tom Cotton’s constituents (just over 3 million) have the same representation in the Senate as almost 40,000,000 Californians.

    There was a stat going around not long ago that something like thirty percent of the country can bring the Senate to a halt through the filibuster

  39. 39.

    HinTN

    @gene108: Actually, more voters for the third place Republican preferred the Democrat as their second choice over Sarah P., giving the Dem the outright majority

    ETA – Of course Baud got there first.

  40. 40.

    Soprano2

    @gene108: You’d think Republicans would understand this, since they help the Green Party do this to Democrats in quite a few places! Or they put an unknown candidate with the same name as the D candidate on the ballot to confuse the voters and help the Republican win.

  41. 41.

    Soprano2

    @Baud: I think about this sometimes. If something happened to me suddenly, like a car accident, there is no one who could post a note saying what happened if I couldn’t. My hubby is internet illiterate, and I don’t know anyone else well enough to ask them to do that.

  42. 42.

    Brachiator

    Biden: No matter what the white supremacists and the extremists say. I made a bet on you, the American people, and that bet is paying off, proving that from darkness, the darkness of charlottesville, of covid, of gun violence, of insurrection, we can see the light.

    A great speech. Republicans can’t say “He called me a Deplorable,” even though some of them will try to take offense anyway. He offers MAGA people and others an opportunity to back away from the madness.

  43. 43.

    Soprano2

    I listened to Biden’s speech this morning, because I was at choir last night when he gave it. It was a great speech, showing a lot of hope for America and highlighting the good things he and this Congress have done. And he finally said plainly what the threat is, and what the stakes are in the 2022 and 2024 election. A lot of those “hit dogs” are gonna holler very loudly. That one tweet is right, if they’re pissed it means he’s talking about them. I’m so, so tired of having to be polite and pretend that their main objection isn’t that women, non-white people, and gay people actually have rights now and are exercising them. When they say they want to go back to the 1950’s, I’m going to start asking “you mean before the Civil Rights Act was passed, when we still had Jim Crow laws?” Because that’s what they mean when they say that, full stop.

  44. 44.

    Cameron

    @Chief Oshkosh: I’ve heard that they’ve all moved to Oz, although whether it’s (a) Australia, (b) L. Frank Baum’s fantasy world, or (c) the prison in the TV series has yet to be determined.

  46. 46.

    Edmund Dantes

    @Ken: when LePage won in ME twice cause of this stupid three person race stuff I don’t recall hearing any real complaints (other than we shouldn’t let that happen again so RCV). And that was without RCV. People here were given a choice to say their favorite won they wanted to the other “conservative” to win. They chose not too.

    I also don’t recall him governing or acting like he came in second. 

  47. 47.

    Eolirin

     

    @Baud: Yeah, but to be fair, if Sarah Palin hadn’t come in second (or wasn’t on the ballot at all) Peltola might have lost that race.

  49. 49.

    artem1s

    @dmsilev:

    what was “done” to Sarah Palin?

    she was used by the GOP, mocked and rejected by the media and people who created her and then tossed aside as a has been.  Yes, MTG, this can and will happen to you and Boebert. The GOP has demonstrated the only women they want to see in Congress or the WH are fuckable, know nothings. You will be ‘allowed’ to keep your seat as long as they think you are fuckable and perform your role as a stupid, vapid mouthpiece spouting extremist, irrational crap (see Joni Ernst). If you dare step out of place and actually try to do the job seriously, and develop actual policy and perform your job within the boundary of the law, you will be shunned and attacked by the very people you are getting all your attention from now (see Liz Cheney and Libby Dole).

  50. 50.

    Baud

    @Eolirin:

    Maybe.  You could think of those scenarios in any close election though.

    ETA: Nothing stopped Palin voters fr choosing the other republican as their second choice.

  51. 51.

    Eolirin

    @Baud: Well, we don’t know what Palin’s voters put down as their second choice, but I doubt they broke for a dem by almost 30%. Without that it’s not close.

    Edit: Well. I may be misunderstanding how Alaska implemented their system, but we only had final vote tallies for Peltola and Palin so I assumed they only moved the third place finishers second votes to the top two. Meaning Palin voters’ second choices weren’t relevant.

