67 Comments

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Sarah Palin: "If I were asked to serve in the House and take his place I would be humbled and honored. In a heartbeat, I would.

“We will see how this process goes in filling that seat – it would be an honor.”

Palin wants to be appointed to fill Young's vacant seat -- there's no way in hell that she has any intent to actually run for it (or for its regular successor term)

Too bad for her that AK Gov doesn't appoint a replacement rep to fill a vacancy -- they call a special election

Interesting to me that the special election will run concurrently/overlap with the regular election for that seat's next full term, with the special election's general election occurring on the same day as the primary for the regular election

CBSNews, 22 Mar: "A special election to fill the seat of Republican Congressman Don Young of Alaska, who died earlier this month, is set for this summer, with a [open] primary slated for June 11 and a special [ranked-choice voting] general election on August 16, the same date as Alaska's regularly scheduled primaries.

"The winner of the special election will finish the remainder of Young's term, which ends in January 2023."

So there will be two overlapping races for AK's House seat --

(1) the special election to fill the seat thru the end of Young's term in Jan 2023 with an 11 Jun open primary and a 16 Aug ranked-choice general election and

(2) the regular election for a two-year term with an 16 Aug open primary and an 8 Nov ranked-choice general election

I imagine Alaskans are feeling grateful for mail-in voting -- or will

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/special-election-alaska-congress-don-young-death/

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"But he’s killing tens of thousands of people, far more than they’re reporting", says Trump..who apparently gets secret information about death totals routed to him. Probably from his pal Putin, who of course wants casualty numbers to be higher.

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Ms.Palin was such a bang-on success as a governor (who BTW didn't have the werewithal to finish even one term) that she surely would bring her acumen as a skilled legislator... (breaking down in peals of laughter).

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Listening to today's Bulwark with AB Stoddard. I'm confused on two aspects of the conversation. When you guys talked about the Democrats' brains being broken about the Court, but you acknowledge how folks on the right view control of the Court in a Flight 93 way because of abortion rights, etc. I mean, isn't it possible that the side with the extremist views about SCOTUS is the side whose brain is broken?

Re: the Bork nomination - I don't remember this and am depending on retrospective sources. Why would his role in the "Saturday Night Massacre" *not* made him problematic to reasonable people? I get that a lot of his views reflected (and probably still reflect) a lot of conservatives' at the time, but how would his willingness to be part of President Nixon's awfulness not sway the average conservative?

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Oh no 🙈 no. OMG no sarah palin

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I'd like to make a suggestion. Ignore The Former Guy. Just ignore him. I don't believe this has been attempted for at least the last 6-7 years. Oh, I know the thing about holding your friends close, and your enemies closer; I've even been practicing it for these last years. But let's just give ignoring a try. If cold turkey is too hard, at least cut down on mentioning him...to, say, once or twice a week, tops. Good grief, there's enough big things happening now to make this a propitious time to quit him. At least for a while.

Also, I have "plus" memberships on a couple of other sites, but this has become my fave. Including "Comments", which, happily, is not, as they say, the circle jerk of some other sites. Thanks.

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"And in the end, everyone comes away a little more convinced that people on the other side are either terminally dumb or intellectually dishonest."

And to some extent both sides ARE both terminally dumb (willfully and/or invincibly ignorant) AND intellectually dishonest.

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founding

It is so mind-boggling to be hearing about Sarah Palin's verbal meanderings about returning to public office, this time as a mere Senator. Could she be angling for the VP slot behind TFG? What could possibly go wrong with that tag-team?

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C'mon Charlie, this is unfair...DJT has already proved that he is a genius. Didn't he pass that tough cognitive test with flying colors? He also memorized "person, woman, man, camera, TV". What more do you want the poor guy to do? It is not his fault that others don't have the intelligence to decipher his gibberish.

But seriously, he has a strangle hold on almost half the country. Some of it is tribalism and just wanting to stick it up to the other side, but also TFG's ability to understand what that base needs and manipulate them to his advantage. What we think of as reckless/ignorant behavior is exactly what he wants to sell to that base.

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a. Bork's role in Watergate rightly disqualified him, yet The GOP still tried to ram his authoritarian, anti-American keister onto the SCOTUS.

b. Marsha Blackburn suddenly thinks Title IX is aces after years of running it down.

c. Ms. Logan certainly would know white supremacy being a beneficiary of apartheid

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With regard to the Supreme Court we should just abandon the pretense of an independent judiciary and when discussing or reporting on the courts we should just refer to the Republican majority and the Democratic minority and refer to rulings with both sides concurring as bipartisan decisions.

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The GoP is the party of what you are doing is wrong/bad--BUT we don't actually have an alternative.

Well, not an alternative they want to talk about in public--which is usually give the rich and corps what they want and everybody else can go hang. The GoP is only interested in governing to the extent that they can make people behave culturally like they think people should behave.

Otherwise they are basically in favor of letting the rich and powerful run things and provide whatever services they wish to provide for whatever price they can get--because, you know, the market is awesome and fair.

This ends up breaking down into some form of corporate fascism--an ethno-nationalist state with rigid authoritarian social rules that are heavily enforced (for the good of your soul, don't you know) with a free for all pretty much everywhere else.

The strong/rich do what they wish, the poor and weak suffer what they must... because if you are poor and weak you deserve what ever ration of shit you get. You want better? Get rich and buy some influence or be able to afford stuff... you parasite.

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Re: Cathy Young's piece, and the question of how to understand shouting down a speaker: I think this needs to be approached entirely as an issue of illiberalism rather than freedom of speech (or not), i.e., not unconstitutional but culturally incompatible with a healthy liberal democracy. Yes, the shouters-down are within their First Amendment rights. However, just because there's a constitutional right to do something doesn't mean it's right to do it. It all depends on what kind of society we want to live in.

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DJT’s word salad is best served with Russian dressing! Trump’s speech is a formal thought disorder, and gross manifestation that he is incapable of logical thought. Before it became politically correct, The American Psychiatric Association classified various degrees of sub normal intelligence with titles: moron, imbecile and idiot. Any of these is appropriate for DJT.

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This scares the heck out of me. Why do people continue to support this intellectual midget and his dangerous theosophy.

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The future GOP leadership team of Palin, MTG, and Boebert is going to be something to behold.

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