THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2026
New York Times gone wild: We were glad to see Mary Peltola back on last evening's Last Word.
Previously, she had appeared on the show on September 9. The following day, we gave you this basic background:
Mary Peltola
Mary Sattler Peltola (born August 31, 1973) is an American politician and former tribal judge. She served as the U.S. representative from Alaska's at-large congressional district from 2022 to 2025.
A member of the Democratic Party, she previously served as a judge on the Orutsararmiut Native Council's tribal court, was executive director of the Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, Bethel city councilor, and member of the Alaska House of Representatives...
Peltola was first elected to Congress in an August 2022 special election after the death of incumbent Don Young...
Peltola was re-elected to a full term in 2022. She lost re-election in 2024 to Nick Begich III. She is a candidate for U.S. Senate in 2026, challenging incumbent senator Dan Sullivan.
In politics as in various branches of show business, the smile can be a powerful weapon. We're not sure we've ever seen a political candidate who defaults to such an array of smiles. To see her session on last night's Last Word, you can just click this.
With control of the Senate at stake, we're praying for Candidate Peltola. Weirdly, though, the New York Times, for whatever reason, came up with this somewhat peculiar front-page report on September 25:
TIMES EXCLUSIVE
Angry Outbursts, Slurs and Firings: Tumult Rocks a Key Senate Campaign
National Democrats cheered when Mary Peltola, the former Alaska congresswoman, declared in January that she would run for the Senate.
Ms. Peltola, an Alaska Native who grew up fishing for salmon on the Kuskokwim River, was well-known and well-liked statewide, even by Republicans. Her party hailed her as one of its strongest prospects for ousting a Republican incumbent and winning control of the Senate.
But behind the scenes, her political operation has been marked by tumult, a pattern that stretches back to her time in Congress. Former aides describe angry and profane outbursts, sometimes directed at aides and sometimes expressed about others who had displeased her. In one instance, she shoved an aide, according to a former staff member who was present and two others who were told about it at the time. Another conflict led to a surprising staff shake-up on the eve of the primary election last month.
And so on from there. Meanwhile, no one has it but the Times? There may be a very good reason!
According to the lengthy Times report, Peltola was "well-known and well-liked statewide." But some staff members were unhappy. This was one key issue:
For some on her staff, one task exemplified the disregard Ms. Peltola appeared to have for her employees: feeding her daughter’s pet chameleon, Meatball.
Meatball’s preferred diet consisted of live crickets, according to three staff members familiar with the demand, including two who fed the chameleon. Ms. Peltola instructed aides to purchase the insects at a pet store and then feed them to Meatball.
Aides initially went to Ms. Peltola’s apartment in Washington to feed Meatball, but the congresswoman later brought the reptile into her office on Capitol Hill. On at least one occasion, the crickets escaped in the office and had to be recaptured, according to two former aides who witnessed it as well as a photo viewed by The Times that showed aides in the office trying to trap the crickets using manila folders and small paper cups.
Live crickets for Meatball gone wild! The endless report was written by Kellen Browning, a young reporter who's six years out of college (Pomona, class of 2020).
A great deal is at stake in each of this year's contested Senate campaigns. It seemed to us that the Times was indulging in peculiar journalistic judgment of a type which was quite widespread as the paper covered Campaign 2000.
In this analysis piece for the Atlantic, Jonathan Chaoit blamed the highly self-involved staffers. At this site, we flashed back to highly questionable journalistic judgment once put on display by the Times.
Trump is getting ready to fire another woman. This time it's Susy Wiles.
ReplyDeleteTrump's political appointees who are personal friends and long-time Epstein grifters are butting heads with his political appointees who think they are there to do a specific job, but don't have any authority because Trump sides with his corrupt buddies against them and doesn't back them up. Susie Wiles is caught in the middle of that. Trump doesn't like the conflict so he blames her, when it is his lack of leadership skills that are causing his administration to be in chaos.
DeleteHow could such an obviously mentally ill person as Trump be able to control a staff of incompetent loose cannons breaking laws, spending too much money, breaking rules, and engaging in feuds over who has daddy's approval? Trump is oblivious. If he doesn't back up his chief of staff (Wiles) there will be even more chaos. Meanwhile Natalie Harp will run the government.
DeleteIf/when Wiles goes, we will need to redefine the word “Shitshow”.
