Future is is dire jeopardy

This is all theater.

I don't think there is any dem in Congress who thinks its not going to happen.


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

facing an electorate which is increasingly rejecting their agenda, conservatives, as a means of political/ideological survival, are doubling down on the most antidemocratic components of our system of government as a means to remain viable. an electoral college that has overturned the democratic will of the majority of americans in 2 of the last 5 elections. gerrymandering (district line drawing) which essentially lets politicians in power pick their voters (instead of the other way around). and lifetime or long term judicial appointments that dont rely on being elected and can never be dismissed when they run afoul of the will of voters.

and now theyre doing it in such a brazen way that they dont even *pretend* to go through the motions of respecting democratic norms, typical process, or previous precedence.

minority rule. iraq, south africa, etc. societies ruled by a class of people the majority of that society are bitterly opposed to. thats where america is headed.

by taking over the judiciary, conservatives can essentially legislate from the bench. they can essentially write and reshape laws via hearing. theyve already given up any perception of judicial restraint when they overturned on precedent after another with citizens united, shelby county v holder, etc.

they dont even need congressional majorities or a president to create/amend/anull laws.

we could conceivably have a dem president, dem senate, and dem house...and have any laws they pass get completely nullified, or have major parts defanged, by a conservative court system.

Right had against the Left all through the 90s, when I first started paying attention to politics.

the rights whole game for the past few decades is accusing others of behavior the right is actively engaging in.

but the proof is in the pudding. just in a few supreme court sessions, the conservative majority has overturned, gutted, or severely hobbled legal precedents regarding labor unions, voting rights, campaign finance, etc. and now they have their eyes on roe v wade and brown v the board of education. all of these rulings run in the opposite direction of the consensus of the american people and the evolution of our civil society.

and it will only get worse and worse the more they stack the courts with judicial extremists who are far right outside of the mainstream.

And it's odd how they don't consider Citizens United to be "legislating from the bench" despite completely changing the shape of our elections overnight.

biggest fight of his presidency. Like he should have staked everything on getting his appointment confirmed. It its a decision that will have the most lasting impact of his presidency.

I also agree with this hindsight analysis. Obama should have picked a black woman to replace Scalia. That might have motivated people in a way that bland as Merrick Garland never did.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/06/in-hindsight-obama-shouldnt-have-appointed-merrick-garland.html


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

he claims he made that suggestion back in the heat of the moment and not in hindsight...but i havent had enough motivation to go and look it up lol.

paul ryans sister in law just happens to be a well respected black woman judge (ketanji jackson) whose behalf ryan personally testified on during her district court nomination/confirmation. she was actually one of the candidates being considered by obama but he ultimately went with garland. her treatment would have helped paint the republican party as racist/biased (even moreso than at the time) and hopefully polarized more people against the repubs.

hillary should have made the supreme court seat front and center in her campaign and explicitly listed jackson as her pick. that would have motivated black voters, particularly black women, to the polls.

hindsight is 20/20 in both cases but they woulda been dope maneuvers.

Haven been the 3d chess move.


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

Because Orrin fucking Hatch said something
nice about him once.

In fact, I think someone literally said Obama
was playing three dimensional chess. Lol

Nah

Obama’s insistence on running to the middle
and his constant “this time the GOP will act
right”....really fucked us in the long run.

Obama wasn’t some genius political strategist,
he was proven naive as fuck several times.

He, the Dems, and the Hil campaign fucked up
that open seat in terrible ways.

“Look at us playing nice” isn’t working out.

in our lifetime who cares about nothing but achieving/cementing liberal gains and tilting the balance of electoral power towards the democrats for as long as possible.

just to see what one actually looks like lol.

basically a democratic version of a republican.

>
>Because Orrin fucking Hatch said something
>nice about him once.
>
>In fact, I think someone literally said Obama
>was playing three dimensional chess. Lol
>
>Nah

I wonder who that someone was ?

http://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=4&topic_id=12988436&mesg_id=12988436&listing_type=search

>Obama’s insistence on running to the middle
>and his constant “this time the GOP will act
>right”....really fucked us in the long run.
>

Exactly

>Obama wasn’t some genius political strategist,
>he was proven naive as fuck several times.
>

Naive and scared.

>He, the Dems, and the Hil campaign fucked up
>that open seat in terrible ways.
>

SOP for Dem
>“Look at us playing nice” isn’t working out.

Went golfing with Bohner

smdh

how inept the clinton campaign was.

in an election where you absolutely needed black voters to turn out to fight off any natural decline in black turnout following the exit of a black president, they picked...tim kaine for vp.

no better way to court black voters in important places like philly, milwaukee, detroit, and cleveland than to run an all white ticket (like whitest of white).

honestly the central focus of the clinton campaign should have been turning out black people. her slogan shouldnt have been 'im with her'. it should have been 'im with you niggas' lol.

>
>I also agree with this hindsight analysis. Obama should have
>picked a black woman to replace Scalia. That might have
>motivated people in a way that bland as Merrick Garland never
>did.
>

Obama should have nominated a black woman instead of Kagan or Sotomayor, not as some last min. hail mary to "motivate people"

Why not nominate all three women? So you think instead of just picking three women SCJs, the three women should have been competing for two slots so the third one can... go to the white guy?

It would have been easier to just say "I don't know what I am talking about but I need to disagree with you". LOL.


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

>Why not nominate all three women? So you think instead of
>just picking three women SCJs, the three women should have
>been competing for two slots so the third one can... go to the
>white guy?

You really believe all three picks would be the same ? Wow, why stop there ? Using your logic he should have nominated assata shakur after giving her a pardon.

>It would have been easier to just say "I don't know what I am
>talking about but I need to disagree with you". LOL.
>

Why didn't you say you don't know since it's obvious you don't know why he picked bland Merrick and Sotomayor.


smdh damn

>>Why not nominate all three women? So you think instead of
>>just picking three women SCJs, the three women should have
>>been competing for two slots so the third one can... go to
>the
>>white guy?
>
>You really believe all three picks would be the same ?

Nope. I didn't say any thing of the sort and not sure how you got that from my post.

Wow,
>why stop there ? Using your logic he should have nominated
>assata shakur after giving her a pardon.

I don't understand any of this and it has nothing to do with my logic.


>
>>It would have been easier to just say "I don't know what I
>am
>>talking about but I need to disagree with you". LOL.
>>
>
>Why didn't you say you don't know since it's obvious you don't
>know why he picked bland Merrick and Sotomayor.
>
>
>smdh damn


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

about something I didn't say.

Example 1 "Why not nominate all three women?"- Your question
Example 2 "So you think instead of just picking three women SCJs, the three women should have been competing for two slots so the third one can... go to the white guy?"- Another question you asked.

I never said Obama couldn't nominate all three women.
I never said the three women had to compete for two slots so the third one can go to a white guy ?

Here are my words. Obama should have nominated a black woman instead of Kagan or Sotomayor, not as some last min. hail mary to "motivate people.

Which means He should have picked a Black woman before Kagan or Sotomayor. That does not mean it was the only pick he could ever make.

I never said anything about holding a slot for a white guy, it's odd that you would make that assumption.

>>
>>You really believe all three picks would be the same ?
>
>Nope. I didn't say any thing of the sort and not sure how you
>got that from my post.
>

Well you did ask "Why not nominate all three women?" when I did not say Obama couldn't. You also asked why did I say Hail Mary, when it's obvious Obama was at the end of his second term and Republicans were pushing back against him.

> Wow,
>>why stop there ? Using your logic he should have nominated
>>assata shakur after giving her a pardon.
>
>I don't understand any of this and it has nothing to do with
>my logic.
>


My comments in reply 17 was about the order of Obama's pick but you asked if it was about the number of picks that he had ? Once again that's odd and strange.

>>
>>>It would have been easier to just say "I don't know what I
>>am
>>>talking about but I need to disagree with you". LOL.
>>>
>>

You went to the need to disagree and don't know accusations but you made this post

http://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=4&topic_id=12988436&mesg_id=12988436&listing_type=search

and needed hindsight to see the obvious.

ain't nothing wrong with kagan or sotomayor

>ain't nothing wrong with kagan or sotomayor

Nothing ?

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126778631

Sotomayor!?!?!?

And to back that it was a wrong decision, you point to an 8 year old critique about her time at Harvard?

You can't find any criticism about her tenure or decisions while on the Supreme Court?!?

**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

INSTEAD of Kagan or Sotomayor but maybe I forgot, so quote where I said "mistake"

>Sotomayor!?!?!?
>
>And to back that it was a wrong decision, you point to an 8
>year old critique about her time at Harvard?
>

I wasn't trying to back up that it was a "mistake" or "wrong decision" with that link. I was challenging the point he made

"ain't nothing wrong with kagan"

>You can't find any criticism about her tenure or decisions
>while on the Supreme Court?!?
>

Do you really need this much help or is this trolling, because it seems like you are reading another thread and responding in here.

His post was ridiculous because he skipped over yours to say something about my reply to you. The irony is you returned the favor by skipping over his to reply to me.

You have no problem with this ?

"this is about garland not getting confirmed"

so the media will prolly start prioritizing coverage of all of the sensational and controversial tidbits of that book over these supreme court hearings.

nightly network news shows already only spent like a minute and a half combined covering the supreme court nomination over the past 5 weeks. meanwhile they devoted entire shows to the fire and fury book. the woodward book is even more controversial than that.

1. Maybe a 1-2 minute compilation of Harris, Booker, and Blumenthal asking to adjourn the hearing.

2. A 10-15 minute bit on the Woodward book, this one highlighting the (hilarious, to be fair) story about Dowd and Sekulow giving Trump a rehearsal interview, concluding he can't talk to Mueller without admitting to a crime or perjuring himself, and then going to re-enact the practice interview for Mueller.

3. The entirety of Ted Cruz' smarmy ass comments about Kavanaugh

4. Back to Woodward stuff, where they are now talking about the humiliating (but utterly true) shit Trump said to Sessions and Giuliani

I guess, in fairness, we've got Brett Kavanaugh's face (minus audio) reacting to whatever the hell people are saying about him right now.

In conclusion, good call.

But damn. Our news overlords ought to at least try to make it look like THE DISCOURSE isn't literally more important than people's actual lives.

Immediately, CNN shining their "we're not partisan" credentials for people who give absolutely zero shits with King claiming that Harris and Booker and etc. are grandstanding for their presidential aspirations.

Fucking Pat Leahy just talked for like twenty minutes and that guy's pretty much done running for stuff. John King is a bootlicker.

through his confirmation.

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2018/09/04/jon-kyl-named-john-mccain-replacement-senate-appointment-ducey/1148030002/

so now the person personally heading up the effort to get kavanaugh confirmed will be one of the deciding senate votes to confirm him.

these niggas dont even pretend not to be corrupt anymore.

edit: apparently kyl is also the guy running facebooks internal probe on 'bias against conservatives' smh.

this Jon Kyl dude knew about all this dirt since he was involved in prepping Kavanaugh for the hearings?

I wonder how the good folk or Arizona feel about being represented by this pond scum of a human being, assuming of course that this Kyl person knew about all this Kavanaugh history.

to the "never hillary" crowd or the "no dif btwn Rs & Ds" crowd
more than issues of the supreme court
because none of those motherfuckers THINK about it at all
its the most slept on branch that does the most important shit

https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1016825672277397504

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1016825672277397504.html


(THREAD) THE TRUMP-KENNEDY PACT. No one is telling the full story of the Trump-Kennedy pact yet, so I'm going to do so now. You can't understand why Kavanaugh's nomination must be defeated until you understand the dirty deal that got us where we are. I hope you'll read and share.

1/ Trump's acceptance of a Federalist Society list of acceptable SCOTUS nominees—a list (remember this) with *20 names* on it—is what won him the presidency. Don't take my word for it; that's what *everyone* says about how Trump built a winning coalition.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/02/donald-trump-supreme-court-list-690628

2/ What no one discussed in the presidential campaign—and what neither Trump nor Kennedy ever spoke of, despite the fact that Kennedy was the most likely Justice to retire, so his intention and willingness to retire was nationally significant—was that the two men knew each other.

3/ Strange, isn't it? That Trump made SCOTUS a major campaign issue, but never mentioned how and to what extent he knew the Justice most likely to retire? Especially given that Justices tend to choose the timing of their retirement on the basis of their view of the sitting POTUS?

4/ Well, we now know *why* Trump wouldn't have wanted to mention anything—or Kennedy. And incredibly, the answer is: Russia. Kennedy's son worked for Deutsche Bank, which during the presidential campaign was being investigated for laundering Russian money.

https://money.cnn.com/2017/01/31/investing/deutsche-bank-us-fine-russia-money-laundering/index.html

5/ The other problem: Kennedy's son was Trump's *banker*. He worked at Deutsche Bank, loaning Trump lots of money before—possibly as—Deutsche Bank began to be investigated for laundering Russian money and Russia stood accused of interfering in the US election (from June 2016 on).

6/ So *any* reference made—by Kennedy *or* Trump—to the fact they knew each other ran the risk of raising the DB connection at a time Trump was hiding his tax returns (through the fraudulent claim an audit precluded releasing them) and the DB-Russia scandal was political cyanide.

7/ So Trump, who has *no* filter in public speeches or debates, forewent speaking much about upcoming retirements, despite him knowing *personally* the man most likely to retire (and Trump *loves* talking about who he knows and how who he knows helps him).

https://youtu.be/G8P8gsI6Yq8

8/ But now we know the *truth*—Kennedy's son wasn't just Trump's banker, he actually oversaw Trump getting ONE BILLION in loans at a time American banks wouldn't loan to Trump and his overall net worth may well have been *south* of that one-billion figure.

http://www.businessinsider.com/anthony-kennedy-son-loaned-president-trump-over-a-billion-dollars-2018-6

9/ So process this: Trump's 20-person SCOTUS list was critical to his victory; he knew personally the man that list would be used to replace; he couldn't discuss how he knew that man, as it'd lead to pre-election stories involving questionable loans, Russia, and money laundering.

10/ It was in this context that—within his first months as president—Trump began to engage in unprecedented secret negotiations with his banker's dad about what it would take to get him (Kennedy) to retire. Again, Trump—who'll boast of anything and everything—kept this a secret.

11/ Trump likely kept it secret for two reasons: (1) he was under more heat than ever over Russia, making news stories about questionable loans to him from a Russian-money-laundering bank incredibly dangerous; (2) he knew—as did Kennedy—that negotiations of this sort were wrong.

