More To Come

I think I'll believe it when I see it, but for now, a qualified "Yeehaw and away we go" seems in order.

House panel announces agreement to get Trump financial records -statement

A U.S. House of Representatives committee said Thursday it had reached an agreement with Donald Trump and accounting firm Mazars USA on handing over some of the former president's financial records.

"After numerous court victories, I am pleased that my committee has now reached an agreement to obtain key financial documents that former President Trump fought for years to hide from Congress," said Representative Carolyn Maloney, chairwoman of the Committee on Oversight and Reform.

The agreement ends litigation by Trump, the panel's statement said.

Representatives for Trump did not respond to a request for comment. Mazars said it could not discuss anything related to its clients without consent but would fulfill its professional and legal obligations.

In July, a U.S. appeals court largely upheld a congressional subpoena seeking financial records from Trump's accounting firm, but said some of the lawmakers' requests went too far. 

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit unanimously ruled that the Democratic-controlled House committee can obtain records from a period surrounding Trump's 2016 campaign and his time in office.

The committee in April 2019 issued a subpoena seeking eight years of accounting and other financial records as part of its investigation into what Maloney called Trump’s "unprecedented conflicts of interest, self-dealing, and foreign financial ties."

She said the agreement includes the handing over of "critical documents" that will help the panel in its investigation.

The committee's subpoena came in response to the testimony of Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer. Cohen said Trump had inflated and deflated certain assets on financial statements between 2011 and 2013 in part to reduce his real estate taxes.

The panel said it wanted to find out whether illegal actions had taken place. Cohen was sentenced to prison after pleading guilty to charges including violating campaign finance law, bank fraud, tax evasion and lying to Congress.

The July court ruling allowed the panel to obtain some records connected to the Trump hotel lease, as well as records tied to allegations that Trump violated financial disclosure laws and may have breached the U.S. Constitution's "emoluments" clause, which prevents federal officeholders from accepting payments from foreign governments without congressional approval.

The Thread

It bears repeating.

Throughout the course of having to deal with the shit sandwich that is the very existence of Donald J Trump on the national political stage -

through ...

• The Mueller Investigation
• Impeachment 1
• Impeachment 2
• Jan6

... and those are just the highlights - but through this whole fucked up mess, this one truth has remained:

THE PEOPLE TELLING US TRUMP IS GUILTY HAVE ALL TESTIFIED UNDER OATH, WHILE THE PEOPLE WHO INSIST ON HIS INNOCENCE EITHER REFUSE TO TESTIFY AT ALL, OR PLEAD THE FIFTH IN RESPONSE TO EVERY QUESTION.

Overheard

"Conservatives" are trying

to convince us that it's OK

for a president to commit espionage

as long as the stolen documents

are kept in neatly stacked piles.

Bonus

Oh, BTW - 

Must Read Alaska:

Track Palin popped for DUI in Wasilla

The adult son of Sarah Palin was arrested by Wasilla police on Saturday afternoon for operating a vehicle under the influence of a controlled substance. He was released and faces a out date “pending.”

Palin, 33, has had a number of run-ins with the law, ranging from domestic violence to resisting arrest and weapons misconduct, and he has spent time in prison.

In 2016, just as Palin was endorsing Donald Trump for the presidency, Track was arrested and charged with assault, interfering with the report of a domestic violence crime, and possessing a weapon while under the influence. The incident took place at the Wasilla home of Sarah and Todd Palin, after calls were made to 911 to report a domestic violence situation. Track’s girlfriend reported he had punched her in the eye and kicked her knee, and she thought Track was going to shoot himself.

Track was also a problem guest at a party in Anchorage in 2014, when members of the family got into a brawl at a party on the hillside. No charges were filed in that incident.

Track Palin’s ex says family pressured her to not report

Gotta make sure we Both-Sides it, dontcha know.

Track isn’t alone in the politics of getting arrested for DUI this summer. The executive director of the Alaska Democratic Party also was stopped and ultimately arrested for attempting to interfere with the law enforcement’s detection equipment.

The Democrats also had trouble with its former executive director, Jay Parmley, with reported incidences of sexual harassment before he came to Alaska.

A Minor Harbinger

... hoping it's more major.

For the first time in almost 50 years, Alaska is sending a Democrat to the House of Representatives.

She still faces an uphill battle in the fall, when she has to run again to stay in the House, but there's something happening that feels pretty encouraging right now.