    That election was very much a referendum on not letting Palin win. I’m not sure we can win it again in the general.

  53. 53.

    Eolirin

    @Baud: Do we? The final vote tally was just Peltola/Palin and adds up to 100%

    If even with Palin voters’ second choices the other R still wasn’t able to get to second place I guess that makes sense too though.

  54. 54.

    Scout211

    If the MAGA insurrectionists believe this Trump statement to be a promise, they will be very, very disappointed . . . again. Link

     

    Washington (CNN)Former President Donald Trump said Thursday he will “very, very seriously” consider full pardons for the rioters who breached the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, if he runs for reelection and wins.

    “I will tell you, I will look very, very favorably about full pardons. If I decide to run and if I win, I will be looking very, very strongly about pardons. Full pardons,” Trump said on Wendy Bell Radio Thursday, adding: “We’ll be looking very, very seriously at full pardons because we can’t let that happen. … And I mean full pardons with an apology to many.”

    Trump had made a similar promise during his final days in office when some of the January 6 rioters were already in jail. None, however, were pardoned before he left

  60. 60.

    Another Scott

    From the WH.gov transcript:

    Democracy cannot survive when one side believes there are only two outcomes to an election: either they win or they were cheated. And that’s where MAGA Republicans are today. (Applause.)

    They’ve grumbled about that for a long, long time (“… and it wasn’t even his place!”). But they’re overt about it now.

    “Yes, I was on the same ballot as TFG and I won, but we have to throw out the results for Biden because MASSIVE ELECTION FRAUD CHEATING LAPTOP SERVER DOMINION PIZZA BASEMENT JYNA OOGA BOOGA…”

    They don’t understand what every patriotic American knows: You can’t love your country only when you win. (Applause.) It’s fundamental.

    Yup.

    Good speech by Biden. It’s important to keep pushing the theme and force the GQPers to make a choice.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  61. 61.

    Ken

    Eric Champnella’s tweet reminds me.  A year or two ago, some Democrat said the Russians were supporting various candidates. Even though no names were mentioned, at least one candidate complained that they were being insulted.

    I can’t remember the name, though. I think it was a third-party candidate.

  62. 62.

    Queen of Lurkers

    @Ken: I really don’t get Palin’s caterwauling. If it were not a ranked choice election, Peltola would win with around 40% of the vote. Palin was far behind, at around 32% as I recall, after the first round.

  63. 63.

    JPL

    A list of items taken from ala-lago has been released.   Besides classified information, there were empty classified folders.   Why were there empty folders?

  65. 65.

    Suzanne

    @dmsilev:

    what was “done” to Sarah Palin? She lost an election. 

    These snowflakes really don’t handle losing very well. Maybe we should send them participation trophies.

  66. 66.

    Another Scott

    @Baud:

    Horse’s mouth:

    How does Ranked Choice Voting work?

    In each race, voters will rank their choices in order of preference. Votes are counted in rounds.

    This is what happens:

    Round One:
    The Division counts all 1st choices. If a candidate gets 50% + 1 vote in round one, that candidate wins and the counting stops.
    If not, counting goes to Round Two.

    Round Two (and beyond):
    The candidate with the fewest votes gets eliminated. If you voted for that candidate, your vote goes to your next choice
    and you still have a say in who wins.

    If your first choice candidate was not eliminated, your vote stays with them. Votes are counted again.

    This keeps happening in rounds until two candidates are left and the one with the most votes wins.

    What happens if I only vote for one candidate?

    Your vote is counted in round one and your vote stays with your candidate throughout tabulation.

    Is there a benefit of ranking multiple choices?

    Yes. By ranking multiple candidates, you can still have a voice in who gets elected even if your top choice does not win.

    Ranking multiple candidates ensures your vote will go toward your second. third, fourth, or fifth coice
    if your top choice is eliminated, giving you more voice in who wins.

    How do I mark my ballot in a Ranked Choice Voting election?

    Fill in only one oval per candidate, in each column. You do not have to rank all the candidates.

    Your second choice is only counted if your first choice candidate is eliminated.

    As I read it, only the votes of the eliminated candidates get moved around, so we wouldn’t necessarily know the 2nd-4th choices for the Palin voters (though for transparency it seems like they should be published for all the candidates).