12/ It's common for SCOTUS Justices to decide—privately and personally, in consultation with family and (sometimes) close friends—when they'll retire on the basis of who occupies the White House. But clandestine negotiations between a Justice and sitting president are different.

13/ But here's the thing: Justice Kennedy's clandestine negotiation with Trump wasn't just politically charged collusion across two branches of government, as the arrangement the two men made, as reported today by NBC, was something quite different—it was a secret *quid pro quo*.

14/ Kennedy gave Trump a list of 5 names—*none of whom were on the list Trump promised voters he'd select Justices from*—and apparently said he'd only retire if Trump nominated someone on the list. As Trump's original list was political, Kennedy's demands were likewise political.

15/ What Justice Kennedy was doing was inserting himself directly into a hot-button political issue that had been at the center of Trump's presidential campaign—and he was doing so as part of a negotiation both he and the White House were keeping a secret from American voters.

16/ By the time Trump had been in office nine months, he was ready to *violate his campaign promise* of picking from the Federalist Society list—though again, he had to hide from the media and voters what he was going to do and why. So he went to Fox News.

https://video.foxnews.com/v/5650490687001/

17/ Fox News got the exclusive via the White House, and dutifully reported the *false story* that "no one" in or outside the White House knew when Kennedy would retire but it was "widely" expected he would, perhaps as soon as Thanksgiving—an overstatement *very* helpful to Trump.

18/ It's important to note that all Trump told even FNC was that he was expanding the Federalist Society list—*not* that he was now obligated by a pact with Kennedy to *only* select from the additions, none of had been originally selected (pre-election) by the Federalist Society.

19/ This is why one detail in the FNC story is key: Trump sent White House Counsel Don McGahn to the Federalist Society to talk to them. What was said at that meeting? What was said or done to ensure the Federalist Society would *keep quiet* about Trump's broken campaign promise?

20/ We don't know what the Federalist Society knew about the unethical Trump-Kennedy pact. But here's the more important point: we don't know what former Kennedy clerk Brett Kavanaugh knew about the existence of Kennedy's secret list. Did he know what Kennedy and Trump had done?

21/ What's clear is that—*though Kennedy told Trump he had to name one of the 5 names on the list to get Kennedy to retire*—Trump *rejected* 4 of the 5 names. NBC reported today that Trump rejected the four because they weren't conservative enough—but there's a problem with that.

22/ Keep in mind—before I point out the blindingly obvious problem with today's NBC report—that Trump knew what he was doing was extraordinary, unethical, had to remain secret, and could define his presidency. So rejecting 4 of the 5 names Kennedy gave him was *very* headstrong.

23/ But even more bizarre than Trump rejecting 4 of the 5 names early on—and thus risking Kennedy's ire—was that his administration would *lie to the American people yet again* by saying that the four names rejected weren't conservative enough. Because that lie's *easily* caught.

24/ One of the names Kennedy gave Trump—in addition to Kavanaugh's—was apparently Amy Coney Barrett, who is so clearly more conservative than Kavanaugh that only *every single conservative commentator* has said so, as well as every GOP pol willing to speak on the record about it.

25/ So why would the Trump administration put out the story that it considered Barrett not conservative enough—when that's clearly untrue? The answer to that question is the answer to this entire mystery, but before I get there I need to make a note about Senator Mitch McConnell.

26/ Trump's pact with Kennedy was *so* secretive he even kept it from the Senate Majority Leader—underscoring how wrong Trump (and we can be sure—given his superior moral standing—Kennedy) knew it was. We know McConnell was in the dark due to something he recently said to Trump.

27/ Just before Trump announced Kavanaugh, McConnell said to him that he couldn't guarantee there were enough votes in the Senate to confirm Kavanaugh—though he believed there were enough to confirm Kethledge or Hardiman. McConnell's statement is now *historically* extraordinary.

28/ McConnell—a deal-maker who can get anything done, but who oversees a 50-49 Congress where 50 votes are needed to confirm a SCOTUS nominee—was telling Trump that he couldn't hold his caucus together to get Kavanaugh confirmed. And Trump *ignored him*. It may be unprecedented.

29/ So Trump lies about Barrett; ignores McConnell; lies to America by saying he's going through a vetting process when he's actually not; and keeps his clandestine negotiations with Kennedy a secret from everyone except—perhaps—higher-ups at the Federalist Society and Kavanaugh.

30/ What explains this *bizarre* behavior? These risky lies? Violating a core campaign promise? Exposing Kennedy to accusations of unethical conduct? It's simple: Brett Kavanaugh had written in 2009 that a president should be exempt from *civil suits and criminal investigations*.

31/ We know from major-media reports that Team Trump was focused on Kavanaugh's 2009 article in the Minnesota Law Review. And we know from his personal and political history that Trump actually doesn't care about abortions—he cares about not being impeached or indicted in office.

32/ Donald Trump is 72 years old and in poor health—however he got the White House doctor to spin it. If he can evade criminal investigation for the entirety of his presidency, he has a chance to be "safe" until January 20, 2025. He'll be pushing 79 by then—and that fact matters.

33/ Any prosecution of a former president will take years, during which we could assume Trump—given his money and inability to melt into a populace at home or abroad—would be free. So if he can forestall a criminal probe until his post-presidency, he's certain to die a free man.

34/ To some of you, that last tweet sounds bizarre. And I'm no more comfortable than you are trying to imagine—and it's hard—a former president on *bail*, even if that's what would've happened to Nixon had Ford not pardoned him. But it's simple math, and Trump is doing that math.

35/ So there's every reason to believe—as the Senate Minority Leader said today—the Kavanaugh nomination is the culmination of a months-long process whose destination has been wholly governed by Trump's desire to evade responsibility for things over half of America thinks he did.

36/ Under normal circumstances, everything I've discussed here would be the subject of a massive Congressional investigation. But we all know that won't happen due to the "law-and-order" Republican Party becoming suddenly lawless once they seized all three branches of government.

37/ But there's *one thread* of the Trump-Kennedy pact that *can* be pulled on—hard. It's a loose end—a loose thread—that Kennedy was surely hoping would never be discovered, but that was produced *by Trump* because he is, at base, to speak plainly, a stupid-ass career criminal.

38/ Per usual, Kavanaugh's speech at the time of his nomination had to be vetted by the White House—though the assumption is that the words were his. In trying to determine whether Kavanaugh knew about all the lies Trump told to achieve his nomination, his speech is key evidence.

39/ No person in America with a shred of objectivity—or, for that matter, any dignity—could say that they believe the words Kavanaugh utters in the clip below were written by him. And we now know for certain that those words were *false*. See for yourself:

https://twitter.com/axios/status/1016490932324175874

40/ If Kavanaugh knew he was on Kennedy's list—and chances are good he did—he knows his nomination process was rigged *so hard* even the Senate Majority Leader didn't know about it and couldn't stop it. But he said the words anyway. If he knew them false, he colluded in the pact.

CONCLUSION/ Under the circumstances, Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats are entitled to call both Kennedy and his son to testify; to demand any documents related to the secret Trump-Kennedy negotiations; and to question Kavanaugh under oath about his knowledge of the pact. /end

PS/ Best-case scenario: Trump broke a campaign promise; used domestic disinformation; struck a highly unethical pact; and lied to America repeatedly to avoid getting caught for crimes he committed during/after the campaign. Worst-case—Kavanaugh knew of the whole thing and hid it.

its a harsh thing to say, but if she dies in the next 2-6 years and a repub prez gets to fill her seat then thats completely on her.

instead of soapboxing about being on the supreme court until age 90 to beat/match john paul stevens, she should have allowed obama to replace her when he had the majority. it wouldnt have tipped the balance of power on the court. but it would have put 2-3 significantly younger liberal jurists there and averted the potential disaster of the next republican president being able to confirm 3 of his own.

kennedy saw the senate possibly changing hands to dems and was like fuck it im outta here. rbg was like lemme continue to be a celebrity and break this record.

Stop with the jaded bs ya'll

any next repub president could have had the ability to possibly appoint 3 supreme court justices.

forethought and teamwork. dems could use more. repubs have it in droves.

kennedy/rbg makes it obvious.

it sure seemed like a high probability. even before the primaries were over it seemed like thats where we were headed, maybe bernie would take it but probably not. for sure no way would a republican would win...trump??? pffft that would be a for sure victory for dems.

it seemed like many actions/half measures were taking with the assumption that the deal would be closed once hillary was in office.

in hindsight that was very stupid. to me it didnt seem too crazy at the time though.

scary times indeed.

>it seemed like many actions/half measures were taking with the
>assumption that the deal would be closed once hillary was in
>office.
>
>in hindsight that was very stupid. to me it didnt seem too
>crazy at the time though.

See the Republicans who were making noise at the time that they wouldn't confirm ANY of Hillary's hypothetical SCOTUS picks.

Low key the smuggest dipshit in American politics.

edit: It's a transparent lie that Supreme Court Justices aren't political actors, but it's use is obvious. Republicans need to repeat it because it helps them. So, duh. But somebody needs to throw a flag when this twelve year old decides to lecture people about that obvious lie like he's our civics teacher and we all just failed a pop quiz.

>edit: It's a transparent lie that Supreme Court Justices
>aren't political actors, but it's use is obvious. Republicans
>need to repeat it because it helps them.

And we know this because of how THEY treat court appointments.

into a banana republic.
https://twitter.com/frankthorp/status/1036729815754334208

but he is fully ok with ramming through a partisan operative as judge with no transparency, a complete dismissal of long-standing norms/process, and a confirmation including a vote from a soon-to-be seated senator who is currently in charge of shepherding the candidate through the nomination process.

... he'd be that 13-seed that makes an inspiring, deep run to the final four. Every word that comes out of his weird, lipless mouth makes my spine crawl. Just a miserable, liquid shit of a bad faith actor.

republicans who always stand by their irreproachable principles and dedication to democracy by giving great speeches then doing nothing and hypocritically voting in lockstep with their party.

There's got to be 64 NeverTrump types if we count pundits and talking heads.

No snark intended, I’m genuinely defeated.

Can Dems just walk the fuck out?

I know they won’t, but could they?


Can some of this be undone if Cheeto is
indicted/impeached/etc?


If Dems have the Pres and majorities in 2020,
can they pack the court?

Are all Dems at least on board to vote no?

Any republicans wavering at all?


Or are we all just fucked for 40+ years?

this is the consequence of sitting out elections in 2010, 2014, and 2016. it wasnt just about this past election.

2010 wins allowed repubs to claw back 6 senate seats and gave them the power to start suppressing dem votes in key swing state senate races in the future.

2014 turnout was the lowest in 70 years (except for white evangelicals who made up 1 outta every 4 voters). repubs picked up 9 senate seats and the majority that year. giving them the power to block all judicial nominations from obama including the supreme court.

2016 people couldnt bother themselves to come out and vote for the lady who gave a couple of speeches to wall street and sent some insecure emails. depressing turnout in key senate races in several states. repubs lose senate seats but maintain their small majority.

most of the solutions we discuss are really micro level bandaids to a macro level problem. we have a civically ignorant population filled with people who are apathetic towards our political process. we are seeing the logical consequences of this.

we dont get here without people not knowing and not voting.

>Can some of this be undone if Cheeto is
>indicted/impeached/etc?

if they actually do find undeniable evidence of collusion.

theres no law or precedence for undoing the actions of an illegitimate president (to a lesser degree...2000 was stolen and repubs gave no fucks moving along with their agenda).

but maybe public outcry makes some morally virtuous judges step down (prolly not but it happened in nc). or maybe it makes an even larger swath of the public vote against republicans for an entire generation.

outside of that we are fucked for an entire generation or more. whats taking place here is just a subtler version of whats gone on in backsliding democracies across the world.

checks and balances still exist (ask merrick garland). we just don't have anyone in a position to check all this.

President Warren/Sanders/Harris/whoever signs an actually robust Medicare For All bill into law. How will it possibly survive the legal challenges it's sure to face the second it's signed? The ACA barely survived (and leaving it up to states to accept/decline matching federal money seriously hurt the ACA) with a friendlier SCOTUS.

the supreme court is arguably more powerful than the president.

like they actually get to determine the power of the president. the president doesnt get to determine their power.

2) 2020 isn't enough. we lucked into a situation like that for a few years during the obama presidency and it wasn't enough because the house and states weren't in play. i'm talking about real get out the votes, not the bump that comes from anti-trump or obama's charisma.

3) that's exactly what happened during the depression and all the shit didn't get done, but plenty of shit still got done.

obviously it's a harder road with a conservative majority, but we're not even at that point yet.

4) i do believe some conservative justices will drift left if the country does, and thomas/alito are next up after ginsburg and breyer anyway.

but 10% more leftists actually showing up at the polls would be enough to make all this moot.

this started with the left not winning local/state/congressional elections. this will keep happening if we can't make those consistently competitive.

That’s not democracy

behind indies and dems. but hold all the power.

people keep framing political convos as repub vs dem but its really repub vs america. the majority of americans as a whole are against just about every major republican policy stance (guns, healthcare, abortion, etc).

the people who represent policies opposed by the majority of the country should never be anywhere near this dominant. and in a true democracy, they wouldnt be.

those pop vote margin figures you see floating around are based largely on old math/maps.

its kinda flying under the radar but dems actually *lost* the house popular vote by about 1% but picked up a net 6 seats anyway. because of suburb pickups in normally gop areas. and we have seen this trend accelerate after the election.

so the map is being rapidly reshaped to the point where that estimated headstart may not apply anymore. some gerrymanders may turn into dummymanders and backfire on the gop.

that doesn't change what it would take to change things.

>
>No snark intended, I’m genuinely defeated.
>
>Can Dems just walk the fuck out?
>
>I know they won’t, but could they?

I mean, they could, but unless they think it would stop 51 Republicans from voting to confirm, it won't do anyhting.

>Can some of this be undone if Cheeto is
>indicted/impeached/etc?

Probably not. There's not really a precedent to do it or not do it, so it's theoretically possible. Good luck getting a majority in both houses to agree to it, though.

>If Dems have the Pres and majorities in 2020,
>can they pack the court?

Theoretically, yes, but it would make the fight to pass health care back in 2009/10 look like a walk in the park.

>Are all Dems at least on board to vote no?

We'll see, but that's the decision for red state Dems. Are you going to get banged for voting against him or not? I don't know how much "Joe Manchin voted against Kavanaugh" would actually motivate voters in WV, but if it scares them into doing it, it probably doesn't matter.

