Any likelihood the gang rape allegation is true, or is Avenatti just trying to muddy things by asking suggestive questions?
The Judge one that was brought forward by the ex-girlfriend, or something else?
My understanding of the current situation is that NYer article says Judge's ex claims he confided I her about bad behavior in high school by a group including potentially group sex with passed out women, but doesn't specifically say Kav was part of the group. At the same time, Avenatti says he has a third victim with "credible information" but has released no details, and says he has evidence Judge and Kav would try to drug women, but he released a letter he sent to Grassley's office asking questions like "did Kav ever have sex with drunk women? Did he have group sex?" So all implication but no concrete claims.
I'm behind in the Avenatti accusations. Wow.
https://twitter.com/MichaelAvenatti/status/1044032678951960576
https://twitter.com/MichaelAvenatti/status/1044215921575772162
For those who refuse to follow links to twitter, Avenatti says he has a client who is willing to take a polygraph exam. But he's not saying what the client's story is -- instead he is telling the Chief Counsel questions that Kavanaugh should be asked.
3. Av's suggestion to Grassley 'you should ask him X' suggests that Av knows the answer to X, not that he is trying to find out if X is true. If Av doesn't know X, the email does his client real harm: a bluff called infects every future assertion.
I'll follow links to twitter but I won't read screenshots of documents that are 120 characters wide. Reformat that shit if you really have presidential aspirations.
I like it because it follows a similar form to what Kav tried to pull on Clinton with the lewd Lewinsky questions. If we asked this, would you truthfully be able to answer X?
And of course Av's X is way broader than what Av knows. It's better to get a complete denial, than to get something hedged that K and his defenders can try to lawyer their way out of (as they've done with the stolen emails, role in GWB judicial appointments, etc).
7: But why is he being so coy? Is he trying to spring a perjury trap?
I didn't go to YLS, but it does seem that they teach people that arguing about what the meaning of is is is effective. And yes it is, among those who already want to believe it.
But, with Rosenstein out, there'll be other shiny objects to chase all week.
Rosenstein news relevant to this thread because now we're all fucked.
that arguing about what the meaning of is is is effective.
I got three ises, I got three ises, anybody got four anybody got four? Is that four in the back? Is that a sign I see for four? Anybody got four? Going once, twice, SOLD!
And there's number four. I guess the "but you libs say predators never have just one victim so by your own argument he's innocent CHECKMATE!" defense is no longer operative.
Also so people are aware, the badly formatted image-of-text in the tweet linked in 3 and 4 has a lot of disturbing language.
Re Rosenstein, it really seems the authors of the Friday scoop (Adam Goldman, Michael Schmidt) were complicit by taking info about Rosenstein propagated with precisely this in mind, and presenting it without much complication.
Contrast to Whelan's doppelganger epileptic tree, which only went out on Twitter because actual reporters turned up their noses at it.
13 Or maybe he isn't. What is the meaning of is, anyway?
18: Yes. This isn't an original thought, but fuck the NYT.
It's really been just so easily manipulated by various Republicans and Trumpists.
I think this is that thing when English uses the the present tense with the meaning of near-future. Everyone agrees he's about to be out, disagreement over whether it's resignation or firing.
I'm told the Vacancies Act allowing temporary replacements without Senate confirmation only applies for resignations, which sounds good. But is there a means of enforcement against violations of that act, besides Congress?
23: That seems to be disputed.
On a related note, a couple of days ago Maggie Haberman was tweeting that she was hearing Trump was too smart to be baited into firing Rosenstein/Mueller.
It's pretty obviously a business strategy at this point, right? It was vaguely the case during the election- need a good horse race to drive clicks, Clinton seems like a shoo-in so let's take her down a notch, oops Trump won so now you all need to support a free press. But now it's specific acts- they've been goading him with "what if you did this, Mr President" for months, he creates news in response to their goading, they cover the news and get more audience.
I think that is too much ascription of grand strategy on their part. Their modus operandi is to cultivate relationships with those in power to get juicy news, and often that means quid pro quo story seeding. Sufficiently explanatory in my mind.
Only partially related to the Kavanaugh thing, but this article warmed my heart a bit.
I agree with 25. Right now my basic reaction is AUUUUGH!
Are all the leaks indicating that Rosenstein is resigning coming from White House people, hoping that this will somehow convince Rosenstein that he should resign rather than get fired?
Well that's hardly a new insight, dear boy.
Notice he said nothing about "in the long run."
Yeah, once again I find myself thinking that the identity and motive of the leakers is a way bigger subject of public concern than the substance of the leak, and once again our pundit class finds itself constitutionally unable to even understand what those words mean, much less how it might be true.
CNN is being sceptical right now.
Argh. Rosenstein put out an official statement saying no news till Thursday when he meets with Trump.
Was this is a stalking horse?
35: Also proves you can't trust the Fake News media.
35-36 should have left it in so we could debate the deeper meaning of a typo.
At their meeting Trump will have a prepared statement that he wants Rosenstein to read if he wants to keep his job. It will say something like, "Trump is the most stable genius in all of history, and the idea that I would ever have questioned his sanity or mental acuity is a preposterous lie created by the Fake Media."
I know that trying to understand is an absolute mug's game, and that we are two years into the Post-Astonishment Era. But I cannot lose my old ways of thinking and I CANNOT FUCKING BELIEVE that a dude with gang rapes in his history put himself in a position of intense public scrutiny. I mean, shit. I have an embarrassing old blog and I'm not sure I could ever run for public office. I mean, I am sure he is crazy fixated on the goal, but did that erase all memory of doing very bad shit and destroy any thinking that he might be held accountable? The question answers itself, but if I had gotten away with a criminal history, I wouldn't be leaping out in front of the public waving my arms.
Echo chamber + privilege = they'll never catch me, and if they do it won't matter. And he still might be right. Who recently wrote that the laws serve and do not bind the ruling class, and bind but do not serve the underclass (Serwer in Slate?)
Gang rape? Wasn't that just Mark Judge?
42: From the New Yorker story, it's just Judge.
Avenatti's questions imply that Kavanaugh did it too.
I'm afraid people looking to Avenatti as the man with the master plan to save the Republic are going to end up like the people who trusted Eric Garland and Seth Abramson.
45 is my thought. I'm going to see how the New Yorker works first.
I don't know how they get anything done, with noses like that.
I don't disagree, but Av has a talent for breaking through, which is important in this thing. His latest teaser is about the qualifications of his client, who's apparently had a clearance, and so is credible. Did K have a clearance himself when he was at the WH? Surely. Doesn't do much for credibility.
K is fighting back, trying, I suppose, to hold onto Trump.
Avenatti was laudable when he was using his skills to run rings around Trump in the media cycle specifically around Stormy Daniels. I fear he's reached his Peter limit very quickly.
You know what doesn't hold up well? Two Weeks [sic] Notice. Even fans of the romcom genre probably found it forgettable. Hugh Grant plays a womanizing rich doofus in Manhattan in the middle of a divorce, who's a bigwig at a construction company that demolishes community centers. Sandra Bullock is a skilled, but idealistic and inadequately feminine, lawyer who protects community centers. She takes a job as his divorce lawyer on condition that he not demolish her community center. She gets sick of reminding him of how to dress himself and quits on reasonably good terms. During the two weeks' notice period she starts training her replacement, who he sorta-kinda develops a personal relationship with. Bullock's character realizes she is jealous and that she has developed feelings for him and regrets quitting. Tension rises when he considers demolishing the community center after all. The premise is particularly contrived and the gender politics of this would have been uneven at best 20 years earlier. Cassandane put it on last night, I assume for some even-lighter-than-usual fare after a tiring weekend, and I didn't finish watching it. It was that bad.
This is on-topic. In addition to the theme, Trump had a cameo appearance in it. It's insidious how we can't escape his grasp.
Just reading about Avenatti on Vox. I really appreciate how direct he is about naming sex acts. Vague descriptions like 'sexual assault by multiple perpetrators' don't hit home like 'line out the bedroom door to rape a passed out woman.' It is graphic, but I'm actually relieved to hear someone give it the plain language that conveys the horribleness of the original event. And once he's said it plainly, it becomes really clear what the more abstract language is concealing.
It's fine to state it graphically, but a lot of people FWICT would really have preferred a content warning.
Warning: You'll never be able to play Mario Kart again without thinking of this.
Great now I can't think about banana peels, rear-end collisions, or tortoise shells without some horrible associations.
That's one hair-brained fantasy, you sick fuck.
Maybe there will be a completely novel sex act description.
25: they've been goading him with "what if you did this, Mr President" for months, he creates news in response to their goading, they cover the news and get more audience.
