Well guess which Wasillabilly family is nominated for TPM's Golden Dukes ward, under the category "Best Scandal -- Sex and Generalized Carnality." Did you peek?

Here are the categories according to Talking Points Memo:

Best Scandal -- Sex and Generalized Carnality -The Palin clan for the brawl of the century (no, no sex but nominated for just generally gettin' down and dirty when everyone's good and drunk.) 

-Gov. Tom Corbett who was Attorney General when members of his staff exchanged pornographic emails. 

-Carl Demaio for multiple sexual harassment allegations. 

-Investigator David Nieland, who conducted the internal review of the Homeland Security Department's prostitution scandal, and then resigned himself over an incident involving a prostitute in Florida.

Aww, come on! Those other scandals cannot hold a candle to the Throwdown at the Hoedown!

I mean we have both pictures AND audio.

You can actually HEAR the drunken stupidity, and threatening behavior for yourself.

Okay look according to Josh Marshall of TPM the decision will not be rendered until December the 31st, so that gives us quite a few days to let him know that there is NO scandal more deserving of that award than the Palin drunken family brawl.

Don't just stand there, go leave a comment. And make sure to leave links to the police audio too.

No way can we let those scandal wannabes Tom Corbett of Carl Demaio walk away this thing.

Apparently Ted Cruz is inadvertently helping the Democrats right now. Update!

Courtesy of TPM: 

While Republican senators were fuming at Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) for holding up a $1.1 trillion spending bill aimed at preventing a government shutdown, Democrats saw a silver lining: the move by Cruz and Lee gave Democrats an opening to move a number of President Barack Obama's nominees for federal judgeships and the executive branch. 

What happened was that when Cruz and Lee scuttled a deal between Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) that would have allowed lawmakers to leave Washington D.C. for the weekend and come back Monday they gave Democrats a chance to advance Obama's presidential appointees by having to stay in D.C. to deal with the spending bill. 

The extra time over the weekend gave Reid the opportunity to, through the Senate's executive session, file cloture on the nominations and move them sooner than they would have under the deal Reid and McConnell had planned on and that Cruz and Lee blocked. Under the original deal Reid would have had to schedule votes on the nominees later in the upcoming week, when Democrats may not have wanted to stick around to vote.

Was worried Dr. Vivek Murthy might not get confirmed but thanks to @TedCruz, looks like he will. #TopDocNow #SurgeonGeneral
— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) December 13, 2014

Courtesy of Politico:

The nominations may take days of procedural votes and a lot energy but are likely to be a boon to the president’s hopes of winning approval of as many nominees as possible before his party loses the Senate. 

“A lot of these people have been sitting in the calendar for a long time. So if this prompts my leadership to stay a little longer to get a lot of nominations done, then I’m happy about that,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) of the unusual Saturday session. 

That's Ted Cruz for you. He always knows exactly where to find his foot. Right next to his molars.

Update: Well the bill passed.

I think we are already seeing strong evidence to suggest who will be the contenders in 2016.

Courtesy of TPM:

 Hillary Clinton has recently met with two of the names most frequently floated to be her campaign manager in 2016, should she choose to run, Politico reported Thursday. 

She met Wednesday with Guy Cecil, who oversaw the national Democratic Senate campaign arm during the 2014 election, according to Politico's sources. Clinton has also met with Robby Mook, who ran Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe's 2013 campaign, though Politico could not secure firmer details of the meeting.

No surprise here, I think we all know this is a given at this point. 

But then check this out, also courtesy of TPM: 

Republican operatives in New Hampshire have told Real Clear Politics that they've been contacted by a Jeb Bush confidant about running his operation in the state for a 2016 presidential campaign. 

The unnamed GOP strategists told the news outlet that they had been told to "keep your powder dry" by those close to Bush. 

"I think the decision’s been made, personally,” one of the strategists said. Another added: “I’ve definitely perceived an uptick in the perception of him doing this."

Yeah I tend to think the decision has been made as well. 

In fact Bush said publicly that he was thinking of running, and let's face it you don't really say that in front of an audience unless you are convinced you are going to run.