DeleteWiles thinks she’s saving the nation from his worst tendencies but she has always been working double duty as his enabler in chief.
DeleteWhat happens when you have a President working for Putin:
ReplyDelete"Inflation when Trump took office: 3%.
Inflation today: 3.7%.
Wage gains when Trump took office: 4%
Wage gains today: 3%
Cost of a gallon of gas when Trump took office: $3.13
Cost of a gallon of gas today: $4.33
Average monthly job creation in 2024: 122,000
Average monthly job creation since Trump took office: 39,000
Unemployment rate when Trump took office: 4%
Unemployment rate today: 4.2%
GDP growth 2024: 3%
Most recent quarter GDP growth: 2.2% (2026 average so far: 2.3%)
Deficit in 2024: $1.83 trillion
Deficit for 2026: $1.99 trillion
National debt 2024: $35.5 trillion
National debt 2026: $40.1 trillion
30-year mortgage rate when Trump took office: 7%
30-year mortgage rate today: 7.45%
Defense spending 2024: $874 billion
Defense spending 2026: $966 billion* (current OMB estimate)
Republican defense spending request for 2027: $1.5 trillion"
If there's a man on Peltola's staff, he should give her a bare-bottom spanking.
ReplyDeleteHe is too busy sexually abusing Peltola's daughter's cricket.
DeletePeltola is doing well in her race, so Somerby dutifully trots out all the dirt and repeats it here, without fact-checking or comment about the triviality of the complaints. Just to say something negative about a Democrat who is winning, to advance those right wing talking points. He might have noted that the NY Times seems to have a vendetta against her, but instead he furthers it. And takes a gratuitous dig at a reporter who has apparently sinned by being only six years out of college. As if that doesn't qualify her to know what crickets are.
ReplyDeleteCompare these two statements:
1. The NY Times seems to be trying very hard to find something ugly to say about Peltola but only found some staff complaints about feeding pet crickets.
2. The NY Times seems to engage in some peculiar journalistic judgment, just as they did at some unspecified time in the past.
Which of these communicates more info? Which says clearly that the times looked for some muck and came up empty? Which of these statements say nothing at all except mumble mumble Peltola is bad?
Somerby is 100% unqualified to criticize any journalist because he has not mastered the art of writing a clear sentence himself. But he is good at spreading vague innuendo against a blue candidate, thereby advancing right wing interests in the upcoming midterms. This is why Somerby is dishonest, an asshole, working to further Trump's agenda while calling Trump crazy out of the other side of his mouth.
Shoving is not trivial. It is the act of an ape.
DeleteAs I said, Somerby does not fact check the quotes he presents here. It is enough for him that the quote is negative about Peltola, a Democrat. Here is an article from The Guardian that investigated and provides another perspective than the NY Times:
Delete"Mary Peltola’s campaign on Thursday downplayed a report that the Democratic nominee in Alaska’s pivotal Senate race shoved a staffer and used slurs, saying the article exaggerated her behavior, but acknowledging she struggled following the deaths of her husband and mother.
The New York Times article published on Wednesday is based on text messages and interviews with nine former employees of Peltola, who served in the House of Representatives from 2022 till the beginning of last year and is now set to face the Republican senator Dan Sullivan in the 3 November midterm elections.
In a statement, Harry Child, a spokesperson for Peltola’s campaign, said her behavior was affected by the stress of working in the House together with the death of her husband in a 2023 plane crash as well as her mother around the same time.
“At the time of their passing, Mary was parenting kids through their own grief, serving full-time in the US House of Representatives thousands of miles from home, and running a competitive re-election campaign – all while shouldering the enormous burden of grief,” Child said.
“Like any person who has gone through multiple personal tragedies in the span of a few months, Mary sometimes struggled to deal with her grief. But she treats her staff with respect and care, and she maintains close positive relationships with her staff spanning her nearly 30 years in public service.”
He added that “exaggerating and outright lying about moments from the hardest period of her life, and falsely presenting them as a pattern of behavior, is wrong”.
Now readers can decide for themselves whether Peltola is an ape.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/24/mary-peltola-campaign-allegations
If I lived in Alaska, I would vote for her.
DeleteWhy does Somerby, a supposed liberal, think it is right to reprint a hit piece against her coming from an obvious right wing source, weeks before the election? How does that help Democrats?
Why does Somerby think that the musings of a young female reporter, who he blames for writing about crickets, are the most important aspect of this situation?