Yep. The two most glaring to me were:
1) Michael Schmidt* being the one to suggest in an interview with Trump whether Mueller looking at his finances was a "red line." In an interview where he was pressed on it his answer was that they basically wanted to "pin the President down" on something; i.e get a headline. (Schmidt is frequently not smooth in interviews or reveals himself as mistaken or biased much more so than his articles; I suspect he gets cleaned up a lot on the editorial process--he's where he is because he has a lot of "deep"--but generally dishonestly motivated--leakers in FBI etc.)
2) Thrush** and Haberman asking Trump whether he thought Susan Rice committed a crime (way back in March 2017) re: the "unmaking scandal."
In both case you might see a way clear to think these were Ok *IF* they had immediately followed up with tough questions, such as "What Crime?" "Why do you think that?", or "Why would that be a Red Line." Instead they get their headline and run (see **).
Schmidt got his start reporting on legal issues in sports, and Thrush and Haberman were both mode tabloid-y reporters.
*One of my chapters in my work-inprogress Rage Book is "What did Michael Schmidt KNow and When did he Know It?"***
**Transcript did not say IIRC, but I am guessing it was Thrush as he was the one who quickly tweeted that they had "News!" from the interview and then tweeted that out (headline in the paper was later softened with "Citing no evidence" after they took a lot of criticism.
***If some enterprising young NYT reporter wants to really score a massive scoop they should use their access to gather material on the incredible coordination between NYT folks like Schmidt and Carolyn Ryan and the elements of government trying to pre-sully HRC with Benghazi/emails etc. (A sadly wildly successful gambit.)
Fucking McConnell, what a fucking fuck.
He's so good at "outrage" on the floor which the useless Stenographers from Hell in the DC press love to describe in their useless context-free dribblings.
Gibbets for everyone!
Republicans have become like Catholic priests when it comes to sex crimes: Regardless of your political or religious views, there is no possible allegation that would change your opinion of them.
Maybe there will be a completely novel sex act description.
The details all together in 60 make me retract 26. I'd call it a career strategy rather than a business strategy, but the NYT is clearly making no corporate objection.
60: I am increasingly a fan of Isaac Chotiner, who is pretty low-key, and in fact often rather boring, but who gets to the bottom of stuff in a way that would make me leery of being interviewed by him if I were engaged in any kind of suspect enterprise.
Talking to Chotiner, Schmidt relies on the general credibility of the NYT as a defense, and offers pretty much nothing else. It's a performance by Schmidt that will probably be effective for the masses, but Chotiner asks the right questions, and alert readers can get a feel for easily manipulated a "sophisticated" reporter can be.
Today's interview with Haidt reads to me like an evisceration, though I betcha Haidt doesn't see it that way -- which, in the old days, I thought was really one of the hallmarks of a great interview.
But nowadays, these Chotiner interviews illustrate a genuine dilemma of the modern age. But Haidt and Schmidt, for most readers, come out of these interviews looking pretty good, I think.
The folks who abused Remnick over his proposed interview with Bannon had the right idea, I think. With some of these assholes, the only thing you can do is deny them a platform.
The Chotiner Buruma interview was brutal, but Buruma probably still doesn't understand why. The good thing is he can puzzle his way through without editing the NYRB to distract him.
67: Yeah, Jesus. I guess I'm a little skeptical of the importance of Chotiner's excellent work in our current fact-free media ecology, but there are still influential non-monsters at the NYRB and elsewhere who can extract useful information from Chotiner's work.
This quote from Schmidt is pretty stunning. Chotiner says that the reporting seems to indicate that all of Schmidt's information is second-hand or third-hand.
Schmidt:
I would point out that there is at least one person in the story who was in the room, and that was the handout from the Justice Department that was given to us. An anonymous person--not anonymous to us, but a person on background--who described the events of the story. Our reporting did not show--did not give a lot of credibility to the Justice Department pushback.
So the one person in the room denies the thrust of the story, but NYT's reporting contradicted that person. And that's how Schmidt defends himself against the charge that he lacked information from a direct witness.
And does he feel as though he was being used by his sources? He dances around that one in a way that suggests he hasn't given serious consideration to the possibility. (Though he says he has.)
I mean, sure, maybe the NYT has learned its lessons from Whitewater, Starr, Jayson Blair and Judith Miller (which Chotiner doesn't bring up) and from its reporting of Hillary's possible e-mail crimes and Trump's lack collusion with Russians (which Chotiner does bring up). But this interview is not reassuring on that score.
Thrush
I appreciate and agree 100% with Stormcrow's comment. And also I feel compelled to point out that in a just world, Thrush would have been fired from his fancy job and would no longer be reporting on sexual harassment or assault suspects.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/24/business/brett-kavanaugh-yearbook-renate.html "Renate Alumnus." A pig then. a more polished pig now.
I just don't understand how anyone who was even minimally sentient in high school or college could be surprised by things that clique did. My schools had the exact same types. In high school they were the kids who wore white basedball caps backwards. They got drunk in the woods, and every few years one killed himself driving drunk. In college they were known as the "fratty frats", since there were some more mild fraternities, but Deke was definitely one of the ones focused on getting blackout drunk every weekend.
A kid at a local college died of alcohol poisoning. Everyone said his parents were shocked that he was into that kind of scene. They said how he was a good kid in high school, just filled around with his friends, one example was how he had scars from weedwhacker fights. Guess what, I'm 100% certain he got drunk in high school too.
||
Chief District Judge here just tossed out the ruling that would delist Yellowstone ecosystem grizzlies and lets folks in Wyoming and Idaho hunt them. So, there's something good going on.
|>
The Chinese investment in Maldives is seen as part of its "String of Pearls" strategy, developing a network of friendly ports in the region from Sri Lanka to Pakistan.
How many different names are they gonna call this thing?
String of Pearls is an older term, I think originated by non-Chinese analysts, and with narrowly naval and Indian Ocean connotations.
Please tell me "string of pearls" is off topic.
78 Speaking of which, how was this not doing the rounds these last few days?
weedwhacker fights. [...] he got drunk in high school too
But you repeat yourself.
Weedwhacker fighting seems like a meth thing.
Also, Stanley!
From an ONA report in 2004 says wiki. (And that people were talking about the same BRI stuff 10 years before the BRI was announced indicates how little substance there is to the thing so far.)
79: Yeah, it's been in my head too.
Opinion polling after reports of Republican men committing sexual assault has been so fucked up that I find myself wondering if Kavanaugh's denials will hurt him.
the kids who wore white basedball caps backwards
"Dirty-white-hat boys", we used to call them.
||
It gave as an example a system invented by associate professor Tzeng Chyng-shyang (曾晴賢), who has 27 years of experience in his field, to grow giant mottled eels.
|>
You don't want the mottled eel from the new guy. They're usually more spotted than actually mottled.
One hopes that Prof. Tzeng's field is something like archaeology or cybernetics, and the giant mottled eel thing is merely a lucrative sideline.
90: if you try to pass off a fake as the real thing, it'll be spotted very quickly.
Prof. Tzeng's system meant the eels showed a marked improvement.
They are, admittedly, a very motley crew.
Prof. Tzeng's air of melancholy is attributable to the fondness he has for his giant mottled friends, and his knowledge that inevitably, as the days and years pass, they will all wither and perish; as he put it, "Time wounds all eels".
A Fox News poll taken in the wake of Ford's allegation found a record number of voters oppose the Kavanaugh nomination. The survey also found that voters believed Ford's claims over Kavanaugh's denials by a 6-point margin.
Women were more likely to believe Ford by 10 points overall, with the same number climbing to 17 points among suburban women. Men, by contrast, sided with Ford by just 1 point.Lifted from the Groan. I'm not going to link to Fox, but even they can't massage it as good news. The sad thing is it won't make any difference to the bastards. In the mid terms, maybe; in the hearings, not.
I just don't understand how anyone who was even minimally sentient in high school or college could be surprised by things that clique did.
This speaks for me. I take some comfort from the apparent fact that the rest of the world might not have been as hideous as my high school. And my elementary school was worse.
I hate second grade booze parties, they always drink the sugary kool aid and wine cooler type things, no respect for gin or scotch.
Don't knock Sunny D & vodka 'til you've tried it.
Did you know they sell mixed drinks in bags? They do in Nebraska, but not here.
That's much more convenient than having to dump your Fireball and Dr. Pepper into a ziplock.
Today's post really brings home the "Kevin Drum is bad in the Trump era" thesis.
I think this article paints a convincing picture of the kind of person Kavanaugh was and is
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/09/brett-kavanaugh-allegations-yearbook-male-bonding.html
107: Homosociality is one of those terms I learned from the Internet, but immediately made sense when I heard it. This might sound weird, but it's basically foreign to me on a personal level. When I was young and single, there was only one group of people who's opinions who mattered to me, and it didn't have any men in it.