    It seems like a good system, as long as there aren’t 15 candidates or something.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  67. 67.

    Ken

    @Eolirin: Yes, we had the first-round results with all candidates. Peltola was winning by plurality at that point.

    They then dropped the last-place Republican, and redistributed his ballots (only) to the other candidates, using the second choices on those ballots. Those second choices went about 50% Palin, 30% Peltola, 20% no second, IIRC.

    After that redistribution, Peltola was still winning, now with a majority.

  69. 69.

    MisterForkbeard

    Interesting news from the Trump Espionage court case: The judge unsealed a detailed list of what was seized. In that list are over 40 empty folders marked ‘Classified’..

    The benign explanation is that the classified docs that were in tbose folders are scattered in the rest of the 100+ recovered documents. The less benign explanation is that they’re empty because Trump sold or lost the contents.

  70. 70.

    Ken

    @JPL: Why were there empty folders?

    It would be irresponsible not to speculate. I’ll guess that the contents are now in Moscow or Riyadh.

  71. 71.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Brachiator:

    A great speech. Republicans can’t say “He called me a Deplorable,” even though some of them will try to take offense anyway. He offers MAGA people and others an opportunity to back away from the madness.

    So did Hillary Clinton, in the “Deplorables” statement! Didn’t matter.

  73. 73.

    ian

    @dmsilev:

    what was “done” to Sarah Palin?

    These people don’t believe in elections. Alaskans were not supposed to make choices, they were supposed to confirm the already decided God-emperor status of the chosen ones.

  74. 74.

    Belafon

    @different-church-lady: What a turnaround for him.

     

    Charles had a period after 9/11 where he went anti-muslim, but that faded a way to rationality. The trajectories of the bosses here and at LGF have been pretty similar.

  75. 75.

    Another Scott

    @MisterForkbeard: The last person who signed out the docs that are “missing” should be hiring a good defense attorney.  There’s always a custody paper trail for this stuff, and when that trail breaks the last person listed is in a heap of trouble…

    “No, TFG, I’m not going to Leavenworth for 30 years for you…”

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  76. 76.

    Doug R

    @Ken:

     

    Oh. My. God. According to the sample ballot at Ballotpedia, Alaska is using Dominion voting machines! There’s your smoking gun! The only Constitutional solution at this point is for an angry mob to storm the Capitol and reverse the results.

    And now we see the brilliance of having the state capitol only accessible by ferry or by road from Canada-where a lot of guns are prohibited, especially handguns and assault rifles.

  78. 78.

    Formerly disgruntled in Oregon

    @Ken: It was “Democrat” and Tucker Carlson fav Tulsi, who made a big stink when Hillary implied that someone was getting Russian support. If I recall correctly, anyhow…

  80. 80.

    Scout211

    @MisterForkbeard: Thanks for posting that. Here is the list.

    Full screen version of the list

    There are few new details in this latest development.

    The list includes U.S. government documents with secret classification marking; documents and photographs without a classification marking; magazines, newspapers and articles; documents with confidential, secret and top secret markings; empty folders with classified banners; empty folders marked “return to staff secretary/military aide”; articles of clothing/gift item; and books.

    U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has not yet ruled on Trump’s request for a special master, saying she will enter a written order at some point. Over the weekend, a federal judge said she was inclined to grant Trump’s request, and a hearing on the matter took place Thursday, but it is now unclear when that decision will come.

  81. 81.

    Matt McIrvin

    @dmsilev: A new ranked-choice voting system was put in place, and it’s already Republican dogma that this somehow cheated Sarah Palin out of a win, even though she would have lost even with a first-past-the-post count. If anything, the ranked-choice system gave her an additional chance to win, at which she also failed.

    The only way to make it even halfway make sense is to claim that the Democrats somehow made a second Republican enter the race.

    But it’s not worth analyzing. Biden said it–the standard Republican stance is now that they cannot lose without the other side cheating. They just know that the majority is with them, forever and always, and if the election says different it must be rigged.