>Any republicans wavering at all?
Nope

>Or are we all just fucked for 40+ years?
Basically this

that they were going to vote against him?

merrick garland just went to take a shit

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/09/redemption-court/566963/

very long but really worth reading.

its really sickening how deep the racism runs.

why are companies considered people? breaks my brain to try to comprehend why "natural" people would prefer that companies have more rights than themselves.

while i strongly encourage everyone to vote i dont see it as the solution.

we need to get serious about organizing and forcing companies to do what is right.

>https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/09/redemption-court/566963/

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DmR4hllU8AIQdfa.jpg

that's egregious trolling. we don't need to split hairs on whether it's possible she's racist or not, because it's all the same in the end considering the electorate that got her in that seat.

i'm going to need the "moderate" right to stop making excuses for this shit. national review said we should stop assuming trump's people are cartoon villains as a defense for her not possibly doing what it looks like she's doing.

but this is cartoon villain shit.

>i'm going to need the "moderate" right to stop making excuses
>for this shit. national review said we should stop assuming
>trump's people are cartoon villains as a defense for her not
>possibly doing what it looks like she's doing.
>
>but this is cartoon villain shit.

... the world we're living in.

https://twitter.com/deborahkherman/status/1037089074094530561/video/1

Living in the textbooks. We can't go back now

https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/28/politics/mcconnell-democrats-judges-deal/index.html

Democrats are a fucking joke. They're paid to lose, and contain the left.

and another was a judge supported by both dem minnesota senators right?
and a dem nominee got a seat on the national labor relations board right?
and vulnerable dem senators (in a year where 10 dem senators are up for re-election in states that trump won) got some extra days to go home and campaign against their challengers right?

seems like a pretty good deal considering trump judges will all eventually get confirmed anyway unless dems take the senate (which is why having time to go home and campaign is so important).

Not for any grand, immediate conclusion - but he just made Kavanaugh look like a lyin' ass liar. And not even a particularly skillful one.

They're never going to get 2/3 votes in the Senate to remove him, but if you only need a majority in the House to put him on trial then that could be a particularly fun waste of time. I think they said the rest of the documents from his Bush tenure will be public by 2019-2010 anyhow? If you can't remove him, publicly embarrassing him for actually real perjury could be entertaining.

Releasing confidential documents, apparently with the potential penalty of being kicked out of the Senate. Good stuff, dude.

Hope he follows through

Singling out, by name, Bill Burck - who's apparently been given authority to decide which documents are publicly accessible - as an unelected figure giving a fully partisan twist to the process.

they criticized feinstein when she made some info public...completely overlooking the norm/democracy trashing and shadiness of the gop that even pushed feinstein and booker to this point.

about the mueller investigation.

https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1037531080402919424

It won't matter, at least insofar as confirmation goes. But he looked like absolute dogshit when Harris dug in. Pretending he didn't know how to pronounce Kasowitz? C'mon. Not to mention that he more or less declined to deny he'd helped commit a crime when Leahy got him yesterday.

It's a show, but good on the D's for making it worth watching.

and refuse to take part in the hearings.

I think everyone of those people would say that this is preferable to walking out of the process, but they expected most of the Dems to be spineless because, well, *gestures at the entirety of 21st century America*.

Trump will not answer federal investigators' questions, in writing or in person, about whether he tried to block the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, Giuliani tells @AP

https://twitter.com/davidjoachim/status/1037846906725117952


https://apnews.com/d5d182b22ebf4f02b81187b94f068a80/Giuliani-to-AP:-Trump-will-not-answer-obstruction-questions

Giuliani to AP: Trump will not answer obstruction questions
By JONATHAN LEMIRE

NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump will not answer federal investigators’ questions, in writing or in person, about whether he tried to block the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, one of the president’s attorneys told The Associated Press on Thursday.

Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani said questions about obstruction of justice were a “no-go.”

Giuliani’s statement was the most definitive rejection yet of special counsel Robert Mueller’s efforts to interview the president about any efforts to obstruct the investigation into possible coordination between his campaign and Russians. It signals the Trump’s lawyers are committed to protecting the president from answering questions about actions the president took in office.

It’s unclear if Giuliani’s public position has been endorsed by Trump, who has said he wants to answer questions under oath. Negotiations about the scope and format of an interview are still ongoing. If the legal team holds its stance, it could force Mueller to try to subpoena the president, likely triggering a standoff that would lead to the Supreme Court.

Mueller’s office has previously sought to interview the president about the obstruction issue, including his firing last year of former FBI Director James Comey and his public attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Trump’s legal team has argued that the president has the power to hire and fire appointees and the special counsel does not have the authority to ask him to explain those decisions. Giuliani said Thursday the team was steadfast in that position.

“That’s a no-go. That is not going to happen,” Giuliani said. “There will be no questions at all on obstruction.”

In a letter last week, Mueller’s team said it would accept written responses from Trump on questions related to Russian election interference. Giuliani suggested Thursday that Trump’s lawyers had agreed to those terms but wanted to prohibit investigators from asking follow-up questions.

“It would be in written form and if you want to follow up on our answers, justify it. Show us why you didn’t get there the first time,” Giuliani said. He said he was not categorically ruling out answering a second round of questions but the entire matter of whether there would be follow-up inquiries should be settled before the president answers anything at all.

“We aren’t going to let them spring it on us,” said Giuliani, who has served as lawyer-spokesman for the president’s personal legal team, using television interviews and public comments as a tactic in the negotiations.

In the latest letter to the legal team, Mueller’s office didn’t address obstruction questions, indicating investigators would later assess what additional information it needs from the president after receiving a response about the written submissions, according to a person familiar with the document.

The person familiar with the letter spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to publicly discuss the negotiations.

Though the president has publicly said he was eager to face questions from Mueller, his lawyers have been far more reluctant to make him available for an interview and have questioned whether Mueller has the right to ask him about actions that he is authorized, under the Constitution, to take as president.

Mueller’s team raised the prospect in March that it could subpoena the president, though this would unquestionably prompt a court fight.

The Supreme Court has never definitively ruled on the question of whether a president can be forced to testify, though the justices did rule in 1974 that Richard Nixon had to produce recordings and documents that had been subpoenaed.

In addition to questions about Comey and Sessions, Mueller has expressed interest in Trump’s role in drafting a statement to The New York Times about a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower attended by his son, Donald Trump Jr., and a Russian lawyer.

Trump Jr. took the meeting, emails show, after it was described as part of a Russian government effort to help his father’s campaign by providing derogatory information about Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Trump has said he knew nothing about the meeting before it happened.

Trump and Giuliani have led an onslaught of attacks on Mueller’s credibility, claiming that the special counsel was biased and that the entire probe was a “witch hunt.” Giuliani has also demanded that the probe suspend its activities with the midterm elections approaching, but the former mayor said Thursday he was not certain of Mueller’s intentions.

___

Associated Press writers Eric Tucker and Chad Day contributed reporting from Washington.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/405518-giuliani-backtracks-obstruction-questions-not-ruled-in-or-out-for

Giuliani backtracks: Obstruction questions ‘not ruled in or out’ for Mueller
BY TAL AXELROD - 09/07/18 09:02 AM EDT

President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani is walking back comments he made to the Associated Press saying Trump wouldn’t answer any of special counsel Robert Mueller’s questions on obstruction of justice.

Those questions are "not ruled in or out," Giuliani told NBC News in an interview Thursday night, shortly after the original reports that he had said otherwise.

"We're very opposed to that we're not closing it off 100 percent," Giuliani also told Politico on Thursday. "We don't want to mislead and have them think it's easy, but we have also not closed our mind to it."

Mueller is investigating possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia and whether the president has obstructed justice as a means to hinder that probe.

Giuliani’s clarification came amid a reported internal debate among Trump’s legal team on if the president should sit down for an interview with the special prosecutor.

While Trump has said he’s eager to sit down with Mueller, his lawyers reportedly fear their client would perjure himself.

Giuliani didn’t completely close the door on the possibility of a sit-down interview between Mueller and the president.

"I think we're pretty close to an agreement, maybe this weekend," he said to Politico.

"We have said we would agree to written questions on Russia after we review questions but no further commitment on interviews. After we finish this we will assess it with no agreement to any post-presidential questions,” Giuliani told NBC News.

He added that for now there’s “no commitment on obstruction which are post-presidential matters” but says the legal team will agree to talk “after the collusion/pre-presidential questions are over."

Reports emerged on Tuesday that Mueller has agreed to accept some written answers from Trump regarding the investigation into whether his 2016 campaign worked with Russia amid the Kremlin's election interference.

Trump has repeatedly gone on the offensive against the Mueller probe, regularly trashing it as a “rigged witch hunt” and saying that there was "no collusion" with the Russians.

that has been caught lying to congress (a federal crime) like 5 times in these hearings alone.

and that isnt even counting the shit he he has lied about in his past confirmation.

and this is still based on a limited subset of documents.

for the next 30+ years

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/09/kavanaugh-confirmation-hearing-alex-kozinski-sexual-harassment.html


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

Like, we're supposed to be happy to have Dem representation in these states. But if they're not going to oppose Kavanaugh then what, precisely, are they worth to Democrats? If the threat to Roe isn't sufficient, then what is the big moment(s) when having the "D" next to their names means something more than, in the wise words of @cocksailor "conservatives who want a thank you card"?

*this is obviously in anticipation of him getting a Senate vote. I appreciate the pain in the ass that the Judiciary Committee Dems are throwing into this, but it's not going to work in any immediate way.

I hadn't heard much either way.

But I agree, these BIG votes are literally supposed to be THE thing they're good for. Nobody expects them to lead, or even vote good most of the time. It's for shit like this and repealing the ACA that they're supposed to do the right thing.

My understanding is that Heitkamp and Donnelly are uncommitted, which seems like a "yes without saying so" right now. Somebody on CNN reported that Manchin said he wasn't bothered by Kavanaugh's answers, so that seems like an even clearer "yes" from him.

My irritation is pre-emptive, but an earned kind of preemption which feels justified by experience.

Weird how his 3.2% liberalism hasn't mollified Republicans. Never would have seen that coming.

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/404963-nra-releases-add-targeting-sen-manchin

NRA releases ad targeting Manchin
BY MEGAN KELLER - 09/04/18 01:45 PM EDT

The National Rifle Association (NRA) released an ad Tuesday targeting Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) for his stance on gun control and urging votes to support his opponent in November's midterm elections.

"They want to take away your Second Amendment. You see what's going on. I don't think you want your Second Amendment played with," President Trump says in footage from a rally featured in the ad. "Joe Manchin always voted for Obama. And I like Joe, but Joe doesn't vote for us."

"We must elect Patrick Morrisey, we need him," Trump adds, endorsing the West Virginia attorney general.

The ad also emphasizes Manchin's D rating from the NRA.

Manchin's low standing with the NRA is a relatively recent development. The gun-rights advocacy organization endorsed Manchin in 2012.
"Joe Manchin is committed to protecting the Right to Keep and Bear Arms guaranteed to all Americans," said chairman of NRA's Political Victory Fund (PVF) Chris W. Cox at the time.

"His strong dedication and voting record have earned him an 'A' rating from the NRA-PVF, and we proudly endorse him for re-election to the U.S. Senate," he added.

Since 2012, Manchin has slipped lower in the NRA's esteem as he worked with Sen Pat Toomey (D-Pa.) to expand federal background checks, though their legislation has failed repeatedly in the Senate.

one of the most unpopular SCOTUS choices in recent memory will influence them.

I'm still mad that nobody, not even the very vocal online DSA types, gave Manchin's primary challenger any love. I didn't even know she existed until after the race was over.

I generally appreciate the DSA's kind of timid electoral approach. It's not a political party, and so they should be judicious about backing specific candidates. "Do they identify as a socialist?" seems like a useful, clear line. But you didn't say "DSA should" but rather that DSA types should, and I'm big on board with that. They did it for Cynthia Nixon (though she may have gotten an official endorsement at this point) and Swearengin, who I only heard of when she stepped up while Manchin was still being wishy washy on the teacher strike, may have been in a better position to win in a state who's got a strong union background that's riper for socialism than people know.

Oh well. Missed opportunity there.

>Like, we're supposed to be happy to have Dem representation
>in these states. But if they're not going to oppose Kavanaugh
>then what, precisely, are they worth to Democrats? If the
>threat to Roe isn't sufficient, then what is the big moment(s)
>when having the "D" next to their names means something more
>than, in the wise words of @cocksailor "conservatives who want
>a thank you card"?
>
>*this is obviously in anticipation of him getting a Senate
>vote. I appreciate the pain in the ass that the Judiciary
>Committee Dems are throwing into this, but it's not going to
>work in any immediate way.

They are the white equivalent of the dude at your job there to fill out a role in the diversity picture for prospective employees and investors.

Kavanaughty out here sexually assaulting women? The fuck? Dems gotta obstruct this for Merrick Garland's revenge.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAPPAJ1sT8g


The woman who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct has identified herself and is speaking publicly about her allegations against Kavanaugh for the first time, according to a Washington Post investigation published Sunday.


Christine Blasey Ford, now a 51-year-old professor at Palo Alto University in California, described an incident between the two in high school, alleging that Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed one summer in the 1980s and forced himself on her.

Ford told the Post that Kavanaugh "groped her over her clothes, grinding his body against hers and clumsily attempting to pull off her one-piece bathing suit and the clothing she wore over it."

She also said Kavanaugh put his hand over her mouth when she attempted to scream for help.

“I thought he might inadvertently kill me,” Ford said. “He was trying to attack me and remove my clothing.”

Kavanaugh last week denied the allegations, which were first reported last week.

"I categorically and unequivocally deny this allegation,” Kavanaugh said in a statement provided by the White House. “I did not do this back in high school or at any time.”

The White House reportedly provided the same statement to the Post on Sunday.

Ford told the Post that Kavanaugh and a friend, Mark Judge, were both “stumbling drunk” when they took her into a bedroom while they were at a house in suburban Maryland. Judge and Kavanaugh were both students at Georgetown Preparatory School.

Judge and Kavanaugh pushed Ford onto a bed in the room, where rock-and-roll music was playing at a high volume, Ford alleged.

According to her, Kavanaugh “held her down with the weight of his body and fumbled with her clothes, seemingly hindered by his intoxication,” the Post reported. She added that both of the boys were laughing “maniacally.”

Ford was able to escape when Judge jumped on top of her and Kavanaugh and broke them up, she said. She said she then locked herself in a nearby bathroom for five or ten minutes before leaving the house.

Judge told The Weekly Standard last week that the allegation against Kavanaugh is "just absolutely nuts."

Ford told the Post that she hasn’t spoken with Kavanaugh since the alleged incident and didn’t tell anyone about it until 2012, when she discussed it in couple’s therapy.