106: even worse is "nothing serious happened."
80s male heterosexuality was exemplified by "The Lost Boys." A man should only have sex with a woman as part of the process of being seduced by Kiefer Sutherland.
It's interesting how many defenses seem to be founded on the notion that no PIV = no misconduct.
* Kavanaugh's "I did not have sexual intercourse or anything close to sexual intercourse in high school or for many years there after"
* The latest Shitty Media Man's* "I was shocked to find myself accused of rape. I don't like intercourse..."
* And probably Drum's meaning of "nothing serious".
*Immediately after that was published, his successor at the magazine told her story about him groping her, trying to get her into a room alone, etc. on Twitter.
107: Judging by the number of times I've seen her individual articles praised, I wonder if Lili would have better name recognition if people had a prayer of correctly spelling her last name? Here is all of it in one place. Scroll down to Early Modern Culture for some real fun. This one is also excellent, and not about TV.
L-O-O-F-B-O-U-R-O-W.
I always assumed "Lili Loofbourow" was a wacky fake name taken from a children's book and "Millicent Somer" was her real name.
Millicent is the alter ego for sure, but I have no idea where it originated; I suspect out of her own head. The real name is standard Chilean first name/last name incongruity a la Bernardo O'Higgins, I think.
Does she also have magnificent sideburns?
So now some guys on 4chan are claiming they tricked Avenatti into making the gang rape implication? People are just assholes. Avenatti denies it.
I'm not saying all prominent Chileans need to have 'burns. I'm not shallow like that. I'm just saying brand consistency is in their own interest.
And that's not even to consider the magnificence as an end in itself.
"When I was young and single, there was only one group of people who's opinions who mattered to me, and it didn't have any men in it."
I find this impossible to believe. You had no male friends whatsoever?
Walt probably grew up in a convent.
who's opinions
Clearly he cares not a whit for nosflow's opinion, at any rate.
126: indeed. Putting it at point 13 seems to be rather burying the lede.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/avenatti-client-emerges-with-new-allegations-against-kavanaugh
Wow.
I feel like I know the dirty-white-baseball-cap kind of douchebag and yet I'm still shocked by the complete toxicity of that particular early 80s group of assholes.
The real name is standard Chilean first name/last name incongruity a la Bernardo O'Higgins, I think.
The best example I have seen of this recently is Franklin Chang-Diaz, whose name sounds like it comes from a SF novel whose author is trying very hard to make the point that the book is set in a future of cultural mixing.
Dr Chang-Diaz is a former astronaut who has invented a superior sort of ion drive that could get you to Mars six times faster. That, too, is fairly SF.
Bernardo O'Higgins sounds like the Bart O'Kauvanagh of Beto O'Rourke.
Right up there with Marechal Etienne Jacques Joseph Alexandre MacDonald, duc de Tarentum.
Not to mention Scipio Duroure Campbell, see here:
http://www.ralstongenealogy.com/number18kintmag.htm
Captain Frederick Campbell was the son of Captain Scipio Duroure Campbell and Giles Campbell whose father Archibald Campbell was Chamberlain of Kintyre and who according to Colonel Charles Mactaggart, a descendant was of the Campbells of Kinloch (2). The father was of the Campbells of South Hall, the representative of which family was a member of the jury which convicted James Stewart of the Glen in connection with the Appin Murder. Captain Scipio had a half brother known as Mustapha Pasha who became Grand Vizier of Turkey and Commander in Chief of the Egyptian Army. Frederick himself served with the 94th Regiment, the Scots Brigade, which was originally raised in 1793 and served in India and in the Peninsular War and took part in the reduction of Badajoz in 1812
Read the whole thing for bonus hamesucken.
128: I had the same reaction to the affidavit -- and to the early reporting, which mimicked that document.
The choices of Avenatti, his staff and his clients are really interesting to me.* I can only imagine the deliberations involved in choosing the picture of Swetnick that Avenatti released to the media. I would have expected a more neutral expression, but the choice she/they made was a nice surprise.
I'm guessing that Swetnick was warned that this picture was going to follow her around the rest of her life. A strong, confident, happy picture also contains a nice "fuck you, Kavanaugh" subtext.
*I realize there's something kind of gross about evaluating this for its PR implications.
I guess grudging admission that Avenatti has not in fact proved to be all hat and no cattle. I still hate his "I am going to have a MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT in 48 HOURS" style, but we know he's good at media management.
Weird that drugging women to rape them is the same thing that Cosby is going to jail for.
I'm not sure the Orrin Hatches of the world would find that disqualifying for a Supreme Court seat, tho. I'm pretty damn curious as to what they would find disqualifying.
140.2 They're all still acting like they're going to walk the plank. And count on Fox to smear these women for as long as Kavanaugh is on the Supreme Court.
139: Trump has gotten the nemesis he deserves.
I think it's over. I think gang rape is a bridge too far even for the Republicans. But you can kind of picture McConnell saying, with complete honesty, "Nothing in these allegations changes my opinion of Judge Kavanaugh."
I think Kavanaugh needs to start worrying about whether he will be able to continue as a federal judge at all.
Wasn't there reporting when Kavanaugh was chosen that Kennedy had agreed to step down provided that Kavanaugh specifically was his replacement?
145: Yes, that was rumored...not sure how credible it was.
144.1 I would be beyond pleased if this were to be the case. But I'm afraid we're to have a gang rapist and torture supporter on the SCOTUS by next week.
147: I predict it will take at least a month or two for that to happen.
Source familiar tells NBC that Justice Kennedy had been in negotiations with the Trump team for months over Kennedy's replacement. Once Kennedy received assurances that it would be Kavanaugh (his former law clerk) Kennedy felt comfortable retiring - @LACaldwellDC & @frankthorp
-- Geoff Bennett (@GeoffRBennett) July 10, 2018
https://thinkprogress.org/trump-anthony-kennedy-brett-kavanaugh-corrupt-secret-deal-13fd59473ecf/
Source familiar tells NBC that Justice Kennedy had been in negotiations...
I don't trust this. Bennett doesn't even say what kind of animal the source's familiar is, or give us any other method to judge whether the familiar is reliable.
144
I think gang rape is a bridge too far even for the Republicans.
I hope you're right, and I'm more optimistic about it today than I have been in recent weeks. I still wouldn't put the odds are more than 50 percent, though.
149: I didn't scroll down all the way
UPDATE (7/10, 2:24 p.m.) -- Later Tuesday, NBC sought to clarify that whatever deal the White House had with Kennedy had a bit of wiggle room.
"I am told by a source who was not directly part of the talks that Kennedy provided Pres. Trump/ WH a list of acceptable replacements," Leigh Ann Caldwell reported on Twitter.
In another tweet, Caldwell added that while Kennedy's list contained a number of names, "Kavanaugh was the only one who was thought conservative enough to consider."
In another tweet, Caldwell added that while Kennedy's list contained a number of names, "Kavanaugh was the only one who was thought conservative enough to consider."
I hadn't heard this aspect. I wonder if they're also concerned Kennedy would un-resign in a huff if his pick gets replaced.
154: I wouldn't be surprised if the answer is, "it's complicated." I checked Wikipedia to refresh my memory. Apparently, what actually happened on July 31 was that he transitioned to "senior status." Apparently he's off the SC but could still do a lot of judging on lower courts if he wanted.
"afraid we're to have a gang rapist and torture supporter on the SCOTUS by next week."
I've honestly lost track, are you referring to just Kav or to him plus another current justice?
I wasn't sure if he had actually retired or just announced he was going to. 155 helps clarify.
Here's a WaPo article on elite Washington prep schools alarmed at "large, unsupervised parties where "excessive drinking and sexual license are common."
Individual schools have confronted the issue before. At the beginning of the school year, for example, Georgetown Preparatory School in Rockville held a conference with parents to discuss the problem of unsupervised parties and similar activities.
Charles P. Lord, headmaster at Holton-Arms, in Bethesda, said, "A number of parents and kids have expressed dismay over some of the situations at weekend parties."
I think they will go into full denial/attack the women mode (they already are, but will potentially step it way up).
A reminderi in the New Yorker story on the Yale allegation there was this gem:
After seeing Judge's denial, Elizabeth Rasor, who met Judge at Catholic University and was in a relationship with him for about three years, said that she felt morally obligated to challenge his account that " 'no horseplay' took place at Georgetown Prep with women." Rasor stressed that "under normal circumstances, I wouldn't reveal information that was told in confidence," but, she said, "I can't stand by and watch him lie." In an interview with The New Yorker, she said, "Mark told me a very different story." Rasor recalled that Judge had told her ashamedly of an incident that involved him and other boys taking turns having sex with a drunk woman. Rasor said that Judge seemed to regard it as fully consensual. She said that Judge did not name others involved in the incident, and she has no knowledge that Kavanaugh participated. But Rasor was disturbed by the story and noted that it undercut Judge's protestations about the sexual innocence of Georgetown Prep.