  82. 82.

    kindness

    Epistemic bubbles….we all live in them to one degree or another.  I think one of the things that sets right wing nut jobs off so hard when they hear another view on a subject is that their bubble is tightly sealed.  They only hear what they want and they only listen to what they want to hear.  RWNJ stuff, you know.  Anyway, they go nuts over being presented with our truths because they are a) toddlers who never learned social graces all that well and b) completely gob smacked that anyone (us primarily) would look at an issue differently from them.  Hence we end up with diva toddler meltdown performances all over.

  83. 83.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Scout211: ​

    It makes me so sick to my stomach just thinking a little about the magnitude of this treason. I can’t imagine being the Intel people whose job is to try to make a cold hard assessment of the damage. I imagine the conversation in that room.

    “Oh fuck”
    “Fuck fuck fuck”
    “Holy shit”
    “OMFG”

  86. 86.

    Formerly disgruntled in Oregon

    @Scout211: empty folders with classified banners; empty folders marked “return to staff secretary/military aide”

    Hmm… why were they empty?

  87. 87.

    Ken

    @MisterForkbeard: Sounds like TFG, by demanding the release of information, has once again stepped on a rake.

    I really am wondering if someone at DOJ chose this as a deliberate strategy. If so, I hope someday they can be publicly acknowledged with a medal.

  88. 88.

    Another Scott

    @Scout211: There could be an innocent explanation for the empty folders – they were just part of a stock pile from a storeroom that got mixed in with other office supplies.

    But, of course, with TFG, the number one rule is that it’s always worse than it first appears.  So, …

    Grr…,
    Scott.

  90. 90.

    Scout211

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    Exactly.

    I am hoping that this release may be one way for the judge to justify denying the special master.  Most of the documents are very clearly marked as US Government property but all of Trump’s personal documents and property are just listed.  They’ve already been sorted so I am hoping that this will give her an out.  Maybe.  Hopefully

  92. 92.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Belafon: Charles Johnson didn’t just go pro-war or neocon, he was letting white supremacists post “kill all the Muslims” shit on his blog.

  93. 93.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Another Scott: The rest of the detailed list has stuff like “23 classified documents mixed in with non-classified documents and pictures of Trump” and so on.

    Honestly, there’s really no way to tell what happened to them. Maybe they can match the folders to the documents they’ve recovered. But at minimum it looks like Trump just sort of threw Top Secret documents around and (purposefully?) hid them amongst his normal documents.

  96. 96.

    Another Scott

    Note: When the original NARA referral described "unfoldered" documents, it means they don't have the classified covers described as empty here. So it could be Trump turned them in.

    Or not.

    ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    https://t.co/QaK1UM7HH3

    — emptywheel (@emptywheel) September 2, 2022

    (via Popehat)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  98. 98.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: And that’s the question, right? Did he sell them out? Lose them? Are they just scattered around the rest of his office or in the loose confidential documents that were found in the unguarded storage room?

    JFC, “loose confidential documents in an unguarded storage room”.

    @Another Scott: Yep! No way for us to know.

  99. 99.

    Fair Economist

    @Another Scott:

    It seems like a good system, as long as there aren’t 15 candidates or something.

    RCV has problems with 15 candidates, yes (this came up in the last SF mayoral election) but it’s still a lot better than a plurality system, which becomes hopelessly pathological with 15 significant candidates. Alaska’s usual system is pretty good because they have a primary to pick the top four and only do RCV in the general. 4 is enough to avoid really pathological general elections with 2 candidates from a minority party (which happened once with the CA jungle primary) but few enough that voters don’t get overwhelmed with too many choices.

  100. 100.

    Eolirin

    @Doug R: Yes, that was actually my point. There is technically no vote splitting in RCV, except, due to the way Alsaka does RCV, Peltola’s victory was quite possibly contingent on Palin coming in second and not third. This is very analogous to a spoiler candidate splitting the vote, allowing a candidate to win with a plurality, just through a different, almost backwards from the norm mechanism.

    This is an issue given that the general election is in a couple of months, with the same slate of candidates, and the voters in Alaska get another go at this. If enough of the Palin supporters decide to go with the other R, so that Palin is in third, Peltola probably can’t get that much over the ~40% she got in the first round. I don’t think Palin’s voters split 28% for Peltola.

  101. 101.

    Ken

    @Another Scott: “OK, I’ve got the cover for ‘Course plans for US submarine nuclear deterrent fleet’, does anyone have the contents?”