The Post reviewed the therapist’s notes, which reportedly don’t mention Kavanaugh’s name but say that Ford was attacked by students “from an elitist boys’ school” who would become “highly respected and high-ranking members of society in Washington.”

Republicans in the Senate have said they expect Kavanaugh to be confirmed to the Supreme Court before October.

>

as simply a democratic party stunt is kinda odd (i shouldnt be surprised at this point). joe and mika pretty much laughed at it. even bill maher was like meh.

apparently we are still anitahilling in 2018.

the fact that they all but entirely ignored the fact that kavanaugh provably lied under oath during *multiple* hearings is some shit too.

https://twitter.com/WaPoSean/status/1041449153841254401

i honestly think if they can get this woman under oath in public testimony for the entire country to see...this nomination could be toast. im not sure of the procedural grounds/hurdles for that after the committee hearings tho.

Even the women.

Republicans care ONLY about power.

No way this will derail this.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/16/politics/blasey-ford-kavanaugh-letter-feinstein/index.html

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a23278660/brett-kavanaugh-rape-allegation/

You Can't Walk Back a Categorical Denial

The Brett Kavanaugh hearings were already weird. Now they're about to get very rough.

BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
SEP 17, 2018


The Categorical Denial is a two-edged sword, which is why politicians and those nominated for seats on the Supreme Court avoid the Categorical Denial as though it were a subpoena from Vlad The Impaler. For example, one Doesn't Recall. One can Not Recall from hell to breakfast and the people who are opposing you can pound sand. One can Not Respond To Hypotheticals. One can Not Comment On Cases That Might Come Before The Court. All of these are perfectly legitimate Beltway strategies by which one can avoid the glistening blade of the Categorical Denial.

Most of the time, of course, they are laughable on their face. (Memorably, Clarence Thomas claimed he'd never discussed Roe v. Wade with anyone while he was in law school. This was either hilariously untrue, or Thomas went to a law school where nobody talked about the law, and I'm pretty sure that wasn't the case at Yale.) Nevertheless, if you have sufficient political support, and if you have the votes, then the institutions of free government generally will give you a slide on things.

But the Categorical Denial is a different level of threat. I am not a crook. We did not trade arms for hostages. I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. These are Categorical Denials. They also are lies. They did nothing except give the politicians who uttered them endless grief, and those three men were presidents of the United States.

Throughout his hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Brett Kavanaugh, the president*'s choice for a lifetime gig on there Supreme Court, managed to dodge the Categorical Denial. He was not as slick at it as was Neil Gorsuch. He stammered and blathered and came off like someone who hadn't learned his lines very well. He was plainly wrongfooted by Senator Pat Leahy on the subject of Democratic committee e-mails that had been hacked while Kavanaugh worked at the White House. He managed to keep up the pretense, but you could see all the gears and flywheels working just below the surface.

He was an unconvincing performer giving an unconvincing performance. But he had (barely) sufficient political support, and he (barely) had the votes, so he looked like he was going to slide. But there was a certain stirring in the underbrush that gave his hearings a kind of spooky counter-melody. The massive credit card debt suddenly paid off. The 300-large worth of baseball tickets. The strange questions from Senator Sheldon Whitehouse about gambling. And a line of inquiry from Senator Maizie Hirono that seemed to come from even deeper left-field:


“Since you became a legal adult, have you ever made unwanted requests for sexual favors or committed any verbal or physical harassment or assault of a sexual nature?”

“No."


All of these curious questions were a direct result of those documents that the committee members have seen that are nonetheless kept secret from the rest of us. They know what's in there, and Kavanaugh knows that they know, but they can only vaguely hint at the material in open session. (This is the half-arsed policy that sent Senator Cory Booker up the wall.) Kavanaugh took full advantage of the protection this policy offered him. Until the end of last week, when a story appeared in The New Yorker about a woman who accused Kavanaugh of a brutal attempted rape when they were both high school students, and Kavanaugh found himself issuing a Categorical Denial.


“I categorically and unequivocally deny this allegation. I did not do this back in high school or at any time.”


Here's the thing about Categorical Denials. They push all your chips to the center of the table. If you're mistaken, or you've forgotten, or you did it but you were too sockless hammered to recall the events, you're just as done as if you were flat-out lying about the whole matter. Certainly, if you're trying to be a Supreme Court justice, you better hope there isn't evidence out there that you've somehow misplaced in your memory, because peddling untruths in public, and before the Senate, and under oath, is a guaranteed way back to your old job. So, if the woman in question steps up, bravely, and describes in detail what she remembers about the night in question, you can suddenly realize that there isn't quite as much limb under your feet as you thought there was.


The assault occurred in a suburban Maryland area home at a gathering that included me and four others. Kavanaugh physically pushed me into a bedroom as I was headed for a bathroom up a short stair well from the living room. They locked the door and played loud music precluding any successful attempt to yell for help. Kavanaugh was on top of me while laughing with REDACTED, who periodically jumped onto Kavanaugh. They both laughed as Kavanaugh tried to disrobe me in their highly inebriated state. With Kavanaugh's hand over my mouth I feared he may inadvertently kill me. From across the room a very drunken REDACTED said mixed words to Kavanaugh ranging from "go for it" to "stop."

At one point when REDACTED jumped onto the bed the weight on me was substantial. The pile toppled, and the two scrapped with each other. After a few attempts to get away, I was able to take this opportune moment to get up and run across to a hallway bathroom. I locked the bathroom door behind me. Both loudly stumbled down the stair well at which point other persons at the house were talking with them. I exited the bathroom, ran outside of the house and went home.


(According to an interview with the Washington Examiner, REDACTED is Mark Judge, a conservative Washington writer who has appeared in this shebeen once before. But bad sportswriting is only a fraction of Judge's oeuvre. He wrote a memorably awful piece about how he'd lost his white guilt when a black kid, he said, stole his bike. He dabbled in what can fairly be called skeevy photos of young girls. He wrote for Internet white-supremacist performance dummy Chuck Johnson's GotNews website. He wrote a memoir of being a blackout drunk...in high school. That he has such a prominent role in this saga is more proof that only 30 people actually live in Washington, and that they all know each other.)

The woman's name is Christine Blasey Ford, and she spoke to Emma Brown of TheWashington Post. To back up her story, she has notes from a 2012 marriage counseling session in which she told the story to a therapist. She also has taken, and passed, a polygraph test. Polygraph tests are not admissible in court, but they are nice things to have in your pocket when things get rough. And things are going to get very rough this week. Meanwhile, Brett Kavanaugh is standing by his Categorical Denial because that's another thing about Categorical Denials. You can't walk them back.

As Sunday rolled on, and the reaction rolled in, I began to wonder if, maybe, some of the Republicans in the Senate might just have had enough of this. While most of the attention was directed at Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, I was thinking as well about Jeff Flake and Bob Corker, two Republican senators who are retiring and who, therefore, have absolutely nothing to lose from delaying this hurried confirmation until, as a prominent Republican politician once said, we can find out what the hell is going on with Brett Kavanaugh. Both, admittedly, have been big-talking pillars of marshmallow in confronting this administration*. However, later on Sunday, Flake called for a delay in the process until Ford's charges can get a complete airing. Corker joined him a few hours later. Significantly, Flake is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which right now is split, 11-10, with a Republican majority. If Flake were to go over the side, the nomination would stall in committee.

I said last week that I feel just as strongly that Brett Kavanaugh will slither onto the Supreme Court as I do that he should be kept away from it with a moat of fire, if necessary. Offer me a bet, and that's still where my money goes. But these allegations, and the absolute brawl that is shaping up in the Senate this week, may just be too much for delicate constitutions to handle. I also believe that, if the committee vote is postponed beyond Thursday, or if it fails because someone like Flake defects, then this nomination is as dead as Kelsey's nuts.

Then, after sedating the president* heavily and throwing his phone off the Truman Balcony, someone in the White House will go back to the original Federalist Society-approved list of candidates and find someone who will be just as retrograde as Brett Kavanaugh, but who is a smoother and more accomplished prevaricator. Because that's the way American democracy works these days. If you don't lie well, find another line of work.

Knowing what they did to Anita Hill and still coming forward.

https://twitter.com/AP/status/1041816473931538432

https://twitter.com/costareports/status/1041890291815538688

(thread) a few dynamics on Kavanaugh, based on my conversations with several top Republicans today... 1. A week is a long, long time in politics and many people involved in Sen and at WH priv. see next Mon's planned hearing as an eon away and still wonder if it'll happen...

... and there are ongoing debates internally over whether Dr. Ford wants to go through with it, whether Judge Kavanaugh can hold on, and whether the votes in Senate GOP can hold until then. 2. While the WH wants to drive the process, McConnell remains central to everything...

... McConnell is the one who early on thought Judge Thapar would be best choice, but went along w/ WH. Now, as process cracks open, he's asserting himself even as he remains a team player. Allies tell me his priority is the SCOTUS seat, not protecting Kavanaugh every news cycle.

3. Don't underestimate the jockeying going on in GOP circles for a post-Kavanaugh world. Advocates for Hardiman, Coney Barrett, Thapar all talking w/ plugged-in friends in Congress or WH, ready for the possibility of further disruption of Kavanaugh nomination between now and Mon.

4. Kavanaugh's most important ally right now is Don McGahn, the soon-to-be departing WH counsel who has made Kav's confirmation his personal legacy project/swan song, eager to score one last victory for the conservative legal estbmt. Huddled w/ the judge most of Monday...

5. McGahn's ability to keep a tight grip on the WH side of the Kavanaugh nom. will be tested in coming days. He still has capital w/ POTUS going back to campaign and Gorsuch, but it has been depleted over time... McGahn working closely w. Hill & legal Rs to keep Sen Rs together

6. Several GOP consultants who work on Senate races tell me they don't want a hearing, period, at this point in the election year in the #MeToo era. Too charged, too unpredictable, they say. Expect this private grumbling to be heard more publicly as nerves over next Mon grow...

7. The other concern about next Monday's scheduled hearing among top Rs: the likely blizzard of questions for Kavanaugh about his teenage habits, behavior, alleged drinking during that period, etc. Wld be more than just a "he says, she says" endeavor. Under oath. Unpredictable.

8. So, you have an on-edge Senate GOP and a WH in defense mode + a president so far typically defensive of his pick, but also watching it all play out... I'll be at Cap on Tuesday to find out more... here's our latest deep dive from late Monday (end)

https://t.co/ETIEuFxmpA

Ain't no one's midterm election bid hanging on the outcome of the supreme court confirmation. What voter is gonna be like "well I was gonna vote for Ted Cruz, but then he voted to confirm Kavanaugh. So now I'm going for Beto."?

I don't see why the GOP wouldn't just force this through. Unless they don't want Kavanaugh. Which isn't that wild of a possibility

>What voter is gonna be like
>"well I was gonna vote for Ted Cruz, but then he voted to
>confirm Kavanaugh. So now I'm going for Beto."

In a mid term, the biggest issue isn't a voter flipping from GOP to Dem, but on how much to the Dem base even goes to vote. Because if the same percentage of Dem voters actually voted then the GOP would be losing seats left and right.

and maybe a few red soccer moms who had been groped at parties in high school stay home.


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

After they announced the hearing.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/18/us/politics/christine-blasey-ford-kavanaugh-senate-hearing.html

from deciding not to walk out to the timing of this drop. even feinstein having a certain level of plausible deniability (while coming under fire for either not releasing it earlier or releasing it at the opportune time to put a monkey wrench in shit).

the media was kinda shitting on dems, saying this was dirty, saying this was a desperate hail mary, etc. damn near everyone switched to being sincere/concerned once the accuser came out into the open tho.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/09/18/grassley-kavanaugh-accuser-hearing-827921

Kavanaugh accuser has not yet agreed to attend hearing

By ELANA SCHOR, BURGESS EVERETT and ELIANA JOHNSON 09/18/2018 10:07 AM EDT Updated 09/18/2018 12:21 PM EDT


The woman who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her decades ago has not yet confirmed her appearance at a public hearing the GOP is planning next week, a top Republican senator said Tuesday.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said that his staff has reached out to Christine Blasey Ford’s camp several times since the California-based professor came forward with her story of a high-school-era assault by President Donald Trump’s high court pick. Although Ford’s lawyer said that her client would be open to “a fair proceeding,” it remains unclear whether she would agree to a planned hearing on Sept. 24 that Republicans have set up to help save Kavanaugh’s nomination.

The lack of response so far “kind of raises the question, do they want to come to the public hearing or not,” Grassley told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Tuesday. As of late Tuesday morning, Ford had not agreed to appear, according to a person close to the nomination.

"Our staff reached out to Dr. Ford’s lawyer with multiple emails yesterday to schedule a similar call and inform her of the upcoming hearing, where she will have the opportunity to share her story with the Committee. Her lawyer has not yet responded," said Taylor Foy, a spokesman for Grassley on the committee.

Republicans have billed the public hearing as an opportunity for both Kavanaugh and Ford to share their sides of the story. GOP leaders made that decision under pressure from undecided members of their conference — chiefly Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), a Judiciary member who said he would vote against Kavanaugh in the committee if senators didn’t get more of a chance to hear from Ford.

"We have a woman who has come forward, she deserves to be heard, it's important that her voice and her story is shared," said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), an undecided swing vote on the nomination, on Tuesday.

One Kavanaugh ally suggested that Katz, a well-respected veteran of high-profile sexual misconduct cases, has “tried to impose some serious conditions on” Ford’s testimony, though it's unclear what those conditions are.

Democrats had received no new commitments from Ford as of Tuesday morning.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) pushed back hard on the fast turnaround of the hearing and called for testimony from Mark Judge, the third person whom Ford alleges was in the room at the time of the assault. The GOP’s plan to omit Judge and hear only from Kavanaugh and Ford is “simply inadequate,” Schumer said.

Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, a Judiciary Democrat, said he would attend a hearing if it’s just Kavanaugh but is also pushing for far more, including an appearance from Judge.

“I do not think we will be meeting the test of a full and fair hearing without Mark Judge present, without Dr. Ford present and without the FBI doing an expanded background check,” Coons said. “There are questions to ask of now. I do hope Dr. Ford comes forward and is treated respectfully.”

Flake, however, was unsure whether Judge would be called for the committee.

“I’m not sure whose witness he would be," he said.

If Ford and her lawyer ultimately opt out of the GOP’s public hearing invitation — Democrats have skipped a staff-level call with Kavanaugh on the matter, casting doubt on their participation — Republicans will face another tough decision on whether to press ahead with the nomination.