Here is what Chait said, which Somerby does not quote since it does not support his own thesis:
Delete"In February 2024, according to a former staff member who told the story to The New York Times, Representative Mary Peltola, an Alaska Democrat running for the Senate, pushed an aide. As the Times put it in a report published yesterday, Peltola “shoved a male employee in the chest with one hand, causing him to stumble backward.”
You might wonder why the paper of record is reporting this detail. Did the employee then tumble off a cliff and die? The Times does not mention any bodily harm, beyond the backward stumble. The encounter is instead offered as evidence of what the Times calls “a campaign and congressional office marked by chaos.” Chaos."
Chait goes on to analyze the dynamics of such staff complaints, pointing out that they tend to be made against female bosses over behavior that would not be treated similarly if a male boss had done it. Somerby, of course, ignores that aspect of the criticisms of Peltola, preferring to chastise a youngish female reporter, for being young and committing some unspecified journalistic crime that reminds of something else, also unspecified.
It’s OK if a male boss shoves a female staffer in the chest and she stumbles backward. Sure, no problem. No consequences.
Delete"Somerby, of course, . . . prefer[s] to chastise a youngish female reporter"
DeleteKellen Browning is male.
My mistake. Thanks for the correction. I wonder if Somerby knows.
DeleteWe don't know the circumstances of any shoving. It is unfair to assume worst case assault when it could have been absent-minded moving through a crowd and trying to clear a way or something similarly innocent. It sounds bad when you use the word shoving but people jostle each other in many innocuous situation, say "pardon me" and no one cares, unless there are hard feelings to fuel a complaint. And we don't know about that either.
DeleteIt is clear that the motive of the NY Times is to hurt Peltola right before the election, while she has a slim lead. There is no way any of those staff complaints are any kind of news. In the context of her personal grief, both the staff's unsupportiveness, their complaining to the press, and the way it is blown out of proportion by the NY Times seem malicious and irrelevant to how well she would serve in office.
Somerby shouldn't be furthering a hit piece the way he does today.
"I’m particularly interested in how the economic situations of young voters — especially young men — are shaping their political beliefs. I’m always on the lookout for unusual or counterintuitive stories."
DeleteIs this perhaps a motive for trashing a successful female politician? Men are for Trump and the manosphere is especially for Trump. Peltola is both female and a tribal leader. Is that maybe too woke for young Kellen? Or maybe he just doesn't identify with her personal problems (parenthood, grief over the death of her mother and husband while trying to carry on in a demanding job)? Or maybe he doesn't like it when men get pushed around (shoved in the chest unexpectedly by a woman)? It is more likely the NY Times editor supervising him assigned him a hit piece on Peltola and told him the desired slant, since he left out any extenuating circumstances about Peltola's staff grievances.
Don’t shove men. Don’t shove women. Don’t shove anybody.
DeleteAre you aware of how long ago this happened?
Delete2022-2023, this is dredging up old non-issues to harm Peltola.
Delete5:14,
DeleteShove it up your ass.
“Peltola is doing well in her race, so Somerby dutifully trots out all the dirt and repeats it here…”
DeleteYes, that’s Somerby trotting out dirt, quoting the corporate NYT, which has consistently written in the negative on various subjects, such as Mamdani and El-Sayed. Now Peltola . Chosen targets are not accidents.
What Somerby also wrote was that “With control of the Senate at stake, we're praying for Candidate Peltola.”
You’re such a fucking clod, and a dense one at that.
It must be you, Slabby. The one who thinks we should all be “better followers.” God knows you follow this blog. What’s maddening, and intentional, is that you won’t identify yourself. You never will, because you don’t exist. If you really are an actual person, then I admit you have stamina, an amazing ability to “compose” slabs of text that only serve… What, exactly?
You’re the one who “writes” Slabs of text, often with word-count that exceeds Bob’s own post. The one who invariably adds Slabs of text to their own comments, after writing a favorable review of you own Slabs.
C’mon, 3:46, give us a handle so we can understand. Maybe you can use the moniker you appended to Somerby: Asshole. That would be fun if you did that. I can see the responses:
“Hey, Asshole…” And so on. It would be great!
I’m honestly not very good at this. I’m tilting at windmills. My frontal lobe requires attention. It should never, ever respond to assholes, but her I am.