(pay wall)

Democrat Mary Peltola wins special election in Alaska, defeating Palin

Peltola scored a rare Democratic win in the state while also becoming the first Alaska Native elected to Congress

Democrat Mary Peltola has won a special election for the U.S. House in Alaska, defeating Republican Sarah Palin and becoming the first Alaska Native to win a seat in Congress as well as the first woman to clinch the state’s at-large district.

Peltola’s win flips a seat that had long been in Republican hands. She will serve the remainder of a term left open by the sudden death of Rep. Don Young (R) in March. Young represented Alaska in Congress for 49 years.

Who is Mary Peltola?

Peltola, who’s Yup’ik, is a tribal fisheries manager and former state representative who led in initial counts after the Aug. 16 election. But her win wasn’t assured until Wednesday, when Alaska election officials made decisive second-choice counts using the state’s new ranked-choice voting system. Republican Nick Begich III, who finished third, was eliminated, and his supporters’ second-choice votes were redistributed to the remaining candidates.

“It is overwhelming. And it’s a very good feeling. I’m very grateful Alaskans have put their trust in me,” Peltola said in an interview with The Washington Post shortly after her victory at the office of her campaign consultants, where she had to break away in the middle of the conversation to take a call from Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). “I will be immediately going to work.”

Alaska’s special-election results come after other summer special elections for the House in which Democrats outperformed President Biden’s showing in their districts. Those outcomes, all following the Supreme Court decision to end a constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy, have been hailed by Democrats as encouraging signs for the November midterms that show voters are angered by the court’s decision and eager to vote for candidates supporting abortion rights.

Graphic: How second-choice votes pushed a Democrat to victory in Alaska

The Alaska race adds another data point to the clues both parties are examining as they gear up for the stretch run to the Nov. 8 elections. But since it was decided under a unique new voting system, the Alaska race could be harder to read as an indicator of the national environment than the other contests.

For the moment, it helps Democrats expand their current narrow House majority and gives the party a better chance of winning the seat in the fall, according to at least one nonpartisan elections analyst.

Peltola had nearly 40 percent of first-choice votes after preliminary counts, which put her about 16,000 votes ahead of Palin. Half of the Alaskans who made Begich their first choice ranked Palin second, and 21 percent did not make a second choice. The remaining 29 percent — a surprisingly large fraction, even to some of Peltola’s supporters — ranked Peltola second, flipping from a Republican to a Democrat. The second-choice support for Peltola was enough for her to hold off Palin, leaving the Democrat about 5,200 votes ahead.

Peltola said in the interview that she thinks her win shows that Alaskans “want someone who has a proven track record of working well with people and setting aside partisanship.” She added, “I think it also reveals that Alaskans are very tired of the bickering and the personal attacks.”

Palin’s defeat comes in her first campaign since she stepped down as Alaska’s governor in 2009; former president Donald Trump endorsed her and held a rally on her behalf in Anchorage.

Peltola’s campaign focused on local issues, such as what to do about declining salmon returns. She is expected to be sworn in to office in mid-September.

The Democrat ran as a relatively moderate candidate with bipartisan bona fides; she conditionally supports hot-button natural resource projects like oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Ambler road, which would cross Gates of the Arctic National Park to access promising mining claims in the foothills of Alaska’s Brooks Range. But she also touted her abortion rights stance.

Asked in the interview about the significance of her soon becoming the first Alaska Native in Congress, Peltola said, “There’s maybe a little bit of personal significance, but really, I am a congressperson for every Alaskan, regardless of their background.” She added, “I am Alaska Native, but I am much more than just my ethnicity.”

Until she ran for Congress, Peltola was the executive director of the Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, which co-manages federal salmon fisheries in a partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Peltola’s Yukon-Kuskokwim region — named for two major salmon rivers that flow through the area — has seen unprecedented collapses of key subsistence salmon runs in recent years. Peltola pledged to tackle the issue if elected.

Peltola, who turned 49 on Wednesday, is the daughter of a Yup’ik mother and a father from Nebraska, who started in Alaska as a teacher in the village of Fort Yukon. There, he worked with Young, who also was a teacher before he ran for Congress. Peltola’s family was close with Young’s, and her father flew Young on campaign stops when he was first seeking statewide office; her mother also campaigned for Young while she was pregnant with Peltola, speaking in the Yup’ik language.

Peltola was in the Alaska state House for 10 years, ending in 2008, and served while Palin was governor. She was first elected to the state House at age 25, two years after losing her first attempt, which began at age 22.