And on 159.last, just saw this from Greg Sargent:
Mark Judge's girlfriend [Elizabeth Rasor]is prepared to speak to FBI about what Judge told her about group sex episodes as part of a renewed background check investigation, her lawyer has informed the Judiciary Committee.
Republican Senators continue to milk hiring a feamle prosecutor for the hearing for self-owns:
Republican Sen. John Kennedy tells @mkraju his advice for Rachel Mitchell, who is questioning Christine Blasey Ford tomorrow: "I'm not interested in seeing Ms. Mitchell go cat woman on anybody."
Also Talia Levin comment on David French's disbelief that this could have occurred:
wrongdoing at a catholic school going unreported? david french, intellectual leading light of the right, is mystified
Samuel L. Bronkowitz presents Catholic High School Supreme Court Candidates in Trouble
And the calendars Kavanaugh produced include references to Judge specifically.
If you support a rapist as President, I don't think having one on the Supreme Court is out of bounds.
Question for the press conference: "Mr. President, if credible accounts were to arise that Judge Kavanaugh is guilty of repeated sexual assaults, would that be a bad thing? What, precisely, is wrong with that sort of behavior?"
Also, if I did the Twitter thing, I would respond to Trump thusly: "Avenatti is a third-rate lawyer the way Watergate was a third-rate burglary." The kids on Twitter wouldn't get the reference, though.
This provides some helpful context on the general social milieu. It was published a couple days ago, so before the latest accuser went public but after the general outlines of her accusations had started to surface.
And now there's a fourth accusation. Much more recent than the other ones, but totally anonymous so far.
That's too much for a Wednesday for me. I just grabbed a six pack.
Some of us have to deal with Thursday already.
On the sixth day of Kavanaugh my true love gave to me...
2018 me is a lot more enlightened than 1984 me, and there are bits of gendered teasing and such that I cringe looking back on, but good lord we never got up to anything remotely approaching the kind of fundamental disrespect displayed in Kavanaugh's "Renate alumni" yearbook entry. That ought to be disqualifying all by itself.
173 was my thought also. Maybe we weren't "elite" enough?
172: A deepening insight into the gaping hole that is the American conservative elite.
Supposedly, some of the new, anonymous reports are the Republican committee staff tossing out what they think are false reports as chaff.
By the early 90s, it seemed like there was one of those incidents (young men sullying the name of one of their classmates in the yearbook or school paper) every year in this area. A good friend of mine got himself in a lot of trouble for it at one of the outstate campuses. That said, I personally didn't grow up with the kind of people who were rich enough to pursue depravity with such avidity/Avenatti as the Geo.town preppy crowd.
People keep mentioning the "Bart O'Kauvanagh" reference but I keep thinking of the prom episode where Artie Ziff gropes Marge and then asks her not to tell anyone about his euphemistically "busy hands" because it would "damage the town" to hear about it.
Speaking of the 90's, did you hear about that crazy scandal in Omaha where the social studies teacher altered the results of the school president election? That was pretty messed up.
174: I thought about that too, but we mostly didn't know that the Georgetown Preps of the world existed, and we were relatively elite by the standards of our school and our class (which, admittedly, was nicer and nerdier than the class before or the class after). We were clueless in lots of ways, but we knew that the girls we hung out with were people and that being attracted to someone didn't get you anywhere unless the attraction was reciprocated.
having gone to NCS I can affirm that the georgetown boys were the worst. I think I only went to one party they hosted because it was so lame and they really were trying to get girls drunk on everclear and koolaid. they were also famous for rating all the freshmen at the various girls schools (to be fair the st. alban's boys did the same on a smaller scale.) in short, well known as dangerous and as massive douches. kavanaugh and his friends pulling a train on some poor passed out girl is the most plausible thing ever. renate just doesn't remember the evening because she was blacked out. and it's literally the only interpretation of the renate alumni thing.
It's hard to believe that any woman speaking up now would feel safe contacting a Republican Senator, any Republican staff, anyone affiliated with a conservative or Republican organization, any man who had not previously earned their trust, or anyone not in a position to shield them from attacks while establishing their claims.
183: Also not cool that someone leaked Blasey's allegations, likely from the Democratic side and likely in the hope that it would play out as it has. I'm very glad she came forward but it wasn't right to take the choice away from her.
185: That's a fair point. I was just thinking in terms of how to evaluate whether Republicans are deliberately spreading false anonymous claims. Kavanaugh supporters don't have much credibility and it's very hard to believe someone would come to them rather than someone else, even anonymously.
Latest is Repub staffers* say they have two (anonymous) guys who say it might have been them who assaulted Ford.
I think they are deep into muddy everything mode.
*A sometimes overlooked area is what complete pieces of shit Repub staffers are proven to be time after time.
Hmm, I'm sorry to say that my school did have an incident roughly equivalent to the Renate thing and that I was/am friends with some of the perpetrators. They got in a fair amount of trouble for it. I think it was something where they regretted it afterwords because they realized no one really thought they should do it but all believed their co-conspirators wanted to do it and no one was willing to say Maybe we shouldn't do this.
And then a psychologist built a career misrepresenting their actions.
I'm not a highly trained political consultant, but "He was not a rapist, merely an enthusiastic participant in a setting where rape was so common we have a list of suspects who might have committed a specific rape" does not seem like a very convincing argument.
At my high school, people got into trouble over sex the conventional way: unplanned pregnancy followed by ill-advised marriage.
190: Yes, I had that thought.
What a sad shitshow.
If he gets on I proclaim that the correct term to refer to the Supreme Court henceforth will be Pig Court.
what complete pieces of shit Repub staffers are
Really not limited to staffers.
I'm sort of glad I'm at work today so I can't watch the news.
The 'i'm going to cut off my own special prosecutor because we only are going to do five minutes a person' just looks very weird.
You know the line about temporarily embarrassed millionaires?
Now I'm wondering how many US white men privately think of themselves as temporarily inactive sexual predators.
Prompted I think by the poll that 54% of Republicans support confirming Kavanaugh even if the accusations are true.
195: Yeah, this switching back and forward between well-meaning but intrusive supportive comments and cross-examination by a pseudo-motherly shark must be really hard for Ford.
||
Have any canonizations yet been derailed in this same fashion?
|>
||
As in, emergence of newly-emboldened victims. Not the shark thing.
|>
Sharks as part of canonization were removed with Vatican II.
Literal canonizations? I think Marcial Maciel would have been a candidate if not for sex scandals that emerged when he was an old man.
I didn't even know mimes were eligible.
Is the testimony still going on? Does anyone have a link to the live hearing? And one to the last couple of hours? One that is not C-Span because it's making me log on to a television provider that I do not have.
It will continue for a while. It was on break but has started again. The NYT has a link.
The first known casualty on 9/11 was Father Mychal Judge, chaplain to the New York City Fire Department. He went to the scene and was hit by falling debris while performing extreme unction for an injured firefighter. He's the most obvious candidate ever for canonization, but it's been held up possibly because he was known to be gay (although celibate).
TFW older male colleague lectures you for minutes on end re imperative you as appellate atty watch hearing culminating in asserting CBF "only 95% credible."
This is shocking. Good Ol' Brett never angrily vowed revenge against conspiracies when he was driving our car pool to soccer practice.
211 Exactly. I don't know how teary Brett will play to that audience though.
211: Yep. Costa claims Trump is liking the "forcefulness."
Interrupting and talking over Senators does not seem like a wise strategy for Kavanaugh.
He's a total fucking entitled dick. But that's a plus for most Rs, and certainly for Trump.
I mean you can totally see McConnell telling Trump on the phone that Kav needed to land a knock-out blow, and didn't, and that going forward with the nomination might actually put the Senate majority at risk (even with that favorable map). And you can see Trump telling him to walk the fucking plank.
217: Yup. But the one he's playing to doesn't vote in the Senate, nor in the midterms. How long do you suppose it will take to cut the ads juxtaposing Blasey's testimony about how the assault changed her life with Kavanaugh's angry whining about how this hearing has damaged him?
I thought you couldn't use congressional hearings in campaign ads?
I dunno, you may well be right. But that was not a good look for the GOP.
Republicans are fighting for a return to a world where what Kavanaugh is accused of doing, and certainly sounds like he did, isn't considered wrong. Every time one of them talks about how this could put any man at risk it sounds like an admission of that they know others in the same high offices, perhaps even themselves, who've done the same kinds of things.
His conviction that he deserves to be appointed is mindboggling. He could just walk away and have a (lifetime?) job as a high-level senior judge. But no, this justiceship is his; he is owed it.