After Democrats declined to participate, Republican staff interviewed Kavanaugh on Monday evening. Foy said the nominee was "forthright and candid."

One top Republican on Judiciary, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, said Monday night that he expects the committee to push for a vote on Kavanaugh next week regardless of whether Ford agrees to the GOP’s public hearing.

“She can come if she likes, but if she doesn't want to, she doesn't have to,” Graham said on Fox News. “Kavanaugh can come, and I think he will. We will vote on Wednesday.”

Grassley himself, however, declined to commit to any timing for a committee vote on Trump’s Supreme Court nominee in brief remarks to reporters Monday night as he left the Capitol following a chaotic day of speculation about the future of Kavanaugh’s nomination.

While the GOP waits to hear about whether Ford will testify, they also are discussing the use of a third-party to question Ford in an effort to make the hearing appear more fair and less political, according to one GOP senator. But Grassley appeared uncertain whether that approach could succeed, quipping Monday night that “I don’t know how you shut a senator up if they want to ask questions.”

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) on Tuesday tweeted that she'll recommend to Grassley that counsel for Ford be allowed to question Kavanaugh, and Kavanaugh's counsel be allowed to ask questions of Ford.

Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.) also floated the idea of an independent counsel.

“It would be better to have either counsel for the majority or minority staff that might do this. It could be independent counsel. Or designate one or two senators. We don’t need 13 or however many senators continuing to pound both witnesses,” said Jones.

The high degree of uncertainty surrounding Monday’s planned hearing has left official Washington on a state of high alert about Kavanaugh.

In conversations with associates, one Judiciary Committee staffer put the odds of Ford testifying before the full committee at 50 percent and said there was just a 25 percent chance she’d appear at a public hearing.

Whether or not Ford agrees to appear, Republicans’ initial goal of getting the 53-year-old appeals court judge confirmed in time for the Oct. 1 start of the Supreme Court’s term is already in serious jeopardy.

Asked if Republicans would agree to a hearing later than Monday if Ford’s camp asks for that delay, Grassley said only that he is “taking things step by step.”

The committee’s top Democrat, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, questioned why Grassley is limiting witnesses to the committee and argued the GOP is still rushing the nomination.

“Chairman Grassley today said there would be only two witnesses invited to testify at the Kavanaugh hearing next week on sexual assault allegations. Compare that to the 22 witnesses at the 1991 Anita Hill hearing and it’s impossible to take this process seriously," Feinstein said. "This is another attempt by Republicans to rush this nomination and not fully vet Judge Kavanaugh.”

if i was the gop...i wouldnt even ask her shit. its really a high risk low reward game for an entire republican side filled with nothing but men to be up there trying to disprove an alleged sexual assault while sounding like relics from a past era.

then when its vote time...its either you dont believe her...or you believe her but you dont think its important enough to vote down the nominee. looks pretty bad in both cases.

.

but that one party in HS stops the show?

The fuck is going on?

are saying that the democrats are showing bad faith because they held onto a document related to Kavanaugh's rapey ways. Ironic that they ignore the fact that thousands of documents related to Kavanaugh's record are being ignored as they sit over in the national archives.

They just have respect for human beings unlike the Repugs and wanted to be sure the victim was ready before releasing it. At least that's how I understand it.


>are saying that the democrats are showing bad faith because
>they held onto a document related to Kavanaugh's rapey ways.
>Ironic that they ignore the fact that thousands of documents
>related to Kavanaugh's record are being ignored as they sit
>over in the national archives.

https://www.standwithblaseyford.com/

fuck your 65 person character letter lol.

yeah this is turning into some iconic metoo movement shit now.

they are starting to peel the skin off dudes friend/witness too. dems should push to get him under oath.

i honestly would only be slightly surprised with they pulled the nomination. seems like things are snowballing (and i have a sneaky suspicion that mitch lowkey kinda wants to tank the nomination to teach the wh a lesson about going against him).

It can only hurt them at this point.

So they're gonna hold hearings and argue out which of them is lying, in a committee hearing? And the ENTIRE R side of the aisle (everyone who will be trying to impugn her side of the story) is an old white man?

I don't see how that can be anything but accelerant for the blue wave.

And then, he'll almost certainly lose the final vote (the wobbly Dems now have a perfect justification for voting no, as do Collins, Murkowski, even Flake and Cornyn). So regardless, they'll be putting up someone new anyway. They could skip the ugly step (again, with an easy excuse for the anti-abortion nuts) and actually have a fresh face to promise before the midterms.

Trump gets a lot of unexpected advantage out of his "never back down under any fucking circumstances" strategy. But this looks like it's stacking up to be a spectacular failure.

I have absolutely not a single doubt in my mind that this nomination succeeds, hearing or no hearing. And I'm only like 25% confident this hearing even takes place.

They're still gonna get someone through, unless they REALLY fuck up and let this go past the seating of the new Senate (and along the way, the Dems win control, which is also unlikely).

The Supreme Court will still be a servant of injustice for the rest of my life.

It's just a matter of how much it costs them to get there.

"What happens at Georgetown Prep, stays at Georgetown Prep. That's been a good thing for all of us"

https://twitter.com/LevineJonathan/status/1042133456740909057

Kavanaugh Transcript Submitted to Senate Omits "What happens at Georgetown Prep..."

https://tyt.com/stories/4vZLCHuQrYE4uKagy0oyMA/1FM2NrgYRiekqIeoiWugai

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/407296-kavanaughs-classmate-tells-senators-he-wont-testify

I’m seeing folks on the left (rightfully) citing Franken. Not that
the GOP cares about being hypocrites, but seems
like it’s piling up.

Mazie hirono is pissed. She was at a press conference earlier today wondering where the men are

Yeah. He's getting confirmed next week sometime. No hearing.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/feinstein-says-republicans-making-same-mistakes-anita-hill-n910546

Kavanaugh accuser wants FBI to investigate before she testifies at Senate hearing


WASHINGTON — The scheduled hearing next Monday on Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court appeared to be in even further doubt Tuesday, as lawyers for Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her when they were in high school, said that she wants an FBI probe into the incident before testifying.

In a letter addressed to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, Ford's attorneys wrote that "a full investigation by law enforcement officials will ensure that the crucial facts and witnesses in this matter are assessed in a non-partisan manner, and that the Committee is fully informed before conducting any hearing or making any decision."

Her attorneys, Debra Katz and Lisa Banks, also said their client has been "the target of vicious harassment and even death threats," and that as a result, "her family was forced to relocate out of their home."

"We would welcome the opportunity to talk with you and Ranking Member Feinstein to discuss reasonable steps as to how Dr. Ford can cooperate while also taking care of her own health and security," they added.

The letter comes after Grassley said Tuesday morning that he had extended invitations to both Kavanaugh and Ford to testify before the Judiciary Committee on Monday. Kavanaugh accepted, but Ford and her attorneys had remained mum.

"We have reached out to her in the last 36 hours, three or four times by email and we’ve not heard from them, so it kind of raises the question, do they want to come to the public hearing or not?" Grassley said on The Hugh Hewitt Show radio show.
In an interview on CNN's "AC360" Tuesday night, Banks, when asked to clarify whether her client would testify Monday if the FBI agrees to investigate, Banks said, "There's no reason that we should have a public hearing on Monday given what has occurred."

Ford's request for a law enforcement investigation prior to appearing before the Senate echoes the calls of several Democrats on Judiciary Committee Tuesday, who argued that any public hearing should wait.

“We should honor Dr. Blasey Ford’s wishes and delay this hearing. A proper investigation must be completed, witnesses interviewed, evidence reviewed and all sides spoken to. Only then should the chairman set a hearing date," said the panel's top Democrat, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., in a statement following news about the letter.

The FBI, however, isn't likely to conduct any investigation into the veracity of Ford's claims, unless the White House asks for it. Several current and former Department of Justice and FBI officials told NBC News that has always been the practice.


But President Donald Trump indicated Tuesday that he did not currently plan to make that request.

"I don’t think the FBI should be involved because they don’t want to be involved," Trump told reporters at the White House. "If they wanted to be, I would certainly do that."

Republicans have indicated that next Monday's hearing could be Ford's sole chance to speak before the committee. Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, a member of the Judiciary Committee, noted to reporters at a Senate GOP leadership press conference Tuesday that she was offered the choice of testifying in an open or closed session.

Responding to the uncertainty around the hearing and Ford's lack of a response, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, told reporters Tuesday: "That's very puzzling to me...I really hope that she doesn't pass up that opportunity."

Democrats protested other aspects of Monday's hearing, too, lambasting the GOP for rushing the process and for not calling additional witnesses beyond Kavanaugh and Ford. Many drew parallels between the current situation and how allegations made by Anita Hill 27 years ago were handled after Hill came forward with sexual harassment allegations against Justice Clarence Thomas during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the Senate floor Tuesday morning that it would be unacceptable for senators to hear from witnesses just a day or two before being asked to vote on the nomination.

He also called it "inadequate" for the committee to hear from only two witnesses on Monday and said that Mark Judge — who Ford said was a witness to the incident — should also testify.

"Let's not repeat the mistakes of the Anita Hill hearings," Schumer said. "Let's call all the relevant witnesses."

Wow. Blasey Ford says that Grassley scheduled the public hearing expecting her to testify “at the same table” as Kavanaugh. At the same table as the man she says once tried to rape her.

https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1042207015970529280

assuming the incident really took place...kavanaugh would either have to plead the 5th or lie to the fbi.

i dont if grassley wants to play hardball with an alleged sexual assault victim (he prolly does lol) but damn near every option looks bad for the r team (just canceling the hearing and moving forward with the nomination process might actually be the least bad tho).

Can't blame her, but the right will spin this as "she's lying and afraid to go under oath." This might put us back where we were a week ago.

i understand the position she is in and why she would be hesitant. but she requested a public hearing (which was a longshot in itself) instead of private interviews, her lawyer said she was willing to testify publicly, and repubs actually conceded. she has to take advantage of this or it will all look like a sham/scam in a lot of eyes (and prolly hurt dems a good bit too).

the fbi investigation request (which the wh would have to approve) is a big ask on top of a big ask.

theres precedence with the fbi investigating claims (anita hill, clinton accusers, etc) but we know repubs dont care about any of that shit. this hearing is prolly the best anyone could hope for.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/19/politics/anita-hill-clarence-thomas-allegations-timeline/index.html

There's no reason they need him on the court this quickly. They waited a full year to pick Scalia's replacement, the only reason to confirm him next week is if you're hiding something.

>There's no reason they need him on the court this quickly.
>They waited a full year to pick Scalia's replacement, the only
>reason to confirm him next week is if you're hiding
>something.


They want him there by Oct. 1. That's when the new SC session begins. He cannot give an opinion on any case that he has not been present for oral arguments.

a full year with eight justices and these folks didn't have a problem.

Let them wait.

Any FBI investigation of efforts to deter an alleged sexual attack victim from testifying at an upcoming Senate hearing — a federal crime under 18 U.S.C. § 1512 — would have to look into the substance of the alleged attack. No WH request needed!

https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1042491426741858305

about how they WILL confirm Kavanaugh, unfazed and determined.

Can't imagine why someone wouldn't want to testify about a sexual assault to these guys.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/09/20/kavanaugh-supreme-court-ford-831112

Kavanaugh accuser open to testifying next week

But an attorney for Christine Blasey Ford writes that she won't go before the Judiciary Committee Monday.

By BURGESS EVERETT and ELANA SCHOR 09/20/2018 10:41 AM EDT Updated 09/20/2018 04:06 PM EDT

Christine Blasey Ford is "prepared" to testify in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee next week about her accusation that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in high school, but is ruling out the Senate GOP's plan to hold the hearing on Monday.

Ford's attorney Debra Katz told the Senate Judiciary Committee that Ford "wishes to testify, provided that we can agree on terms that are fair and which ensure her safety," in an email obtained by POLITICO and first reported by the New York Times. Senate Republicans have offered her public or private testimony before the committee, whatever makes Ford feel most comfortable.

"A hearing on Monday is not possible and the Committee’s insistence that it occur then is arbitrary in any event. Dr. Ford has asked me to let you know that she appreciates the various options you have suggested. Her strong preference continues to be for the Senate Judiciary Committee to allow for a full investigation prior to her testimony," Katz wrote. She added that she wants to talk to top Judiciary Committee staffers on Thursday.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky,) would not answer questions about whether Ford should be accommodated or whether the hearing must occur on Monday.

A spokesman for Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said: "We are glad to finally hear back from them."

While Katz's note puts the burden on Grassley to decide whether to accommodate her, Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination nonetheless appears back on track for the moment. The GOP is increasingly confident and Democrats decidedly alarmed that the Supreme Court nominee will be confirmed despite a sexual assault allegation against him.

Ford’s attorneys and Democrats have asked for an FBI investigation into the alleged assault in high school and more witnesses to appear before the panel, but the GOP has shrugged them off.

Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) said on Fox News on Thursday that if Ford and the committee can't work out a hearing and provide new information, "after the time we’ve spent on this, it's time to move forward and get the votes in next week.”

Kavanaugh “says he is innocent. And we have to get this information out. If the person who has this information doesn't provide it, then I think it's time we face the reality that we need to move on. We have already spent 50 percent more time confirming Judge Kavanaugh than the last six judges. It's time to get this to a decision," Perdue said.

Senate Democrats have asked for Monday’s hearing to be delayed given the circumstances and Ford’s discomfort with the format. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) said Thursday that Ford should skip the “sham hearing” if the FBI doesn’t investigate, and some of her colleagues are fretting that Kavanaugh will be confirmed whether Ford testifies or not.

“They’re going to get this guy on the court come hell or high water,” Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) said in an interview. “I’m going to continue to raise my voice.”

“I do hope she testifies, but I deeply respect her hesitation,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) told reporters at the Capitol. He argued the delay both Democrats and Ford are seeking is not unreasonable: “This doesn’t need to take months but it should take a few days.”

Indeed, Grassley told committee Democrats in a Wednesday evening letter that the hearing will proceed. He said it was be a “disservice” to everyone to “delay this hearing any further” and said he will view additional complaints about the committee process “very skeptically.”

Grassley also put the blame on Democrats for the manner in which a letter Ford wrote about her story, given confidentially to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) in late July, was leaked to the press. “This is but the latest — and most serious — of your side’s abuse of this confirmation process," he said.

Mike Davis, Grassley’s chief counsel for nominations on the committee, tweeted that he interviewed Kavanaugh “under penalty of felony” if the nominee lied to him, while Ford’s attorneys “can’t find time between TV appearances.” Davis added that he is “unfazed and determined. We will confirm Judge Kavanaugh.”