    “Hmm… Not ‘Maintenance schedule of US submarine nuclear deterrent fleet’? I’ve got some of the documents for that, mixed in with these USA Today newspaper clippings.”

  104. 104.

    PAM Dirac

    @Ken: Exact tally of first round and second round votes in the Alaska house race are here. The only second round votes that counted are from Begich because when they were distributed, Peltola had the majority.

  106. 106.

    cmorenc

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    So this happened in Mississippi. The state auditor says $70 million in federal welfare funds went to [Brett] Favre, a volleyball complex and a former pro wrestler

    Wasn’t it Mississippi where the law said that any of the food budget the warden of a prison didn’t spend on feeding the prisoners, he could keep for his own personal use? With predictable results?

    And Mississippi in the news currently because Jackson has no water, due to decades of neglect.

    Don’t forget the part about Mississippi’s governor failing to invite the black (D) mayor of Jackson to a briefing meeting of officials on dealing with the crisis.  Not even for symbolic lip-service.  And meanwhile, Gov Tate Reeves has a large-capacity water truck parked outside the goveror’s residence, so he isn’t being personally inconvenienced along with the majority black residents of Jackson.

  108. 108.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Eolirin: So Peltola needs to win again. That’s how elections work. She had a plurality in the first round, a majority in the second. Could it turn out differently in November? Sure. But, again, that’s the risk of elections, and this time, Peltola might have some advantage as an incumbent.

  110. 110.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @cmorenc:

    The state auditor says $70 million in federal welfare funds went to [Brett] Favre, a volleyball complex and a former pro wrestler.

    If ever there were a sentence in need of an Oxford comma….

  111. 111.

    cain

    @Soprano2: ​
     
    They of course know. The entire thing is about kicking up grievance. Even if it makes no sense and that their own party has tried to make that happen to the Democratic party – grievance requires no logic sense. The words are meant to stroke feelings and the people feeling them are more than happy to indulge in them.

  116. 116.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    @Soprano2:

    If something happened to me suddenly, like a car accident, there is no one who could post a note saying what happened if I couldn’t.

    Same. My spouse is a normie. She doesn’t read this blog. Of course, given I don’t comment every day, its far less likely that it would be noticed if I stopped commenting altogether.

  117. 117.

    Soprano2

    @The Moar You Know: Al Franken had a funny story in one of his “Limbaugh” books where he went to one of these conservative conventions. He was perusing the different tables, and talked to a woman who was selling some books. He asked her if she knew what the top tax rate in the 1950’s was. She said “Something like 20%”. He told her they should look it up in one of the books she had, so they found it; she was shocked to find out what the tax rates then really were. Most of them have no idea what taxes were actually like in the 1950’s.

  119. 119.

    Montanareddog

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    The state auditor says $70 million in federal welfare funds went to [Brett] Favre, a volleyball complex and a former pro wrestler.

     

    If ever there were a sentence in need of an Oxford comma….

    I am not a proponent of the Oxford comma as a solution to ambiguity, because the comma itself has an ambiguous usage – list separation and sub-clause separation.

    My solution to that poorly expressed sentence would be “went to [Brett] Favre, to a volleyball complex and to a former pro wrestler.

    ETA: to summarise, a better technique is simply to repeat the preposition

  121. 121.

    Just One More Canuck

    @Matt McIrvin: She may have been the first choice among the MAGATs, but sentient, non-crazy Alaskans wanted no part of her. Seems simple enough to me

  122. 122.

    Montanareddog

    @Omnes Omnibus: but it does not always work. The classic example “…thanks to my parents, Mother Teresa, and Nelson Mandela” is still ambiguous if you are not aware of the the Oxford comma, or if it is spoken.

  123. 123.

    James E Powell

    @Eolirin:

    We should be more concerned when DeSantis makes a similar promise.

    I don’t see any harm in getting him on the record about pardoning Jan 6th criminals right now. Why not just say everywhere to everyone that DeSantis agrees with Trump on pardons and see if he denies it?

  124. 124.

    Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)

    @Eolirin:  I think that calling it an “instant Runoff” would better. I know I’ve heard that tern and I don’t know if it is technically different that Ranked Choice Voting, but I think it can imply something many states already do, but with a huge savings in time and money.

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