Based on reporting (I'm not watching the hearing) sounds like Kavanaugh's about to post his SAT scores, income, and a list women he doesn't think will accuse him of assault.
This whole hearing is horrifying and I can't believe it's still going.
I watched the whole motherfucking thing. So infuriating.
I'm just trying to imagine Kavanaugh-speak in other random contexts.
Hercules Mulligan: "I heard your mother say, Come again?"
Kavanaugh: Oh, did she need hearing aids?
a) That son of a bitch
b) Harris got him in what must be provable perjury. He testified that he did not watch Dr. Ford's testimony and the WSJ has him in another room watching on a monitor.
This is bringing back all the anger of Election Day 2016 for me, which leads me to wonder if there will be another women's march soon. Incremental stuff.
I think Yggles is right that part of what's going on with the Rs is that they really don't believe that an assault of the sort Blasey suffered should be disqualifying, but they know they can't say that, so they're genuinely furious that they're in an impossible position. They blame the Ds because they blame the Ds for the culture change, but they know they can't say that either, so it gets channeled into process arguments.
This is bringing back all the anger of Election Day 2016 for me
I saw a couple of tweets today referencing Rebecca Traister's upcoming book about female anger (including this excerpt, which I read the first third of and liked) which does seem like the right mood for today.
Yes to both 230 and 231.
Repubs "firing" the hired gun after she brushed too close to some potential actual relevant facts re: his calendar is not getting much play.
I think it is over and he is in. Lindsay Graham auditioning for Attorney General with his histrionics probably "saved"* the day. Fuck me.
We are a crappy big country that some one should pick up and throw against the wall.
*Actually I think the fix was in no matter what.
Perhaps sensing that it needed an online presence, someone on Capitol Hill, operating from a congressional IP address, decided to update Wikipedia to include an entry for "* "Devil's Triangle", a popular drinking game enjoyed by friends of Judge Brett Kavanaugh."
It's kind of amazing what a shitbag Kavanaugh is.
Yes, but I can't quite bring myself to appreciate it in an artist sense.
235: So angry massively partisan shitbag with massive "grievances" on the court for the rest of my lifetime.
I guess I might need careful diet and regular exercise.
Fuck it, if he's confirmed, Ds need to run the table this year and in 2020 and impeach Kavanaugh and Thomas both. Angry, crazy, lying sacks of shit.
While we previously endorsed the nomination of Judge Kavanaugh on the basis of his legal credentials and his reputation as a committed textualist, it is now clear that the nomination should be withdrawn.
And the Georgetown Prep reunion is going to be really fraught next summer.
I have a sinking feeling like this nomination was the last straw, and we're about to embark on a national divorce.
Hard to find a silver lining in this. Feeble attempt: if he drinks as much as it seems, maybe he won't stay on the Court very long.
243: Well put.
The self-righteous rage of old white men never grows old does it?
Last evening wife and I watched Kedi about cats in Istanbul as a temporary balm. Helpful that unless you know Turkish you have to pay attention to the screen for subtitles so no surreptitious glances at Twitter while watching.
Temporary was the operative word for sure.
Toomey is such a "principled" conservative that he is not even considered in play. I really hate that Murawski and Collins are the ones most on the hot seat but that they are even on "on the fence" is hateful in itself.
I need reassess my hate tranches.
Wait! Maybe I need to try love.
NY Times front pages "She Said. Then He Said. Now What Will Senators Say?" by the sultan of savvy, Peter Baker.
Horse race fucktard journalism at its finest.
Have you tried rubbing a cat on your skin? It's apparently a soothing remedy in Turkey.
May you be governed by villains from 1980s teen movies
Yeah. Kavanaugh really looks like that.
Also Back to the Future Part II can sort of be considered a teen movie.
So can The Blob, if you can overlook that Steve McQueen was 47 when it was filmed.
CBS news this morning, which is normally the least bad morning news channel, was horrifying this morning. There was some he-said-she-said, but mostly it was he-said.
Kellyanne Conway set the tone, parroting the Republican line, including the nonsense that both Kavanaugh and Ford could be right. Gayle King declined to challenge her, and no alternative view was offered.
Finally, they called in their two legal experts. The first one said she was really surprised by Kavanaugh's opening statement. After Ford's testimony, she was sure that Kavanaugh couldn't be such a sympathetic witness, but she was wrong! The second lawyer explained that the American Bar Association's call for further investigation was meaningless because, although the ABA endorsed Kavanaugh, the Republicans regard it as a liberal institution and therefore intrinsically unworthy of attention.
It was the most extraordinary display of the View from Nowhere that I've seen in a long time.
241: Just the fact of it is impressive, but am I the only person who thought the way they did it was unimpressive? I mean, Jesuits would obviously be diplomatic about that kind of thing, but they almost don't say why they're unendorsing him at all. It's not because he actually raped anyone, that would require a trial to determine; they still endorse all his views, so it sure is an unfortunate coincidence that they're held by a person like him; the nomination process has become a circus, and they aren't blaming the Democrats for that, but they don't say who is at fault; they don't mention many half-truths or outright lies he's told during this process... one could be forgiven for thinking that they unendorsed him because he got weepy during the testimony yesterday.
I don't think the Jesuits support ALL his views. All they say in the article is "textualist" and of course they want to outlaw abortion.
Maybe they only put their name out there to support him in the first place because they educated him.
243 It's an attractive fantasy, I'll grant, but there's no such thing as a divorce here. They are playing for domination, for real. They have to be defeated.
Well, I've always been in favor of the end of the union, so I wouldn't regret that. But I would also like to see the defeat and domination of the Republicans. Mind you, we did it here. It isn't impossible, and afterwards, it is quite lovely.
Republicans today: "He did it, and it was awesome."
Yeah, I am usually anti what I perceive as pipedream secession talk, but that falls flat today.
Another sign the Republicans have no future in CA - not just their politicians, but also their ideology- they thought they could bring back suburban Democrats at least to vote rage against the new gas tax, but Prop 6 is underwater in 2 out of 3 polls so far. Plus, both of the 2 are more recent polls that used the actual ballot title language which emphasizes the road repair the tax funds.
241, 257 America mag also has been the most critical and honest voice from near the Catholic hierarchy on the moral bankruptcy of the U.S church.
I get panicky about secession talk. It sounds like accountants pricing out how much it will cost to toss you a life preserver.
What it does is allows red state Republicans to paint the Democrats a coastal party that will sell out the interests of red state liberals for their own comfort.
It's also deeply cruel to the rump POC, left, etc, in the remnant union.
Secession talk is profoundly immoral. It's the flip side of the libertarian "fuck you, I got mine".
267 to 265,that is to say, pwned.
Solidarity is the sine qua non of the left.
I assume that after the West Coast secedes their elites will generously offer to take in all available ideological refugees from the New United States of Trump (I do not assume that)
268: Agreed. I sometimes think "well maybe I'll just move to Europe" but that has the same problem. (With the caveat that my tax payments going to a European social safety net instead of the American war machine is probably better for the world as a whole.)
That better gets at my qualms about the secession notion - it's not just feasibility.
If we're going to talk about secession remotely seriously, I think we covered a lot of the important points in this thread. Link goes to my single comment in it, FWIW. It's from December 2016. Interesting to reread stuff from back then for several reasons. Pessimism about Trump that has partly but not entirely come true. Bob was there a lot, and his very last comment in it was a tantalizing allusion to The Big Sort.
As escapism goes, personally the idea of secession doesn't do much for me, maybe just because I've lived most of my life in the DC area and New England. My current home is in the belly of the beast, my childhood home is as independent as Transylvania, and my childhood region, while roughly liberal, is too solidly attached to the "main" United States to imagine being on the right side of secession. Maps like this would be better than the West in general seceding, but also are the more implausible kind of fiction. That being said, I won't begrudge anyone their coping mechanisms.
274.1 I'm nothing if not consistent.
Oh, I figured Apo literally meant that all the women in the country would leave.
I still think we should move an entire federal bureaucracy to West Virginia or something. Much more likely to be effective at shifting the long term trajectory of US politics than empty threats about judicial impeachment.
Did we talk about how Kavanaugh's face is almost as punchable as Ted Cruz's?
I still think we should move an entire federal bureaucracy to West Virginia or something. Much more likely to be effective at shifting the long term trajectory of US politics than empty threats about judicial impeachment.
It isn't enough for them to have that big radio telescope and the office where they have to keep track of all our guns without being allowed to use computers?
I told my dad he's the personification of the snob camp on the other side of the lake.
Don't make fun of the big radio telescope. I toured it last year. They're good people.
Solidarity is the sine qua non of the left.
Truth
I took Transylvania to mean Kentucky at first and was profoundly confused.
277: Bobby Byrd was working on it.