“We got a little hiccup here with the Kavanaugh nomination, we’ll get through this and we’ll get off to the races,” said Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) on a call with Republicans on Wednesday, according to The Nevada Independent.

Ford has accused Kavanaugh, 53, of groping and forcing himself on her at a party in Maryland, when there were both in high school. A number of Senate Republicans say they have personally asked him about the allegations in the past few days, and they all say that Kavanaugh has denied them as strongly privately as he has done publicly.

Members of Ford’s family circulated a public letter of support for her amid reports of death threats that forced her to leave her home. “Her honesty is above reproach and her behavior is highly ethical and respectful of everyone’s point of view,” they wrote.

The Kavanaugh nomination’s lurch into scandal comes at a critical moment for Washington as a whole: The midterm elections are barely a month away, and McConnell is closing in on a fundamental remake of both the Supreme Court and lower level courts.

If his nomination moves forward, Kavanaugh seems increasingly likely to be the first Supreme Court nominee approved along party lines, as undecided Democrats continue to come out against him. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) announced her opposition, which she linked to the nominee’s campaign finance record rather than Ford’s allegation, on Wednesday night.

Kavanaugh currently lacks the votes to be confirmed, with no Democratic support and a trio of GOP senators publicly undecided. But Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) laid out the general GOP frame of mind: Barring extraordinary testimony by Ford or new damaging information about Kavanaugh, he will be on the court.

“If ultimately we have seen sort of these allegations that have been out there in the press but no testimony about it has been presented … based on that information and not just that but everything else we know about Judge Kavanaugh, we'll have to make a decision,” Rubio said on Fox on Thursday morning. “I continue to be supportive of his nomination.”

In theory, Kavanaugh's nomination could proceed through the Judiciary panel to the full Senate as early as next week. And it’s possible McConnell could still meet his goal of confirming Kavanaugh by the time the court opens its fall session on Oct. 1, though a final vote could drift into October if there are new questions raised about him or accommodations made for Ford.

Meanwhile, Republicans heard from an unwelcome voice on the topic: Roy Moore, the disgraced Alabama Republican candidate who lost last year when confronted with sexual misconduct allegations of his own. Moore said the GOP needs to get behind Kavanaugh, though the party did not do the same for him.

“Republicans need to take a stand. I think a lot of them don't,” Moore told One America News.


Rebecca Morin and Ramsen Shamon contributed to this report.

than the nomination is sunk.

the gop job in the hearing is essentially to discredit the accuser and that aint gonna play too well with the majority of americans. even if they trip her up on some inconsistencies or something...its gonna look like a bunch of old white men intimidating a sexual assault victim whose only 'crime' is being an unpolished/unprepared witness on the stand.

kavanaugh is already underwater in approval rating. the 1st time thats happened since they started polling. even with a bush nominee that crashed and burned.

all of this gives vulnerable dems cover to vote with the party and puts more pressure on some repubs to defect without being bailed out by the vulnerable dems.

the governor and lieutenant governor of alaska just came out against him over tribal issues...putting pressure on murkowski to abandon him since that was a key voting bloc for her last election win.

i wouldnt be surprised if some key repub elected state officials come out against him too now that they see how unpopular he is.

Some NEWS on a call that Katz, the attorney for Ford, had with Judiciary earlier as they negotiate terms of hearing next week, per senior Senate source --
--Katz raised concerns about security and how to ensure Ford's safety
--Katz raised concerns about potential outside counsel


(bringing in an outside counsel would make it too trial-like, they believe)
--Ford does NOT want Kavanaugh in the room when she testifies, and she asked that Kavanaugh testify first
--Raised prospect of subpoena for Mark Judge and other potential witnesses


Oh! One more tidbit from the call. They are discussing Thursday as a potential hearing date but that is not yet locked down

https://twitter.com/seungminkim/status/1042924047615623170

https://twitter.com/seungminkim/status/1042956172851068928

especially if it has anything to do with this:
https://twitter.com/EdWhelanEPPC/status/1042893987747713024

the fact that they are shifting from casting doubt on whether that party even took place or those people were even present...to outright framing another student lol...it makes me think there is something floating around that they know would upend their 1st defense strategy.

also their reason for avoiding the fbi investigation is basically because it now disrupts the regular order of the senate/committee. but what would you call bringing in outside counsel then? clearly they are aware of how bad the visual is of *them* interrogating her.

I think the most likely scenario is that he caught whatever DC brainworm infected Eric Garland and Seth Abramson, just for the other side. The most hilarious part is that he found a house nearby that country club that belonged to a classmate of Kavanaugh, and, rather than uttering an entirely sensible "oh shit, maybe she's telling the truth" actually doubled down and concocted a theory whose entire structure is built around the true, but dumb fact that every white kid at Georgetown Prep looks exactly the same.

before "it was a doppleganger" as a defense.

https://twitter.com/JohnJHarwood/status/1042982604339916800

dude is tryna retract it now.
https://twitter.com/EdWhelanEPPC/status/1043117304152817664

but fox and friends already blasted it out to millions.
https://twitter.com/LisPower1/status/1043097493410639872

the whole party is dumb/crazy.

I thought for sure that the doppelganger suspect had agreed to fall on his sword for this. What a fucking creep.

If only to set him up for possible perjury charges.

We saw how he acted when asked about Trump's law firm, so he's probably going to spend most of it trying to act like he can't pronounce "Ed Whelan" but they should still do it.

"I have not communicated at all with Don McGahn or anyone at the White House, or Judge Kavanaugh, about the topic of the Twitter thread," @EdWhelanEPPC tells me just now, in a brief phone interview.

Whelan declined to answer further questions.

https://twitter.com/costareports/status/1043145703302856704

Because he seems to have a lot of (false) knowledge about a suburban DC prep school's social circles and home addresses from decades ago. He didn't go to school there, so who supplied him with it, if not Kavanaugh?

https://twitter.com/elianayjohnson/status/1043272230476677121

no way he did all of this alone.

New: Senate GOP has two “non-starters” for Ford testimony: 1- Issuing Subpoenas for Judge or other witnesses, Senate does not take subpoena requests from witnesses, ie, Ford. 2- Making Kavanaugh testify first, he should have chance to respond to Ford. -Senior GOP Senate Staffer

https://twitter.com/jimsciutto/status/1043122428438872064

"I have no doubt that, if the attack on Dr. Ford was as bad as she says, charges would have been immediately filed with local Law Enforcement Authorities by either her or her loving parents. I ask that she bring those filings forward so that we can learn date, time, and place!"

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1043126336473055235?s=19

I'll show them!

http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/ooooh.gif

Racism >>> self interests

Racism, money and internalized misogyny are three of the most powerful things in America. But at SOME point Serena Joy has to wake up, right?

(This is rhetorical.)

to see Sarah Huckabee Saunders further sell her soul as she tries to justify this latest Trump disaster.

In today's Yale Daily News: what Brett Kavanaugh was up to back in his school days, when he belonged to a secret society known as "tit and clit". Motto: No means yes. Yes means anal.

https://twitter.com/joycemaynard/status/1042777761381838848

https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2018/09/20/a-flag-of-underwear-photo-from-kavanaughs-time-shows-dke-hijinks/

McConnell just now on Kavanaugh: "you’ve watched the fight, you’ve watched the tactics. But here is what I want to tell you, in the very near future Judge Kavanaugh will be on the United States' Supreme Court."

https://twitter.com/samstein/status/1043143343126073344

out in Nov.

Maybe they knew they would never stop the confirmation and are trying to get something out of it.


I feel bad for Dr. Ford. There was no up side for her anywhere in this and it is happening just like she was afraid it would happen and she came forward anyway.


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

This is the rest of her life now. Doesn't mean her *life* is over, but she's a public figure/flashpoint for ractionaries/part of the history books forever now. Can't imagine what that's like. Anita Hill's probably the only person who can really understand.

And if it’s true, it leads me to believe the Dems may actually be coordinated

>out in Nov.
>
>Maybe they knew they would never stop the confirmation and are
>trying to get something out of it.
>
>
>I feel bad for Dr. Ford. There was no up side for her
>anywhere in this and it is happening just like she was afraid
>it would happen and she came forward anyway.
>
>
>**********
>"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then
>they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson
>
>"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-am-e10ee0a7-491a-4004-8bd8-c3526f630795.html

1 big thing: Dems plot massive campaign if Kavanaugh falls

If Brett Kavanaugh's nomination sinks, Democrats would turn the midterms into a referendum not just on President Trump but also women’s rights, abortion and the future of the Supreme Court, sources tell Axios CEO Jim VandeHei and me.

In what Republicans believe is an increasingly unlikely scenario where Kavanaugh tanks ...

Dems believe they can juice turnout — already hitting record levels — by playing off the huge public attention to the court, and Roe v. Wade in particular.

They envision President Obama and Michelle Obama locking arms with the Clintons, the Bidens, and Democratic congressional leaders to crank up a presidential-election-sized campaign.

They feel confident every rich liberal in America would help fund this effort.

If Democrats downed Kavanaugh, the White House would be inclined to nominate someone at least as conservative, or even more vocally so — perhaps Judge Amy Coney Barrett of Chicago, a Catholic conservative.

Brian Fallon, executive director of the progressive court group Demand Justice, said such a choice "would simultaneously electrify evangelicals on their side, and animate progressives on our side."

"There wasn’t anybody else on the short list who has more pronounced positions against abortion and Obamacare," Fallon said. "It wouldn’t take a lot to explain the urgent threat to progressives."

Be smart: Matt Miller, a former aide to Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, told me that a court opening during the stretch run of midterms would "convince Democrats all around the country, many of whom have been afraid that nothing matters anymore, that some things still do matter."

**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

i mean, it will probably work short term, but Clintons, Bidens, Congressional Leaders and rich liberals, probably isn't a long term strategy that's gonna take hold.

This axios letter isnt' any kind of comprehensive strategy doc, so it's kind of whatevs and nothing to get too worked up about, but they really do need to focus on engaging on a grassroots level as well as the traditional fundraise & spend model that focuses on wealthy donors.

Also Mike Allen kind of sucks, so who knows how true or accurate this whole summary is.

By all means, let the Obamas help however they want to. The Clintons should stay away (Bill moreso than Hillary, he really doesn't need to stick his nose into this) and Joe Biden REALLY doesn't need to be reminding people of how he reacted to Anita Hill.

Faces.

Booker and Harris, in particular, are the heroes
on this issue.

Obamas? Sure.

Biden needs to fall back. And the Clintons
definitely need to fall back.

They can fundraise in the background.

Which is scary considering this dude.

Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine says she's "appalled" by President Donald Trump's tweet criticizing his Supreme Court nominee's accuser.

https://twitter.com/ZekeJMiller/status/1043187193840324608


Trump’s tweet could affect GOP support among women going into the midterm elections. It could also threaten Kavanaugh’s support with several Republicans -- including Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Jeff Flake of Arizona -- who have not declared their stances on his nomination. If two Republicans vote against Kavanaugh, his nomination could fail.

https://apnews.com/8f5fc89473d8429f90af397ce0ae6b97/Trump-drops-civil-tone,-slams-Kavanaugh-accuser-credibility

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/09/21/ed-whelan-kavanaugh-tweets-pr-firm-836405

PR firm helped Whelan stoke half-baked Kavanaugh alibi

CRC Public Relations, a powerhouse conservative firm, guided Ed Whelan on a bad Twitter adventure.

By ELIANA JOHNSON 09/21/2018 04:47 PM EDT

It turns out that the Keystone Cops detective work by conservative legal activist Ed Whelan — which set Washington abuzz with the promise of exonerating Brett Kavanaugh, only to be met by mockery and then partially retracted — was not his handiwork alone.

CRC Public Relations, the prominent Alexandria, Virginia-based P.R. firm, guided Whelan through his roller-coaster week of Twitter pronouncements that ended in embarrassment and a potential setback for Kavanaugh’s hopes of landing on the high court, according to three sources familiar with their dealings.

After suggesting on Twitter on Tuesday that he had obtained information that would exculpate Kavanaugh from the sexual assault allegation made by Christine Blasey Ford, Whelan worked over the next 48 hours with CRC and its president, Greg Mueller, to stoke the anticipation. A longtime friend of Kavanaugh’s, Whelan teased his reveal — even as he refused to discuss it with other colleagues and close friends, a half dozen of them said. At the same time, he told them he was absolutely confident the information he had obtained would exculpate the judge.

The hype ping-ponged from Republicans on Capitol Hill to Kavanaugh’s team in the White House, evidence of an extraordinarily successful public relations campaign that ultimately backfired when Whelan’s theory — complete with architectural drawings and an alleged Kavanaugh doppelgänger — landed with a thud on Twitter Thursday evening.

The coordinated effort was a testament to the far-reaching but frenzied attempt among conservatives to save Kavanaugh, which appeared to have spun out of the White House’s control. Indeed, Whelan told associates that he had kept his friend Kavanaugh and those working with him in the White House in the dark about his plans.

Thanks in part to the anticipation Whelan ginned up, Republicans who had gotten excited by the prospect that he really did have information that would solve Kavanaugh’s problems drew attention to Whelan. They later insisted they were kept in the dark until he went public, and fled from any association with Whelan’s theory.

CRC, however, was right there with him all along.

On Friday, hours after Whelan called his decision to name and post photographs of Kavanaugh’s high school classmate “an appalling an inexcusable mistake of judgment,” CRC helped organize a news conference featuring an array of women who dismissed Ford’s allegations.

Best known for its work with the Swift Boat Veterans in 2004, CRC bills itself as a full-service communications firm “specializing in media relations, social media and issues management,” according to its website. It has long been the go-to communications firm for conservative organizations in Washington and across the country. Its current clients include the Federalist Society and the Judicial Crisis Network, the chief outside groups working to help confirm Kavanaugh.

After unsuccessful attempts to persuade reporters to chase down a theory he put forward on Twitter — that the high school party described by Ford may have taken place at the home of a particular high school classmate of Kavanaugh’s, and that that classmate may have been the perpetrator of the alleged attack — Whelan worked with CRC's Mueller to devise a strategy that would draw attention to his theory, according to two sources familiar with his plans. That involved teasing the idea that he would make a big reveal but remaining mysteriously tight-lipped about what he had uncovered.

Neither Whelan nor the CRC's president responded to a request for comment.