And if he runs my friends, and I know that many of you don't want to hear this, he will more than likely win his nomination. And, your going to hate this part, he actually has the best chance against Hillary of ANY OTHER Republican candidate.

As much as people say they hate the idea of political dynasties there is a lot to be said for name recognition.

So in my opinion, barring some unforeseen event that derails one or both of these candidates, I think that image above represents the 2016 presidential campaign.

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo sums up why he finds it so hard to believe Darren Wilson's account of the shooting of Michael Brown.

Michael Brown's family at Thanksgiving dinner.

I just read Josh Marshall's editorial on the the Grand Jury decision and was struck by how closely his points mirrored my own.

Here are the main points I want to share courtesy of TPM:  

I'm going to set aside all the questions about just how far apart Wilson and Brown were when the fatal shooting occurred, the angle of Brown's body, whether his hands were up. Lots of people have parsed the evidence on that a lot more closely. Those points are technical and accounts are conflicting. 

It's Wilson's description of how the incident began that just does not ring true. To believe Wilson, you have to believe that Brown, an 18 year old, is stopped by a police officer on a street in broad daylight. The police officer is armed. He's in an SUV. And Brown's immediate reaction is to begun screaming and cursing him, physically attacking him and before long literally daring him to shoot him. 

Here's how Wilson's account unfolds: Wilson passes Brown and his friend Dorian Johnson and tells them to stop walking in the middle of the street. The two friends basically blow Wilson off at first and then when Wilson tells them again, Brown yells "fuck what you have to say." When Brown and Johnson ignore Wilson's request, he backs up his vehicle and turns to the left, slightly cutting them off. As Wilson begins to get out of his car, Brown says "What the fuck are you going to do about it" and slams the door shut on him. 

After this, Brown and Wilson scuffle with Brown leaning into the car striking Wilson and Wilson, still seated, defending himself. Wilson describes thinking through how to escape from Brown or which weapon to use against him before finally pulling his gun and saying "get back or I'm going to shoot you." 

At this point, Brown grabs Wilson's gun and says "you are too much of a pussy to shoot me." 

They scuffle. A shot goes off but neither is injured. Brown comes at Wilson again - another scuffle and another shot which apparently hits Brown in the finger. Brown runs off. It's after this that the fatal shooting takes place, with the various questions about how it happened. 

We all have our intuitive, experience-based sense of what's credible and what's not. I doubt Michael Brown was going to physically assault an armed police officer in broad daylight, sitting in his SUV, without any apparent provocation or mutually escalation. But what really puts it over the edge are Brown's alleged statements, as recounted by Wilson. None of them ring true from what we know about Brown.

After that Marshall goes on to describe the famous Michael Brown robbery of the convenience store, and the fact that he roughed up a clerk, which in the minds of many was all they had to see to write Brown off as deserving of his fate that day.

I know this because the video was exactly the reason that my brother decided to argue with me during OUR Thanksgiving dinner as to why Michael Brown deserved to be shot.

To our credit we remained fairly calm, but my brother was completely convinced that Brown "was looking for trouble" that day. And his theory was based solely on the video of Brown manhandling that much smaller convenience store clerk.

What I suggested to my brother was that he ignore that footage as it did not factor into Wilson's decision to shoot Brown. Even if Wilson knew of the robbery, which is still somewhat debatable, he certainly had not seen the footage and would have no visual in his head of how Brown bullied that clerk into letting him walk away with those cigarillos.

Instead I asked my brother if he thought that shooting to death an unarmed man for walking down the street seemed reasonable. At that my brother asked how the officer would know he was unarmed, and I said because when they were supposedly grappling for the officer's gun (Darren Wilson's version of events) Brown did not pull a piece of his own once Wilson shot at him.

My brother also seemed blissfully unaware that Brown had been shot at least six times, twice in the head. (My brother only knew of two shots even though he said that he had watched hours of footage on TV.)

One of my brother's arguments was that Wilson had no choice as Brown was much bigger. In response I reminded him that they were of almost equal height (Brown's 6 ft 5, to Wilson's 6 ft 4.)

"But he charged him," my brother said. I mentioned that such a claim was not consistent through all of the witness testimony, and that several had said that Brown was staggering toward him, NOT rushing him.