I feel like I didn't appreciate him enough. I regret it. I used to make fun of him for naming everything after himself.
272: AIHArguedHB, the US war machine has much to recommend it.
Honestly, I'll never stop making fun of him for that because Trump is the same way. I'll just stop caring that they have such nice roads and we don't.
Well, I've wanted to secede my entire life, so it isn't an opportunistic coping mechanism. (I have the blog posts to prove it.) My identity is Californian; Americans baffle me. I feel closer to Mexico than America. The closest I ever came to understand the feeling of being transgender is when I thought about what a relief it would be to be Californian and not American.
Now that America is overtly horrific, and Californian votes don't count, I want it far more. But I'd have had my state leave America in the good times as well.
I've said this before, but I give credence to people's objections to secession in proportion to their protest over Californian votes being discounted to nothing.
Anyway, I think you should seriously consider it. It wouldn't necessarily be Pacifica leaving America and the rest of the country staying intact. I could see it dissolving into several countries, all more coherent than America. That could be done amicably. And yes, of course I would have it that we happily accept refugees.
288
I give credence to people's objections to secession in proportion to their protest over Californian votes being discounted to nothing.
Well, "nothing" is hyperbole at best. You have Congresspeople. You might be aware of them; Feinstein and Eshoo are in national news at the moment. Californian votes are discounted exactly as much as all votes not cast in swing states, which is to say, votes of roughly 90 percent of Americans. If you really need evidence that people around here object to how the Senate and Electoral College work, I'm pretty sure I can find it for you.
And if you want to play misery poker, DC residents actually lack Congressional representation. You don't see us talking about secession because the absurdity is more obvious and because we're forced to be more realistic, among other things.
Flake is a yes on Kavanaugh. Still no word from Collins or Murkowski.
Back when Strom Thurmond was still alive, everyone knew he was constantly groping the interns, and nobody thought it a big deal. And most of the people around back then are still in power. Can't really expect much to change when our legislature has a lower rate of turnover than the North Korean politburo, after all.
Donnelly is a no. He was thought to be genuinely in play, so that's potentially a sign of where other red-state Dems are heading.
Let's see, Strom Thurmond retired after 2002. Which Senators are still around from 2002? I think it's 20 out of 100. Plus Murkowski and Cornyn overlapped for a couple months because their predessors retired early.
Shelby
Kyl
Feinstein
Nelson (FL)
Crapo
Durbin
Grassley
Roberts
McConnell
Collins
Stabenow
Schumer
Inhofe
Wyden
Reed
Hatch
Leahy
Cantwell
Murray
Enzi
I think you will find, however, that not a single American legislator has been executed with an anti-aircraft gun.
And let's be honest, you would totally turn on C-SPAN for that.
Also, Rosenstein apparently endures? Trump postponed the meeting?
233: Repubs "firing" the hired gun after she brushed too close to some potential actual relevant facts re: his calendar is not getting much play.
A good summary from emptywheel here.
Supporting evidence that July 1 (a Thursday*) date is the "party" (entry is go to Timmy's house for skis (brewskis) in question is that the attendees match Ford's memory (with several others). Most interesting is "Squi" who is the dude who Whelan tried to Doppelganger and apparently dated Ford some that summer and was how she knew Judge and Dickhead. (Whelan tried to say it was at "Squi"'s house; Timmy has been identified but not sure where his house was.) It also lines up with timing for Ford running into Judge "6-8 weeks later" at his job at Safeway.
After the questions on this was when old asshole Republican Senators took over from Mitchell. I think it really would be a fairly easy investigation to at least just establish whether or not that was the party in question.
*Dickhead McFuckface made a big deal about not being in Washington on weekends** (and that no weekday parties because jobs) when his own "exonerating" calendar indicates otherwise.
** Not finding it but he tearfully and plaintively whined about not even being in Washington on weekends that summer.
I really would think the WaPo at least would try to pursue that a bit further... (Of course if only there were some kind of Federal agency who has more powerss at its disposal to induce potential witnesses to give evidence. But of course nothing of that kind exists...)
And all of this time I thought that "Squi" was just an alternate spelling of "[brew]ski."
https://twitter.com/SherylNYT/status/1045733220204138496
Flake is now asking for a one-week FBI investigation "limited in time and scope.:" "I think we ought to do what we can to make sure that we do all due diligence with a nomination this important.".
Flake's behavior throughout this has been really weird and confusing.
If it weren't for the fact that they're so confident they wouldn't need it, and it weren't for the fact that Kavanaugh weren't so transparently, tearfully desperate to demonstrate his innocence in the face of these horrible partisan attacks by Demoncrats, I'd strongly suspect that this July 1st calendar entry wasn't a dirty trick ala Rove: dangle some tantalizing evidence in front of your enemies, get them to fully commit to it, then when there turns out to be nothing to it, you've proved your innocence!
Apparently he announced that he wanted the floor vote delayed for a week for an investigation, then voted yes on the nomination in committee. There's no indication that McConnell has actually agreed to the delay of the floor vote.
The idea that red state Dems were going to succumb to pressure to support Kav was always really weak. I mean, come on, how can they possibly win without the votes of Democratic women? This isn't like pissing off fringe socialists that barely vote: we're talking about the heart of the coalition. There's no way on earth that any Democratic senator in any state could get a net gain from supporting Kav.
I'd think even Manchin would be able to make that calculation.
It's the world's greatest debilitative body.
302: It was a really stupid joke, but as time goes by it seems more and more to be the only plausible explanation -- Senator Flake's most profound commitment is to living up to his name.
302: It was a really stupid joke, but as time goes by it seems more and more to be the only plausible explanation -- Senator Flake's most profound commitment is to living up to his name.
Flake's behavior throughout this has been really weird and confusing.
Erratic? Unreliable? Flaky?
304 I would say that from Flake's comments in the committee session, it's clear that there's no agreement with McConnell at all. But he's given Collins & Murkowski cover to vote no if McConnell/Trump insists on plowing ahead.
Would some unhinged tweets from the President this weekend help? We just might get them.
305: So today's the day you want to bet on Democrats to not fold and shoot themselves in the foot? I mean, it's certainly possible, but not what I'd call a sure thing.
Flake's political commitments seem to put him in a world of near-constant cognitive dissonance -- or maybe it's better to say that they limit his paths out of that cognitive dissonance. It's much easier to maintain slow-food artisanal conservative ideals as a pundit than as an active member of Congress. I trust one of you can take it from here and draw out the implicit sausage-factory metaphor.
Flake's political commitments seem to put him in a world of near-constant cognitive dissonance -- or maybe it's better to say that they limit his paths out of that cognitive dissonance. It's much easier to apply slow-food artisanal flakes in the chill of the chocolatier's workroom than in the putrid heat of the Capitol.
312 They fold when people who don't vote are asking them to do something that'll cost them, they think, with people who do vote. Turning their backs on the women who were emotionally engaged by Dr. Ford's testimony yesterday -- and I guarantee you we're talking about a majority of the people making call and knocking doors -- is really another thing altogether.
Men too, sure, but definitely #notallmen
Murkowski supports the delay. Still doesn't seem to take a position on the nomination itself.
If this nomination actually does fail, I'm going to write a book about it called "Profiles in Not Entirely Failing at Basic Decency."
Even better: have someone else write it for you before you run for President.
Like Sorenson, I have a UNL degree. I'll manage.
If there's an FBI investigation, Mark Judge says he'll cooperate.
Intertubes, sometimes good. Do watch this (very short).
how can they possibly win without the votes of Democratic women? This isn't like pissing off fringe socialists
Yeah, fuck the fringe left.* I am always amazed at the leftist narrative that in our coalition, we don't want people who focus too much on racism and sexism. Sorry, fringe leftists, but even if it were okay to downplay bigotry, we can't win without the enthusiastic support of the anti-bigots.
*Okay, that's a bit over the top. I'm having PTSD from a stupid Facebook argument.
Per nycsouthpaw, the media may be interpreting that too broadly. Unless there is more, the letter I saw refers specifically to the Swetnick allegations.
They are going to do the investigation.
I feel like I need to stop speculating about this to preserve my ability to eat food without having it come back up.
I wonder if the investigators will be seconded from the New York FBI office.
So, Sen Murkowski really does need to get the message that there's no re-election for her if she votes to confirm. Her electorate must include enough suburban women for this to seem realistic. And, obviously, Alaska Natives.
I'm assuming that the FBI isn't going to change anything: they'll get Judge's denials on record, and get thr various people who knew Kavanaugh and the women in question to say 'I don't know anything about the specific incident, but, yeah, that's totally the kind of thing that might have happened, and I think [woman] is credible when they say it did. Won't change the views of 45 Republican senators, at least.