In a series of Twitter posts on Tuesday evening, Whelan strongly suggested he had obtained information that would clear Kavanaugh’s name. “By one week from today, I expect that Judge Kavanaugh will have been clearly vindicated on this matter.” He continued, “Specifically, I expect that compelling evidence will show his categorical denial to be truthful. There will be no cloud over him.”

For 48 hours, he declined to share that “compelling evidence” with close colleagues or Kavanaugh allies. Several have said privately that they regret that decision because they would have advised Whelan against the course of action that CRC advised, and that he eventually took.

Kavanaugh himself, who largely large remained cloistered in the White House preparing for a hearing since Ford went public with the allegations on Sunday, was also ignorant of Whelan’s plans, according to two sources close to him.

But Whelan’s tweets piqued the interest of Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee and inside the White House.

It is unclear to what extent Whelan was coordinating with members of the Senate Judiciary Committee and other Republicans on Capitol Hill. He was in communication with at least one Republican member of the committee this week, and that member told associates he was aware Whelan’s theory involved the home of a Kavanaugh classmate near the Chevy Chase Country Club.

Matt Whitlock, deputy chief of staff to Sen. Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah), directed people to Whelan’s Twitter feed on Wednesday in a tweet of his own and later deleted his tweet.

“Keep an eye on Ed’s tweets the next few days,” Whitlock wrote.

After Whelan unveiled his theory Thursday evening, Whitlock deleted the tweet, explaining that he “didn’t want to promote” anything that “dragged an unrelated private citizen into this unfortunate situation.”

“I had no idea," Whitlock added, "what Ed was planning.”

Has been saying Dr Ford is confused for at least
a week, hasn’t he?

Seems to me Hatch and his minions were
involved in this from the beginning.

I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Hatch’s idea

Grassley amps up the pressure on Ford, says the Judiciary committee will vote Monday on Kavanaugh unless they can come to some accommodation for her to testify next week, in which case he will postpone the vote. Wants to hear from her by 10 PM tonight.

https://twitter.com/ByronTau/status/1043268136353636352

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/09/22/kavanaugh-accuser-accepts-senate-judiciary-committees-request-to-testify-836452

Senate Judiciary Committee tentatively agrees to Thursday hearing with Kavanaugh accuser

Details remain, but Christine Blasey Ford has accepted a deal to testify on her allegation that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in high school.

By BURGESS EVERETT and ELANA SCHOR 09/22/2018 02:45 PM EDT Updated 09/22/2018 03:56 PM EDT

The Senate Judiciary Committee tentatively agreed to a hearing on Thursday with Christine Blasey Ford regarding her allegation that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her while in high school, according to a person briefed on a call between the panel and her lawyers on Saturday night.

Representatives of the committee will speak to Ford's lawyers on Sunday to continue hammering out details, the person said. The call on Saturday night lasted about 15 minutes.

Senate Republicans had preferred a Wednesday hearing, but indicated privately they would be more flexible on when the hearing occurs than their public stance suggested.

The news of the agreement marked the second major breakthrough of the day between the Senate and Ford, who have exchanged several offers unsuccessfully in the past two days as they hash out the makings of the most important congressional hearing in years. Kavanaugh's confirmation hinges on his and Ford's performance regarding an accusation that threatens to scuttle the GOP's plan to confirm a new high court justice before the midterm elections.

“Dr. Ford accepts the Committee's request to provide her first-hand knowledge of Brett Kavanaugh's sexual misconduct next week,” wrote Debra Katz and Lisa Banks, Ford’s attorneys, on Saturday afternoon. “We are hopeful that we can reach agreement on details.”

Ford's legal team also now includes Michael Bromwich, according to a spokeswoman for his firm, The Bromwich Group. He is a former federal prosecutor, inspector general for the Department of Justice and is also working on the legal team for Andrew McCabe, a former deputy director of the FBI who has feuded with President Donald Trump. Bromwich resigned from his law firm, which is separate from the Bromwich Group, in order to represent Ford in private practice.

The two parties are still far apart on what day the hearing will take place as well as other details, and Republicans immediately questioned whether the acceptance from Ford and her attorneys was merely designed to orchestrate further hindrances to Kavanaugh's confirmation.

"Our view of this latest response from Ford through her attorney is still ambiguous. She says she's willing to testify but she says she still wants negotiations," a senior White House official said. "Until there's actually an agreement, there isn't. It could be a another delay tactic."

But one undecided Republican whose vote on Kavanaugh will prove pivotal, Senate Judiciary Committee member Jeff Flake of Arizona, welcomed the acceptance from Ford's attorneys as a sign of "progress" towards her testimony. "This is good," the Arizonan tweeted Saturday.

Conservatives on Twitter speculated that Flake would vote present on Kavanaugh’s nomination in the Judiciary Committee, which would prevent the nominee from getting a favorable recommendation. While Flake has not made up his mind yet, he said on Saturday night that he will not vote present: “Not gonna happen,” he told POLITICO.

Democrats praised Ford's acceptance as a huge step toward telling her story publicly. They decried "bullying" tactics used by Grassley on Friday, when he said his committee would vote on Monday if it hadn't heard back from Ford's attorneys. Grassley later extended the deadline for Ford's response to Saturday afternoon.

“Courageously, Dr. Ford will tell her story in the face of an impossible choice and vile bullying by Republican leadership. I will support her steadfast bravery against the arbitrary, unfair, irrational constraints set by Chairman Grassley," said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a member of the Judiciary Committee. "I remain deeply disturbed by the conduct of my colleagues over the last week."

Kavanaugh is not advocating for certain conditions, a Republican senator said. But Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ford's attorneys are still wrangling over critical details, and Grassley's office had yet to comment as of Saturday evening.

On Friday, the two parties agreed to limit the number of cameras in the hearing room, ensure Ford and Kavanaugh are not in the same room together, offer Ford breaks in her testimony and security from the U.S. Capitol Police. Ford has faced death threats since coming forward and accusing Kavanaugh publicly of groping and forcing himself on her more than 30 years ago.

But they are far apart on a number of critical areas: Republicans want Kavanaugh to testify after Ford, the GOP wants to retain the option of using female lawyers to ask questions and have dismissed Ford's calls to subpoena Mark Judge, who Ford has said was in the room at the time of the alleged assault. Ford's attorneys have asked for Kavanaugh to testify first and do not want Ford to be questioned by anyone other than senators.

A handful of the Senate's 51 Republicans are holding out on Kavanaugh, including Flake, and the nominee has no Democratic support. Despite Kavanaugh's beleagured status, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) confidently predicted on Friday that Kavanaugh will soon be a Supreme Court justice.

But as Ford's potential testimony draws near, her legal team is growing in size and stature. Bromwich began representing her after resigning from Robbins Russell, the law firm where he worked separately from his eponymous firm, which had raised “objections” to his decision to represent Ford, he said in his departure note.

“My role will likely require me to appear publicly on Dr. Ford’s behalf, and the Senate is being advised of my involvement this afternoon. Because objections have been raised within the partnership to my doing so while employed by the firm, I am resigning from the firm, effective immediately,” Bromwich wrote in his departure note from Robbins Russell, a copy of which was obtained by POLITICO.

Republicans defending Kavanaugh have experienced a brutal 48 hours: Prominent conservative legal activist Ed Whelan posted an alternate theory of Ford's account that blew up in his face, the GOP cringed on Friday as Trump attacked Ford's credibility and on Saturday an aide on the Senate Judiciary Committee resigned over questions of his own conduct in the past.

just in the last 24 hours...

the dep press secretary has been revealed as the person who outed fords identity to republican operatives.

grassley/kavanaugh committee advisor resigns because of past sexual assault allegations (dude was also employed by the same pr firm that helped whelan push that mistaken identity bullshit).

whelan was most likely working with the grassley/kav team to spread his smear of an innocent man (based on info above).

and now someone inside the white house is leaking that kavs prep is not going well at all.

plus michael avenatti is hinting that someone else is about to come forward with something related to kav and his friend mark judge.

thursday is a long damn time to keep this shit together...

their shift in defense strategy from 'the party never occurred' to 'it happened but a lookalike did it' was clearly a panic move based on something they know could easily disprove the 1st defense.

they could pick 20 other judges off a list with the same likelihood to rule the same way kav would...but without all of the baggage. thats prolly what they end up doing.

That the GOP backed off their 10 AM deadline, AND agreed to move the hearing to Thursday.

I mean, on paper they don't have to do anything. And they don't give two shits about playing dirty.

But now, it has gone on to the point where I don't see how it gets better for them- to your point, especially by Thursday.


At this point, it really is a head scratcher as to why they are sticking with this guy.

Is it to avoid Trump's wrath?

>
>That the GOP backed off their 10 AM deadline, AND agreed to
>move the hearing to Thursday.
>
>I mean, on paper they don't have to do anything. And they
>don't give two shits about playing dirty.
>
>But now, it has gone on to the point where I don't see how it
>gets better for them- to your point, especially by Thursday.
>
>
>
>At this point, it really is a head scratcher as to why they
>are sticking with this guy.
>
>Is it to avoid Trump's wrath?

So they don’t want the optics of enabling sexual assault but on the other hand they don’t want the Dems to smell blood in the water

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/incredibly-frustrated-inside-the-gop-effort-to-save-kavanaugh-amid-assault-allegation/2018/09/22/6808baf6-bde0-11e8-b7d2-0773aa1e33da_story.html?utm_term=.04cb01f147ca

‘Incredibly frustrated’: Inside the GOP effort to save Kavanaugh amid assault allegation
By Seung Min Kim and
Josh Dawsey
September 22 at 5:32 PM

Just as he did several weeks ago to prepare for his confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court, Brett M. Kavanaugh was back inside a room at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building — again facing questioners readying him for a high-stakes appearance in the Senate.

This time, the questions were much different. An array of White House aides, playing the role of various senators on the Judiciary Committee, quizzed Kavanaugh last week about his sex life and other personal matters in an attempt to prepare him for a hearing that would inevitably be uncomfortable.

In his answers during the practice runs, aides said, Kavanaugh condemned sexual assault and carefully avoided seeming to discredit Christine Blasey Ford, a psychology professor in Northern California who has accused the nominee of pinning her to a bed, groping her and putting his hand over her mouth to stifle her screams as he tried to take off her clothes at a drunken high school party in the early 1980s.

But Kavanaugh grew frustrated when it came to questions that dug into his private life, particularly his drinking habits and his sexual proclivities, according to three people familiar with the preparations, who requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. He declined to answer some questions altogether, saying they were too personal, these people said.

“I’m not going to answer that,” Kavanaugh said at one point according to a senior White House official, who said that the questions were designed to go over the line and that he struck the right tone.

The tense preparations underscore the monumental stakes of public testimony from Kavanaugh and Ford, who signaled on Saturday through her lawyers that she has accepted the Judiciary Committee’s request to speak about her allegation next week, though there is no final agreement and Republicans viewed the response as a delaying tactic.

How Kavanaugh weathers the storm — and if enough Senate Republicans stand by him — will help determine the ideological balance of the Supreme Court for a generation. A handful of GOP senators are undecided about how they will proceed on Kavanaugh’s confirmation, particularly in light of Ford’s accusation, and the party faces a broader political challenge: Keep their right flank satisfied by confirming a reliable conservative to the court, while minimizing backlash among female and independent voters ahead of the November midterms.

“The Republicans need women voters, but all hell will break loose (or it will be chaos) if this nomination unravels,” Dan Eberhart, an Arizona-based GOP donor, wrote in an email. “If we can’t get the nomination done, why vote Republican?”

The epicenter of the scramble to rescue Kavanaugh’s nomination was inside the second-floor office of outgoing White House counsel Donald McGahn — the nominee’s lead champion in the West Wing who, in coordination with Senate Republicans, had helped engineer a rapid transformation of the federal judiciary and was about to secure a second seat on the Supreme Court for President Trump.

But instead of making the final rounds with senators and locking down pivotal swing votes last week, Kavanaugh was calling Republicans on the Judiciary Committee and other key allies, urging them to publicly support him and determining what questions he would face in a hearing that inevitably draws comparisons to the 1991 proceedings with Anita Hill, who had accused now-Justice Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment.

In one key call, Kavanaugh told Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) that Ford had the wrong guy in mind, saying he had not attended a party like the one she described to The Washington Post. He and his allies also privately discussed a defense that would raise doubts that the attacker was Kavanaugh, rather than try to dispute that an incident involving Ford had happened.

In a preparation session on Tuesday, Kavanaugh faced more than a dozen White House aides in the Eisenhower building, during which aides played different senators for more than two hours.

Kavanaugh has complained about the stories focusing on his family and has grown “incredibly frustrated” at times, in the words of one associate, but he has not sought to drop out of the running, two people who spoke to him said. He has said privately and publicly that he is eager to testify.

Yet McGahn was originally opposed to a public hearing — as were many within the orbit of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) — but it became clear one would have to happen, two people familiar with their comments said. Ford, through her attorneys, said she would be willing to testify publicly, and several potential pivotal votes, such as Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), signaled that his confirmation could not move forward unless Ford was given a public airing.

McGahn has kept other key aides out of the process, afraid they would leak damaging material, relying on special counsel Annie Donaldson and spokesman Raj Shah. He has also talked on several occasions with McConnell, who is fond of McGahn.

Both men, along with other senators, have encouraged Trump to keep a low profile during the fight. His tweet on Friday morning in which he directly targeted Ford was not seen as helpful by White House aides, but Trump told senior officials that it was becoming a political issue that could affect the midterms. Republicans did not believe the woman’s claims, Trump added privately.

McConnell called Trump Friday to say that the tweets were not helpful, according to two people familiar with the call, and that they could cause new problems. As of Saturday, Trump had not said anything more directly against Ford.

Even before a final call on when or whether a hearing would happen, the preparations had long begun. Republicans wanted more information on what they viewed as potential gaps in Ford’s recollection of the alleged incident, and to describe the extent of her previous relationship with Kavanaugh, aides said.

Republicans have also talked about enlisting female lawyers on the committee, who Grassley said would be “sensitive to the particulars of Dr. Ford’s allegations and are experienced investigators,” to the lead the questioning. They might also help the GOP avoid an optics problem of 11 men grilling a woman about her sexual assault allegation.

The hearing could end “without new conclusive evidence either way,” one senior Republican official said. “Members have to determine their threshold for credibility. And that will be the challenge.”

Senate Republican officials had repeatedly vented in private that it seemed, at least to them, Ford’s lawyers were doing more press than responding to their emails or requests for calls. Her attorneys would return that sentiment in kind, complaining in a late Friday letter to top Grassley aides that they would learn of the Republican hearing counteroffer “through the media” and got it officially through the committee “hours after those media accounts first appeared.” On Saturday they accused GOP senators of “bullying.”