Leroy
If Somerby is actually supporting Peltola, why doesn't he fact-check and debunk the slanders he repeats here?
DeleteSomerby recently attacked el-sayed for being “prickly” and Ossoff for making an “angry insinuation”. This tracks with the right wing grievance machine.
DeleteThis, perhaps, tracks with reality. Or does it matter to retarded Dumbocrats?
DeleteI also remember Somerby’s months-long sliming of Elizabeth Warren when she was running for president.
DeleteOssoff is way ahead, and did not make an angry insinuation.
DeleteIf Peltola appeared on "Last Word," why didn't Somerby quote anything she herself said?
DeleteEl-sayed was responding to Trump calling him “full of shit”. Else I had responded with ”At least I don't let mine go in the middle of the Oval Office." and Somerby retreated to his fainting couch.
Delete…El-sayed, not else.
Delete
DeleteToo bad you can't get your own blog and sufficiently glamorize all 'em Dumbocrat heroes.
By the way, why can't you? What country you're operating from?
Leroy is complaining because other people's comments are too long. Maybe that is because men don't read. There is an article about that over at Daily Kos:
Deletehttps://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/10/16/800112768/community/men-dont-read-because-of-men-not-the-publishing-industry/
Reading is like anything else, the more you do it, the faster you get at it and the better you do it. Same with writing. "Slabby" obviously does a lot of writing and so is probably faster at it than Leroy thinks. Cecelia used to complain that "Slabby" wrote posts using AI or by pre-writing based on a guess about what Somerby was likely to say the next day. Writing fluently is part of literacy. The lack of literacy on the right goes hand-in-hand with disdaining education and trying to undermine facts, knowledge, and critical thinking in general. Too bad for Leroy, but it is something he can fix by practicing writing and reading more.
10:55: why don’t you take your own advice and do a blog where you can just call democrats “dumbocrats” all day long? This adds nothing to the discussion here. As far as “heroes”, no one sees them that way, but Ossoff and el-sayed are trying to help take the senate for democrats, which is an Important goal right now. They need support, not carping.
DeleteI'm hot for Corby, resident retarded Dumbocrat here. She's the love of my life.
DeleteFaced with a rapidly encroaching Project 2025 takeover of American Democracy, what folks really want to know is if Peltola is another hysterical woman.
ReplyDeleteLike MTG, Lauren Boebert, Kristi Noem, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Katie Zacharia, Nancy Mace, Susie Wiles, Natalie Harp, etc.
DeletePeltola is a Democrat currently elected to office. We don't elect conspiracy mongers who need to inspect genitals in bathrooms, shoot puppies (and goats), write love letters to a demented old man, claim imaginary credentials, give handjobs in public at Musicals, talk about Jewish space lasers and reptilians, shout in the faces of teens who survive a mass school shooting, and extort money from right wing donors seeking favors. Is that what you mean by hysterical? If so, Republican men do that stuff too.
Matt Gaetz is being sued over the young women he trafficked to his buddies, as political favors, while in office. And his legislative drug parties (orgies).
These are the people promoting Project 2025, not Mary Peltola or any other Democrat.
Are you saying the Peltola woman only gives hand-jobs? Disappointing.
DeleteBut at least her name is not Green Placenta.
Another school shooting today! The second amendment is alive and well.
ReplyDeleteEveryone knows the Second Amendment is for shooting up schoolrooms, and pretending that you would fight government tyranny with it, while hiding under your bed shitting yourself in fear.
DeleteTrump Jr is apparently invested in the idea of mail order guns. Effing genius. Has a business model revolving around that.
DeleteTrump Jr probably got his business model from Ross Ulbricht. Daddy really likes that guy apparently. Pardoned him day 2 of this presidency.
DeleteDemocracy is in grave danger from mail in voting but mail order firearms? No risks there.
DeleteAnd because of the Second Amendment, the school shooter was taken out by an armed citizen saving countless lives of both children and adults.
DeleteAlways remember when the seconds counts, the police are minutes away from being too late to be of any help.
And because of the second amendment, that possibly mentally unstable 16 year old shooter had easy access to a gun in the first place.
DeleteChildren may die, juvenile shooters may die, the second amendment lives.
Delete10:45,
DeleteDefund the police, indeed.
Trump is evil.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteI touch my asshole, and I sniff the finger. And I get an epiphany: Somerby is an ass!
I am Corby.
You are not an asset to this blog.
Delete