This went back and forth a few times, with me eventually informing my brother that how the Grand Jury decided on the indictment was also essentially unheard of and that it was also cause for concern by those demanding justice. 

My brother's a good guy, he really is. However his responses were a real education to me as to how people who were only minimally paying attention could come away firmly convinced of something that was not backed up by the facts.

By the way he got ALL of his information from CNN.

And yes we had a really nice dinner and plenty of reasonable conversation after that exchange.

The Palin family's attempt to play the victim in the media may be working on the Right, but with the rest of the media? Not so much.

So Chez Pazienzaof the Daily Banter finally decided to compare the Palin family to their equally famous reality show doppelgangers the "Honey Boo Boo" clan. (They probably have a last name but I simply don't care enough to look it up.)

Anyhow apparently the "Honey Boo Boo" show was recently cancelled after "Mama June" started dating a convicted child molester. Which is kind of a surprise to me since I thought they were probably ALL child molesters.

Well anyhow Pazienzaof (A name I have to cut and paste to get right.) makes the following, fairly obvious, point:

Boo Boo. I bring this up because the white trash drama of the Honey Boo Boo clan segues quite nicely into the latest developments in the ongoing saga of the Palin family’s big drunken brawl, which happened at a party back in September. Family matriarch and incurable social disease Sarah Palin is finally breaking her silence about the whole thing, taking to her overworked Facebook page to both defend herself and her kinfolk and to, of course, slam the media for mocking them instead of taking seriously what was a “humiliating” experience for the entire family. 

The author then links to the Facebook post by Palin condemning the media for reporting on her family's drunken behavior.

For those who may have forgotten:

I understand that the CNN host who laughed at my daughter describing her assault has issued an apology to Politico. (Why Politico needs an apology is anyone’s guess. No one at CNN contacted my family regarding an apology, in case you were wondering. CNN contacts us directly on a regular basis with inquiries and requests for comment, so it’s not for lack of contact information that they didn't reach out. But perhaps Carol Costello should phone Martin Bashir. He knows how to reach us.) 

What happened on the night in question wasn’t funny. It was humiliating and frightening. The broken ribs, black eyes, and messed up elbows and knees suffered by people in our party that night were no laughing matter. Neither were Bristol’s bruises on her arms and leg from being dragged by a man. My kids aren’t proud of what happened, nor are they seeking sympathy by playing the victim card – that’s why they haven’t commented on this for all these weeks. Instead, they had to have faith that the truth would come out, despite those who did the cold-cocking actually using social media to brag, “’bout to get famous!” Screen shots of tweets captured their bold intentions, and they’ve certainly enjoyed the publicity. 

Looking at the reports, it strikes me as bitterly ironic that the same people who tell us there is a “war on women” have no problem laughing at the recording of my daughter crying as she tells police about being assaulted by a man. I’d like to say shame on the media and those on the left laughing at her or at any young woman in a similar situation, but I no longer think they have any shame. 

Now Todd and I are headed to an exciting middle school girl’s basketball game along with dozens of other families proud to cheer on their daughters. 

- Sarah Palin

 Pazienzaof continues: 

Families bring with them unexpected issues, sometimes embarrassing ones. But most people’s families — particularly families in a position to represent in some small way the United States of America — don’t get into wild drunk melees at parties. Most families don’t ride around places like Alaska in garish Hummer limos because they think it’s an awesome way to show off. Most families don’t rant about “faggots” on Facebook. Most families aren’t recorded after wild drunk party melees calling somebody “a little pussy” and using the word “gay” in a derogatory manner. But the Palins do. They do all that shit and more. Because they’re not the family of a former elected leader and ex-candidate for Vice President of the United States — they’re a reality show family. They’re a finer-coiffed version of Mama June, Sugar Bear and Honey Boo Boo with delusions of both grandeur and unpretentiousness at the same time. 

They’re a living, breathing punchline and a national embarrassment — and there’s no reason to treat them as anything more. 

Very well said. 

And Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo makes essentially the same point:

So no. Bristol is not a battered woman. She is a battering woman, which may give her some claim to being a feminist icon, as she suggests. I don't blame or care if the Palins are defending themselves or making up stories or doing whatever else. That's just the drama and involuntary performance art that makes up their public lives. But their dead-ender defenders need to accept that if you're a public figure, a recent candidate for national office, and you crash a party drunk and the fists start flying and the police have to show up to sort everything out, people may end up hovering over the details and getting a chuckle out of it. That's life.

I think it is important that all of us support the journalists who are not buying into the Palin victim hood meme, and leave comments on the sites they write for in support of their logic and ethics.

I also support going to the places where they are buying into all of this like horny conservative bidders at an auction for Palin's crusty panties, and leave comments correcting their ignorance.

However on that last one you will really only get so far as, at least at Breitbart, since they may delete your comment almost as fast as you make it. 

P.S. I have it on pretty good authority that there is another shoe yet to drop and this one will certainly NOT support the Palin's version of events.

So why is Joni Ernst gathering information about recount procedures a week and a half before the election?

Courtesy of TPM:  

Iowa state Sen. Joni Ernst (R) this week requested materials on recount procedures, signaling that she might be gearing up for a recount request in the Iowa Senate race against Rep. Bruce Braley (D-IA). 

Ernst filed open records requests in multiple counties for training materials, satellite voting locations, names of ballot counters, recount procedures and any thing also sent to Braley, The Gazette reported. 

Such a large record request so close to an election is unusual for candidates, multiple Iowa auditors told The Gazette. 

"I think they’re gearing up for a recount," Johnson County Auditor Travis Weipert said.

Okay well there are two ways to take this.

One is that the Ernst campaign is thinking proactively with an abundance of caution.

Or that they expect to lose and like many recent GOP candidates will simply refuse to accept defeat until they have exhausted all possible challenges?

Yeah I am going to go with the latter.

Pictures of the drunken brawl? Yes please! Updated wtih audio!

Nice try Bristol.

So Talking Points Memo got their hands on the actual police photos of the drunken brawl and is presenting them for public consumption, and to get some help identifying those in the photos.

Here is a portion of the article:

The Anchorage Police Department finally released photos on Tuesday from the bloody, drunken brawl involving members of the Sarah Palin clan. 

The photos, apparently taken by Anchorage cops who were called to investigate, showed mostly bloody flesh and various pieces of evidence from the aftermath of the altercations at a house party in September.

 As you can see the pictures do not show any faces, but I bet you can identify those shoes on the left.

I am not going to sample any more of he photos here, as TPM deserves all of the traffic so definitely go over there and take a look and then come back here to share your opinions.

If you want to of course.

And here's the audio courtesy of Extra TV:  

A clearly distraught Bristol is also seemingly beside herself when her interview begins, saying, “I have a 5-year-old in the car, so if you’re going to question me, question me.” 

The police officer responds, “Do you want to talk to me? Come talk to me away from your family.” 

This is when Bristol goes into explicit detail, claiming she was jumped after trying to defend sister Willow, who had also been attacked. “A guy comes out of nowhere and pushes me on the ground… takes me by my feet, in my dress… my thong dress in front of everybody. Come on you c**t, get the f**k outta here! Come on you s**t get the f**k outta here.”

Oh this is awesome!

You can hear the Palins spinning their tale, and attempting to destroy the reputation of the homeowner.

And at several points Bristol admits that Tripp is in the car.

Korey Klingenmeyer needs to sue.

Update: They also admit that there is video, and then somebody, I an sure it's Todd, suddenly says "These are friends of mine, the video don't exist." 

In other words whoever took that video was convinced not to share it by the Palins.

Update 2: Radar Online has a much longer audio. (Below the fold.)


As you will notice there is no bleeping of curse words in this version.

Update 3: Unbelievably there is even more audio courtesy of TPM.

This one has Korey Klingenmeyer discussing his plans to press charges against Bristol, and he sound PISSED!

Okay a minute into the second audio I am convinced that is Tripp crying while Bristol is yelling.

Levi is going to LOVE this. 

The interview with Todd and Track is bizarre and clearly shows them to be drunk and belligerent. And not only that their stories don't really match up.