They think of the confirmation vote as something that happens now, and then everyone moves on. But Kav is going to be joining or writing a bunch of really bad shit rulings in the coming years, and every time people are going to say to the particular senators: you enabled this.
They are going to do the investigation.
I'm glad to hear that; it's clearly better than having a Senate vote on Kavanaugh today. I am somewhat hopeful that something will emerge in the next week which will make it clear that the Kavanaugh nomination has to be withdrawn.
But I expect that it will mean another week of dramatic news which doesn't change anything, and that the investigation will be too limited to prove anything and so both sides will remain the same.
I get panicky about secession talk.
I didn't mean that kind of divorce. I mean like I don't want my Republican relatives anywhere near my kids any more.
Spending another week with this in prime time, during the midterm campaign, seems like a good thing. Even running out the clock is helpful.
288 et seq: If California secession doesn't result in states that we can call Lo-Cal and No-Cal, I'm not playing.
so both sides will remain the same.
Ah, but that's not really possible. Flake and Murkowski have taken a very strong position that they are not going to take a position. That's going to change.
A week of news does not work in Kavanaugh's favor. Flake and Murkowski want to see how Kavanaugh holds up under the kind of abuse that they will ultimately take if they vote to confirm him.
pwned by Megan, who I think is also pointing out that whatever the result, you want this to play out as close the the election as possible.
333: We didn't get Random Penguin from that merger. People who run things suck at names.
Seen this?
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/09/christine-blasey-ford-is-a-class-traitor.html
I'm still thinking about how the sort of thing described here ends up playing out.
pwned by Megan, who I think is also pointing out that whatever the result, you want this to play out as close the the election as possible.
That was what I believed before the hearings yesterday, and it is still true. However, after the hearings yesterday it also feels a little bit like hitting my head against a wall.
Don't get me wrong, I'm genuinely glad that there's going to be additional investigation (both by the FBI and, presumably, by reporters), I think any delay hurts the chances of Kavanaugh being confirmed, and yet, I don't feel happy about the news.
I'm trying to think of the last time I heard news about politics or policy that made me happy. Even the failure to overturn Obamacare just made me somewhat less pissed off.
I'm trying to think of the last time I heard news about politics or policy that made me happy.
The Doug Jones win? There have been moments when the Beto/Cruz race has made me happy.
There have been moments when the Beto/Cruz race has made me happy.
I think it's a happy dream from which we will have to awaken, but it is such a happy dream.
Thanks, Nick! That really did make me happy. Ocasio-Cortez, too, come to think of it, even though she didn't oust a villain.
Beto, as far as I'm concerned, is just an effort to raise our hopes so that the disappointment is more cruel in the end.
338: Almost any delay is good at this point, but given the facts we now have, an investigation is likely to be frustratingly inconclusive. It was 30 years ago, there's no physical evidence anyone's aware of, it's hard to imagine a reason why anyone now defending Kavanaugh would change their mind...
To actually keep Kavanaugh from being nominated, we'd probably need some kind of public meltdown beyond what we've seen so far, or some new allegations with even stronger evidence, or for one of the sure "yes" votes to be hit by a bus or something like that. Absent something like that, an investigation just slows things down.
So, Sen Murkowski really does need to get the message that there's no re-election for her if she votes to confirm. Her electorate must include enough suburban women for this to seem realistic. And, obviously, Alaska Natives.
That's pretty much her whole electorate at this point. Real Republicans hate her. I think she's definitely hearing the message, and maybe even listening to it. We'll see.
I just got back from another rally at her office. Definitely more people than I've seen there before, but I haven't gone to all of them.
343: Evidence and proof really aren't what this is about. There is no need for any further evidence to demonstrate that Kavanaugh is unfit. The question is: What bombs remain undropped? We have a week to find out.
Avenatti is the obvious gun on the mantlepiece. He's going to go off, and by all appearances, he has the goods.
Murkowski and Flake are afraid, and they're hoping for some deus ex machina to take them off the hook. They might get it.
Kav's over-the-top performance kept Trump and the Baying Nincompoops on board for now, but he's not going to get another shot at that, really. In contrast, there'll be some dripping, as the scope of his various lies, and inconsistencies in his presentation, trickle out into public consciousness. If it starts to look like it's not going to work, maybe Trump pulls the plug. I don't think he wants to lose, and with the momentum towards confirmation dissipating, and with time for the anti-Kav forces to get people convinced that maybe we really can win this thing, maybe he decides to blame Flake and McConnell and goes with someone else.
After a certain point, even a confirmation during the Lame Duck starts to look a little iffy.
I've mostly been pretty sure of confirmation up to now, but I'm drifting towards optimism -- maybe down to 65-35 in favor of conformation right now, which is a huge jump.
346 is important. Lindsay Graham's "was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor" speech turned yesterday's hearing into a Republican pep rally, but that's going to wear off pretty quickly. They have an unpopular nominee who lied his ass off and was shockingly partisan and obnoxious toward Democratic Senators. They might have been ready to hold hands and jump last night, but another week is a long time for reality to sink in.
There's a Vox explainer on Lindsey Graham that I'm not reading with way more urgency than I'm not reading the one on Flake.
Also, "Trump and the Baying Nincompoops" is the worst band name ever.
"If it's not a Trump-brand asshole, it's not a gaping asshole."
I thought the boofing discussion was yesterday.
I should have put the little ® in there.
I'm making the family watch a video on cob building.
SO. What is everyone doing to unwind? I am probably just going to fail to unwind like I fail at everything.
Given 355 + 353, I take it you're preparing to flee into the wilderness with your family after the midterms? Shit.
Just make sure it's not seismically active wilderness.
"I never made you sit next to me in public and smile while people asked me about horrible things I've done, so I get to pick the TV show."
Senator Flake did the best possible thing for Senator Flake. He knows he can't be the lone vote against Kavanaugh or his post-Senate lobbying career is toast. So he had to let the thing out of committee.
But he also knows the Republican party needs a way to back away from their commitment to putting a rapist on the court, or else they loose the Senate in November. That also wouldn't be good for his post-Senate lobbying career.
So he gave the GOP this lifeboat. The FBI now has a week to come up with enough to say "yeah, the evidence looks pretty bad, folks." At which point Murkowski, Collins, Flake, and anyone in a close race this cycle can vote against confirmation and say "teh FBI has spoken, not my fault," giving them cover with the base. If it even comes to a vote at all.
Shit could still go wrong but I think we might be out of the woods on the Kavenaugh nomination. Then we can move on to whatever fresh horror gets nominated next.
Yeah, it's way too early to declare victory or let down any guards, but there's no way dragging this out longer with an investigation is good for Kavanaugh, which is surely why they tried so hard to avoid it. Even if the FBI doesn't find anything more damning than we already know, or doesn't release it publicly, that's another week for other allegations to bubble up in the media on a separate track.
I feel like "victory" is too strong a term for "getting a Supreme Court judge just like Kavanaugh, but one without a credible accusation of sexual assault."
It's important. But it's not victory.
Fair enough, but these days we have to take our successes where we can.
It's also still less than even money, I think.
I'm hoping that Trump nominates Merrick Garland next, just to fuck with everybody.
Personally, my best case scenario involves accidently awakening dragons and purging the world in fire.
Personally, my best case scenario involves accidently awakening dragons and purging the world in fire.
Be careful! If you say that three times you will awaken the dragons!
I intend to awaken dragons the old fashioned way, archeology or subway construction.
I'd definitely support a dragon on the Supreme Court instead of Kavanaugh.
It's also another week they don't have available to ram Kavanaugh 2.0 ("now with 37% less rapiness!") through in the lame duck session, and given this administration's general level of attention to vetting, it's not impossible that another appointee will turn out to have problems too. We're still very likely to end up with a hardcore wingnut, but every few percentage points off the likelihood is a tiny little ray of hope.
The other thing that this whole fiasco has highlighted is the intellectual bankruptcy of the whole Federalist Society court packing project. There are some smart Republican lawyers out there, and when the dust finally starts to clear after the Trump years, I'd rather have a Justice who's a little more intellectual and a little less movement Republican warrior than Kavanaugh.
If Kavanaugh goes down I think Trump's going to nominate his sister, though.
Hey now, let's not give them any ideas.
I haven't tried that, but I like Jameson better than regular Bushmills.
The 10, and especially the 16, are way better than the regular.
I don't want to establish expensive tastes in case my selling out stops working, but I might try one of those.
My best case scenario involves stressing out Trump so much that he has a psychotic break. Not just the baseline level of insanity we take for granted now but smearing shit on the walls. Invoking the 25th Amendment is easier than impeachment if the president can't write and sign a letter. Republicans get to save a bit of face by claiming that hey, the insanity had nothing at all to do with the policies, but some images are indelible in voters' minds.