Forty-eight candidates ran in a special primary election in June. That race narrowed the field to four — independent Al Gross later dropped out — before the Aug. 16 general election.

Meanwhile, a regularly scheduled election is playing out to decide who will hold the same U.S. House seat for the next two years, once the rest of Young’s term concludes. The primary for that race also was held Aug. 16, and Peltola, Palin and Begich are projected to advance, according to the Associated Press. There will also be a fourth spot on the ranked-choice ballot in November.

“Mary Peltola’s victory is a clear message from AK voters that they will not compromise their values or their rights at the ballot box. Mary is a pro-choice, pro-fish, common sense leader who knows what it takes to protect and create AK jobs. On to November!” tweeted former Democratic senator Mark Begich of Alaska. Nick Begich III is the nephew of the former senator.

Following Peltola’s win, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report moved the Alaska seat’s rating from “Likely Republican” to “Toss-up.”

National Democratic groups did not participate in the special election race even as Peltola was outraised by Palin, according to federal campaign finance reports. But party officials say they’re closely watching the general election race.

Palin and Peltola were at a candidate forum earlier Wednesday. Peltola mentioned the joint appearance in the interview with The Post and said that she had not yet heard from Palin, but “we are going to be reaching out to her.”

Asked what both campaigning for the seat and representing Alaskans in Congress would look like in the months ahead, Peltola said, “I don’t.” She added, “I will supposedly have the benefit of incumbency.” She added, “We’ll see how that works.”

Palin, Begich and other conservatives have sharply criticized Alaska’s new ranked-choice voting system, and the nonpartisan primary system that accompanies it. Palin, in an election night statement, called it “convoluted,” “cockamamie” and untrustworthy.

“The biggest lesson as we move into the 2022 General Election, is that ranked choice voting showed that a vote for Sarah Palin is in reality a vote for Mary Peltola. Palin simply doesn’t have enough support from Alaskans to win an election,” Nick Begich III said in a statement Wednesday.

The system’s supporters — some of whom are aligned with Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski — argue that it will result in the election of more-moderate candidates and reduce the risk of third-party politicians “spoiling” an election, because their supporters will be able also to rank mainstream candidates.

In the congressional race, Alaska Republicans ran a campaign urging voters to “rank the red” and fill out ballots for both Palin and Begich, rather than just one of them.

John Coghill, a Republican former state senator who ran in the special primary, attributed Peltola’s win to negative campaigning between the two GOP candidates in the race — which, according to Coghill and multiple strategists, may have made Begich supporters less likely to rank Palin second.

“They started taking shots at each other, and the supporters of one would not dare vote for the other Republican, because of so many cross words,” Coghill said in a phone interview Wednesday. “It’s a new system, and people campaigned like it was the old system.”

Coghill served with Peltola in the Alaska Legislature and said that he was still somewhat pleased to see her elected even though he only ranked the two Republicans on his own ballot. “I think she represents a very good chunk of Alaskans, and she has a broad view,” he said. “She and I argued a lot. And I found her to be a formidable debater, but willing to work where you could.”

Seems Odd

This popped up on Reddit's r/terriblefacebookmemes

I don't know who posted it, so I can't answer the usual basic question:

Is it a fearful warning or a menacing threat?

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🌎🌏🌍❤️🇺🇦 

Times Radio

A new one for me.

Times Radio - Carole Walker with Gen Ben Hodges (3-Star USArmy Ret)

The Russians can't defend their rear areas, they've lost the initiative, the Black Sea Fleet is hiding, the Russian air force won't fly in Ukrainian airspace, and now they're obviously vulnerable at home in Moscow - no matter who planted that bomb, it shows a real weakness.

Expect to see Ukraine pushing Russia back to pre-24FEB lines before winter.

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🌎🌏🌍❤️🇺🇦

Today's Climate Thing

Wondering if the coastal states might ever get together and go after the oil companies and their PR pimps - like the AGs got the tobacco companies to pony up for the shit they caused.

Anyway, there's a part of me that feels resigned to it - saying, "Well fuck, the damage is done". But thinking a little further, that's the kind of surrender the plutocrats are gunning for.

Greenland may have already committed us to almost a foot of sea level rise

How long that takes to play out is unclear.