This presumes that Pence is solidly implicated in the Russian meddling or something. There's no way to avoid a Republican in the White House until 2020, but we can hope they're too distracted to do much harm, at least.
377-379: I recently discovered Jameson and am, in fact, finishing my plastic cup of that very beverage as I prepare to leave work. I haven't tried the 10 or 16, but I like the regular quite a lot.
I kind of assume Amy Coney Barrett is coming next so god help us, but I'm super satisfied that a Starr goon just got his reputation shredded on the largest possible stage.
And Democrats desperately needed to take a scalp. They'd been getting steamrolled for two years.
Drinking from a plastic cup at work, a good sign or the best sign?
I can't remember when the Druid holidays are.
I really hope the "question of the day" they're going to give us canvassers ("high-traffic" = accosting people leaving markets and so forth) doesn't mean I'm expected to bring up Kavanaugh to random women who might be barely holding it together on this subject.
I assume you weren't inviting me to come along in 369? Otherwise you might need to sell it a little harder. On the other hand, I am still really fucking mad and could turn that into energy.
Beto, as far as I'm concerned, is just an effort to raise our hopes so that the disappointment is more cruel in the end.
Probably. But TX voter registration is at an all-time high, with 400k added in just the last 6 months. And there's a Latina running for governor; she's going to get crushed, as any Dem. would, but hopefully she'll increase Latinx Dem. turnout.
And Beto may raise turnout enough to win us some state and federal seats. (N.b. This is uninformed speculation, but it sounds good and I'm going with it.)
There's always the Pristina option.
At least it's not the 1924 Abanian parliament option.
Personally, my best case scenario involves accidently awakening dragons and purging the world in fire.
brb, going to delve too greedily and too deep
Beto, as far as I'm concerned, is just an effort to raise our hopes so that the disappointment is more cruel in the end.
This is sort of what I'm expecting. It's making for a very unpleasant fall, like I'm constantly feeling like I'm not doing enough and local democrat friends aren't panicked enough that Beto will still probably lose.
395: We thank you for your service. Can your local friends possibly be that dumb confident?
What's wrong with being confident?
Well, there's a difference between so confident that your gal is going to win that you don't even need to bother to vote, and confidant that if everyone works their asses off, maybe we have a chance of pulling this off.
Panic is just bad.
397 was more a song lyric I kept hearing on the radio than a question I wanted answered.
I'm in some bar. Texas A&M football is on ESPN. I look up. There's a clip from Beto being awesome on kneeling football players. It's a Ted Cruz ad.
I live 50 miles east of Syracuse, NY.
Yeah, they're throwing around money like they think Beto is likely to win. That seems encouraging.
Ted Cruz is buying ads outside his own media market?
Presumably some of the ads are tied to the game, not the local affiliate.
But surely ads can be better targeted than that.
Maybe not for football games in bars. I think they have a special network to get stuff that isn't shown locally.
337: [link to the article on the class aspects of the various abusers] I'm still thinking about how the sort of thing described here ends up playing out.
Several times during the whole embarrassing spectacle of this thing I've thought about how this was the high-school substrate of the milieu described in Sally Quinn's infamous piece on Washington society/Whitewater/those awful bounders in the White House. (It had the famous Border quote He came in here and he trashed the place," says Washington Post columnist David Broder, "and it's not his place"*
1. THIS IS THEIR HOME. This is where they spend their lives, raise their families, participate in community activities, take pride in their surroundings. They feel Washington has been brought into disrepute by the actions of the president**.
*Although it was actually only the 2nd most fatuous quote of his in the article. "The judgment is harsher in Washington," says The Post's Broder. "We don't like being lied to." (Still brings the bile to the back of my throat.)
**But of course the majority of the power Republicans*** among them have tolerated, enabled, or even cheered on the behaviors of the currently serving oaf and the Kavanaugh nomination in particular.
***Ted Olsen, for instance, said he was leaving the ABA when they advocated for an investigation.
And Speaking of entitled rich white assholes form that scene, here is a bit on Ken "I Ignore Rapes" Starr* from that article (of course the whole article was prompted by his (and Kavanaugh's) prurient investigation).
Similarly, independent counsel Ken Starr is not seen by many Washington insiders as an out-of-control prudish crusader. Starr is a Washington insider, too. He has lived and worked here for years. He had a reputation as a fair and honest judge. He has many friends in both parties. Their wives are friendly with one another and their children go to the same schools. He is seen as someone who is operating under a legal statute, with a mandate from the attorney general and a three-judge panel, although there are some lawyers here who have questioned some of Starr's most aggressive tactics.I recommend rereading the whole article for both some relevant history and to get your blood moving.
*Ken Starr on TV a lot during this confirmation (not just Fox). However, the context of how he left his last job in disgrace for pretty much ignoring the exact same kind of behavior** is never provided.
**Much less his letter in support of a Potomac School teacher convicted of sex abuse between 1966 and 1985.
It was just one of dozens of letters sent by as many Washington, D.C., and New York City power players--including former ABC News anchor Charlie Gibson, a former aide to Laura Bush, a former GOP congressman, and a powerful partner at the insider law firm Akin Gump--who wrote in praise of Christopher Kloman, a 74-year-old retired Potomac School teacher who has pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting several female students under the age of 14. Kloman received a 43-year prison sentence in OctoberExterminate the brutes.
That's still just ridiculous. (I don't know why I'm getting affronted on behalf of media buyers, but here we are.)
(I'm not taking down my Klobuchar/Bullock 2020 tweet from this morning, though.)
Cruz ads in outside markets might also be targeting fundraisers. Someone probably has actual stats but there's a lot of money in Senate races, especially competitive ones, and I would guess a substantial percent of donations come from out of state.
NBC out with WH "constraints" on the investigation.
No Swetnick claims. And a few specifics such as Two sources familiar with the investigation said the FBI will also not be able to examine why Kavanaugh's account of his drinking at Yale University differs from those of some former classmates, who have said he was known as a heavy drinker.
So, I guess Avenatti needs to be staging a press conference with a new witness every day this coming week. Or Swetnick should sit down with Jane Mayer . . .
OT because I'm not looking back for the thread: Musk being made to step down.
Rousing vote of confidence in their guy there, when they don't think he can withstand a week of legit FBI follow up.
I feel like one of the people who kept recommending Wallander should have warned me that Prof. Lockhart was in it.
Call me naive, but I honestly never expected that to be my defining role.
I just couldn't spell your name. You're very good as a jaded detective facing down deep horror. Almost as good as the Wales guy.
I mean, I can spell "Hamlet", but lots of people have played that.
388: More offering the option than trying to entice.
I had a lot of good conversations, but the most baffling one that stuck with me was an attractive, fairly young woman saying primly "I look to God's kingdom to restore mankind".
I'm no apocalypticist, but I don't think it's supposed to work that way.
Anyway, of it's allowed and you're single, you should have given her your number.
Once you go premillennial dispensationalist, you'll never go back.
The millennial dispensationalists only have rapture for avocado toast.
414: Only as chairman.He's still CEO.
I started a new thread on the front page.
I'm testing a new browser. Never mind this.
Chrome was eating my entire data plan.
The alarming thing about Wallander is that it was filmed ten years ago. Kenneth B. must look like Methuselah by now.
He was the same age when he filmed this as I am now. It's a good reminder to shave.
He looked fine last year. Craggy and weathered, but in an attractive privileged-male kind of way.
It's only his character with diabetes.
Diabetes and witness murdered twenty foot away from him.
Which seems like a big failing, though Inspector Barnaby never fired off a clip at a fleeing speed boat.
His junior detective looks more like Matthew McConaughey than Troy ever did.
Transsexual serial killer. Very last century.
Speaking of Swedes, we just finished season 1 of Black Widows on Acorn. I've seen worse.
We got Acorn to watch Mystery Road which was totally worth it. L'Accident wasn't so bad, either, although the wife thought the male lead should have been prettier.
I'm reluctant to give Acorn a second chance following its dismal failure to steal a liberal majority.
Never mind my reasons for reading the historical timeline of BP on its corporate site, but it includes the following passage:
A severe wheat shortage made life miserable for the 200,000 people living at Abadan and for the 80,000 more spread out in remote camps and villages at the oil fields. At times, the line at Abadan bazaar stretched for a mile. Anglo-Iranian sent a representative from London to help with the crisis. Tankers brought food rations from India and Australia. Second-hand clothes arrived from England.
But things would get worse before getting better. Smallpox and typhus swirled through the nearby countryside. Something close to hysteria gripped the community. In the malaise, at least one of the British women at Abadan planted her small provision of dehydrated mutton, mistaking it for nasturtium seeds.
At least one. There's a risk of finding more caches of unexploded mutton eighty years on?
It's the unexploded pork we should worry about.