While it's possible to halt global warming by halting our greenhouse gas emissions, sea level rise is a consequence that keeps on giving. Great ice sheets like Greenland and Antarctica have tremendous inertia—they're slow to melt but carry on melting even after the thermometer stabilizes. There are many reasons for this, including complex processes beneath glaciers that control their rate of downhill flow. And this complexity makes projecting ice loss over the coming century—and centuries—exceptionally challenging.

In the face of this formidable complexity, a new study led by Jason Box at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland opts for a simple approach to projecting Greenland's future. Rather than attempting to simulate as much physics and detail as possible in a model, the team used a simple equation to calculate what portion of the ice is vulnerable in the current climate.

Finding the line

Glacial ice deforms under its own weight, flowing outward and downhill like slow-motion pancake batter. The low elevation and—for an ice sheet like Greenland's—coastal environment at the ice's edge is much warmer, and ice melts away here even as snow accumulates over the colder interior of the ice sheet. The point where the net result changes from gaining mass to losing mass is called the "equilibrium line." Increase air temperatures, and this line will push up to higher elevations, exposing more ice to melting until the glacier shrinks.

The new study maps the average equilibrium line from 2000 to 2019, based on data from NASA's Terra satellite. (You can identify it because snow cover above the equilibrium line is more reflective than bare ice below it.) Given that equilibrium line position, the researchers then apply the geometry of glacial ice to estimate the volume of ice that would disappear to bring the ice sheet into balance with its new climate.

That blurs over a ton of critical processes, like meltwater lubricating the base of the ice or ice flow changing the portion of the ice sheet that contacts a warming ocean. One consequence of this is that the study can give no time frame for its predicted ice loss. Their method assumes that enough time passes until the ice sheet finishes shrinking.

The result, they say, is that the Greenland ice sheet would lose about 3.3 percent of its ice—enough to raise the global sea level about 27 centimeters (almost 11 inches). That's the long-term commitment of warming so far. Since we aren't close to eliminating greenhouse gas emissions, the world is continuing to warm, which would push this number higher.

What’s in a number?

Is this number shocking? That depends on the time frame you assign to it. The latest IPCC report projected about 5–18 centimeters (2-7 inches) of sea level contribution from Greenland by 2100, depending on the greenhouse gas emissions scenario. But it also presented long-term sea level commitments. For a world that only warms 2° C, for example, total sea level rise came to about 50 centimeters for 2100—but two to six meters when given 2,000 years to respond.

Some authors of the new study have been quoted saying that they suspect their estimated sea level contribution could manifest by 2100 or 2150, but that is their personal judgment and not a conclusion of this particular study. Ice sheet responses are generally discussed in terms of centuries to millennia, depending on the scale, so 2100 would be a very rapid timeline.

One more thing worth noting is that the analysis only had 20 years of data to work with. Greenland sees a lot of variability in its weather, and ice loss accelerated considerably in the early 2000s. To illustrate the impact of this variability, the researchers repeat their calculations using the dataset's warmest (2012) and coolest (2018) years.

In permanent 2012 conditions, the committed sea level contribution grows almost by a factor of three to 78 centimeters. But in permanent 2018 conditions, Greenland ice would actually grow, lowering sea level by 17 centimeters. Both are unlikely extremes, but they highlight the importance of basing the calculation on a representative average.

In the end, this is another study adding to our understanding of future sea level rise. And applying multiple independent methods helps firm up that understanding, even if no individual answer is the ultimate one. This latest analysis certainly reminds us of a well-worn truth—that warming now commits us to sea level rise long into the future.

A Narrow Escape

I'd like to know why the "grownups" have no legal problems on this one.

If you let your dog loose and it's seen as a threaten to school kids, you could at least get a ticket, if not have to face a charge of misdemeanor negligence.

WTF, America?

2nd grader in Arizona brings 2 guns and ammunition to school

BOWIE, Ariz. (AP) — A second-grade student at a southeastern Arizona elementary school is facing charges for allegedly bringing two guns and ammunition to school, authorities said Wednesday.

Cochise County Sheriff’s officials said they were called Monday to Cochise Elementary School in Bowie on reports that a 7-year-old student had a weapon.

Deputies met with school officials and the student and said a handgun and ammunition was found in his backpack and a second gun also was discovered.

Authorities contacted the student’s parents and gave the boy a juvenile referral for charges of misconduct with a weapon and a minor in possession of a firearm.

A sheriff’s spokeswoman said it was unlikely that the boy’s parents will face charges in the incident, which remains under investigation.

Today's Tune

The Milk Carton Kids - covering Pink Floyd