Democrats are also plotting their own strategy for the hearing. Furious about Grassley’s ­decision to limit testimony to just Kavanaugh and Ford, Democratic aides planned to find other potential witnesses — such as a trauma expert — who could help bolster their case.

If they couldn’t be heard under oath, Democrats discussed holding news conferences where those other experts would speak, aides said. A top priority, according to Democratic officials, was ensuring Ford felt supported, whether it was having enough friends and family in the hearing room with her or finding people who can speak publicly about Ford’s character.

“We’re not accepting the premise that it’s going to be a he-said, she-said hearing,” one senior Senate Democratic aide said.

As for questions for Kavanaugh, Democrats planned to hold nothing back. Democratic staff have been researching the broader culture of the prep academy world in which Kavanaugh lived while reading the writings of Mark Judge, a Kavanaugh friend who Ford said was in the room when Kavanaugh allegedly assaulted her. Judge, who has said he doesn’t want to testify, has written about how much alcohol he and his classmates consumed while in high school and details about other debaucherous behavior.

Democrats also planned to grill Kavanaugh on what he knew about a controversial Twitter thread from Ed Whelan, a prominent conservative lawyer and friend of Kavanaugh who not only theorized that Ford could have been assaulted by another person, but named the person whom Whelan suggested could have perpetrated the attack.

Another point of contention is Ford’s July 30 letter outlining the allegations sent to Feinstein and Rep. Anna G. Eshoo (D-Calif.). Republican senators, initially cut off from accessing the unredacted version of the letter, prodded Feinstein repeatedly to hand over her copy so they could conduct their investigation.

Feinstein gave the full letter to Grassley on Thursday, according to GOP and Democratic aides. Republicans have continued to harp on Feinstein for keeping the letter private, but she says she was honoring Ford’s wishes and, now that it is part of Kavanaugh’s background check file, has declined to release it publicly.

“This is just bizarre,” one senior Senate GOP official said. “They want her to publicly testify . . . but the infamous letter is still not public. They won’t allow it to be.”

all the marketing firms and all the consultants and all the people these political types employ to make sure things happen a certain way..you would think they would be proactive

like how have they not bred some lily white dude in a lab that has a pristine unblemished background and rolled his ass out

its like they have everything in their control and they still bring out some dude with a sordid history that just causes them more headaches


its shit like this that makes me either believe the "deep state" is undefeated or the dumbest thing ever concieved

This baggage would've been a disqualifier under any other president. But if Republican voters elected a Pussy Grabber in Chief bc he voiced alot of their closeted, bigoted beliefs , they'd surely support a justice nominee with some teenage sexual assault baggage bc he'll help overturn Roe v. Wade and other judicial grievances.

But now that it looks like it may have some repercussions on November, the self-interest of some republicans has them wondering whether they have to sacrifice their own careers to put THIS guy on the Supreme Court.

Someone who he thought would be easier to confirm. But Trump insisted on Kavanaugh. Presumably Trump thought he "looked the part" as a bro-ey prep-school spawn. And the fact that he was on Ken Starr's prosecution team could have only helped, as well.

I'm sure they didn't have any indication going in about Ford's allegation, or anything like it. If they did, the file would have been moved to the 'pass' pile before it even got to Trump. But they must have been aware of his friend Judge's books and stories about heavy drinking with "Bart O'Kavanaugh." I'm guessing McConnell saw trouble coming but couldn't stop the train.

and the letters of support from women in advance. Of course that stuff backfires when none of these women knew about the allegations before they pledged their support for K.

I think it's three things. 1. These folks are in a bubble and don't know how bad the response would be to these things, 2. The opposition aren't the masterminds we think they are and 3. They don't really give a fcuk. They knew there might be some headache but they also knew they would prevail.

**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

which even if thats the case seems like a huge waste of their resources lol


i feel like they have the capabilities to avoid these types of things if they really wanted to


or hey maybe they dont and its just incompetence all the way up

doesnt disclose that these 'republican voters' are actually republican politicians/activists/operatives.

https://twitter.com/girlsreallyrule/status/1043854568554196993

in a normal functioning democracy with an untainted media/press environment...heads would roll after something like this. people at cnn have been fired for running a (then) thinly sourced story about a trump associate that eventually turned out to be true anyway. this here is blatant propaganda.

but then again...cnn knowingly hires/pays trump associates that they know are under legal agreements that stipulate they can never talk bad about trump.

https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1043992507288145921

Wonder if it's connected to this ?

https://twitter.com/MichaelAvenatti/status/1044006928416825344

from white house and congressional sources.

i think the avenatti client is a different person too.

i said it above somewhere...but usually when theres one...theres more than one.

I see it in the Avenatti time line.


Krystal wrote about that.

"#MeToo era shows there's almost never only one accuser"

https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/407120-metoo-era-shows-theres-almost-never-only-one-accuser-says-hilltvs-krystal-ball
‏

https://twitter.com/RonanFarrow/status/1044011555115872256

Shits about to get interesting.

And then he’ll get confirmed because life is meaningless.

plummeting support, midterms implications, etc.

dude is looking like the type of politician that parties try to force out of re-election campaigns to save a state/district.

this is what happens when you try to ram through nominees without proper vetting.

other people vet them for you lol.

just like that va secretary dude that turned out to be an abusive alcoholic and had his career and reputation ruined by trump opening him up to scrutiny. kavy kav could follow the same path.

i said it a while ago and i will keep saying it. trump himself may skate off untouched (because we give so much power and leeway to the office of the president). but him getting elected will be the worst thing to happen to almost everybody around him.

Trump ruins EVERYTHING he touches.

The GOP will be no exception.

To get this particular conservative judge on
the bench?

And if so, why? There are other judges.

kavy kav wasnt even on the initial list of potential nominees. mcconnell didnt want him chosen when he eventually was on the list. once he was nominated...repubs said they would adhere to all document production/release but then reversed course after a meeting with trump.

despite the bluster in public (they did it with healthcare too)...i suspect mcconnell knows they dont have the votes right now. or they would just ram it through without constantly caving to dr fords requests and moving the deadline back.

they prolly wanna get out from under this nomination (its basic good/bad politics at this point)...but they dont wanna be publicly humiliated by trump.

If you watched the hearings then you know this guy wouldn't verbally take a side on even basic things. Trump expects him to have his back when things eventually come to his doorstep regarding Russia

I won't be surprised if he ends up being the one who finally puts out the infamous Steele Dossier or the footage Mark Burnett allegedly hid of Trump trumping.

---------------------------------------


---------------------------------------

>the footage Mark Burnett allegedly hid of Trump trumping.

its tom arnold tho so...

https://twitter.com/foxnewspoll/status/1043855252691329024

this is before ford has testified and these other accusations have dropped.

and start framing them as repubs vs america.

because dems, indies, and the majority of america routinely line up on the same side of these issues even when repubs overwhelmingly are on the other side.

with people saying feinstein should have handed over the letter earlier before the initial hearings.

but that would have given repubs a better chance to go on defense and coordinate a strategy. or even pull/replace the nomination altogether with very little fanfare.

the fact things broke the way they did made repubs hitch themselves to this nominee and also reset the play clock. now people get to see just how detestable trump and repubs (even repub women) are when it comes to these issues.

the whole party hates women.

one of the aides on the senate judicial committee even said dems invented 'rape culture' as a ploy to woo female voters smh.

the gender gap among parties is already at an historic level. shit is only gonna get worse after this.

Let them get all frothy and whiny. Poke the baby bear. True colors and all that.

>with people saying feinstein should have handed over the
>letter earlier before the initial hearings.
>
>but that would have given repubs a better chance to go on
>defense and coordinate a strategy. or even pull/replace the
>nomination altogether with very little fanfare.
>
>the fact things broke the way they did made repubs hitch
>themselves to this nominee and also reset the play clock. now
>people get to see just how detestable trump and repubs (even
>repub women) are when it comes to these issues.
>
>the whole party hates women.
>
>one of the aides on the senate judicial committee even said
>dems invented 'rape culture' as a ploy to woo female voters
>smh.
>i
>the gender gap among parties is already at an historic level.
>shit is only gonna get worse after this.
>
>

the funny part is...im almost positive that the accusers letter/identity was leaked to damage feinstein from the left. because the intercept was the 1st outlet to post it and her 'progressive' opponent in the senate race immediately seized on the opportunity to attack her for holding on to the information for months.

in the end...this may have ended up actually strengthening her.

The fact of the matter getting Kavanughed dumped alone really doesn't change things from the onset. If they got him dumped on the day he was announced or before they would have just got someone as reprehensible with a shallower record.

But this right here is unfolding to do maximum damage to the image of GOPers right before the midterms, again, that might have been the ultimate goal.


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dn0mJm8WsAAX2kI.jpg

they will try to loop it all together as "evidence" that it is just a baseless smear campaign.


Frankly, I wish this dude would have stayed out of it. If he does have something, he should have passed it along to someone else.

from the ex gf of mark judge (kavy kavs best friend) and another woman

https://www.rawstory.com/2018/09/treated-women-like-meat-mark-judges-college-girlfriend-calls-playing-georgetown-prep-culture/

---------------
In a story that outlined a second sexual assault accuser, Elizabeth Rasor came forward about her information on Judge and Kavanaugh.

Rasor told New Yorker reporter Ronan Farrow that she mat Judge at Catholic University and that she felt morally obligated challenging his characterization of “horseplay” in high school.

“Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t reveal information that was told in confidence,” she said. However, “I can’t stand by and watch him lie.”

Judge told her a different story about an incident involving him and other boys taking turns having sex with a drunk woman. Judge made it sound consensual and never named any other men involved. She does not know whether Kavanaugh participated.

After hearing the accusations and Judge’s response, she noted dismissal of the high school incidents were not “sexual innocence of Georgetown Prep.”

A second woman who attended high school in the 1980s in the same county as Georgetown Prep refuted Judge as well. In a letter to Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and her attorneys, the woman said she witnessed boys at parties including Georgetown Prep students that engaged in “sexual misconduct.”

The woman recalled male students who “would get a female student blind drunk” on what they called “jungle juice,” which was grain alcohol and Hawaiian Punch. They would then try to take advantage of her.

“It was disgusting,” the woman said. “They treated women like meat.”

She wanted her identity withheld out of fear of political retribution.
-----------------

we havent even really started receiving concrete details about what kavy kav knew or played a part in when he was clerking for federal judge alex kozinski (who was removed from the bench for multiple instances of sexual misconduct and abusive employment practices).

"...three-year girlfriend of Mark Judge has serious allegations that call into question his account of incidents at Georgetown Prep.

Former Georgetown Prep student Eric Ruyak nailed Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge in a Facebook post this week. He claimed Judge not only attacked him for outing a priest who molested youth but tried to blame it on “unchecked liberalism.” But now, Judge’s ex-girlfriend is backing him up."


Unchecked liberalism is to blame for outing child molesters? Word?

**I realize Judge said this, but I imagine now there are good reasons they don't want this guy to testify or whatever**




I guess I'm just used to Republicans being better at politics than this...can't understand why they are riding with him.


Curious if this asshole losing his current position is at all a possibility.

and just retire from the bench.

>Curious if this asshole losing his current position is at all
>a possibility.

not because he has to (in the immediate future) but just to get his name/face out of the limelight.

>not because he has to (in the immediate future) but just to
>get his name/face out of the limelight.

Clarence Thomas certainly loves it.

>

and decided to move the hearing timeline UP.

https://twitter.com/pauldebenedetto/status/1044017065160560640


this party really needs to burned to the ground in november.

https://twitter.com/MichaelAvenatti/status/1044056219084828672

yeah i think this dude really has the goods.

Unless he gang raped a white male. (50% chance if it was a white male CATHOLIC that was raped.)

Warning: My client re Kavanaugh has previously done work within the State Dept, U.S. Mint, & DOJ. She has been granted multiple security clearances in the past including Public Trust & Secret. The GOP and others better be very careful in trying to suggest that she is not credible

https://twitter.com/MichaelAvenatti/status/1044233074609811456

KAVANAUGH to break TV silence tonight on FOX NEWS -- he and wife Ashley taped interview this afternoon with @marthamaccallum, set to air this evening, per 2 sources

https://twitter.com/grynbaum/status/1044310315578642433

Update: 2 Kavanaugh classmates withdrew from a statement his lawyers issued disputing Ramirez’s claims. It is now signed by the 2 men whom Ramirez alleged had egged on Kavanaugh, the wife of the man she said told her to "kiss it,” and one other classmate:

https://t.co/o8nTmjw2Vg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dn43eQUU4AAclxB.jpg

https://twitter.com/RonanFarrow/status/1044333161142935553

Avenatti tells @maddow that his client, who he describes as a “witness and a victim,” is going to come forward within the next 48 hours with new allegations against Kavanaugh.

https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1044397850866659328

He’s been flawless so far...but one misstep and this is over.

this shit might end with criminal charges


https://hillreporter.com/latest-kavanaugh-accuser-has-multiple-security-clearances-8137?utm_source=Ed&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=HR

Latest Kavanaugh Accuser Has Multiple Security Clearances

She's going public within 36 hours, with evidence and corroborating witnesses, attorney says.

by Steph Bazzle 53 mins ago

Attorney Michael Avenatti says that he has a client with multiple security clearances who will go public this week with further allegations, and evidence, against Brett Kavanaugh. Christine Blasey Ford is slated to testify before Congress on Thursday, and the attorney is warning Republicans that an attack on her integrity would be misplaced because the government has cleared her multiple times for different agencies. Avenatti says he expects her to take her story public within the next 36 hours, as soon as security measures are in place to protect her.


Appearing on the Rachel Maddow Show Monday night, Avenatti described his client as both a victim and witness, and said there are additional corroborating witnesses, and assured Maddow that this individual would be recognized by the American public as 100% credible. He has previously alluded to his client’s credibility, saying on Monday morning that she has worked for the Department of Justice, the State Department, and the U.S. Mint, and has been granted multiple security clearances, “including Public Trust Secret.”

Warning: My client re Kavanaugh has previously done work within the State Dept, U.S. Mint, & DOJ. She has been granted multiple security clearances in the past including Public Trust & Secret. The GOP and others better be very careful in trying to suggest that she is not credible

— Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) September 24, 2018

Avenatti is currently keeping much of his client’s information, including identity, private, and tweeted Tuesday morning to reaffirm this, saying that he will continue to do so until the client is ready and safe, but suggesting it will be soon.

It is her choice and hers alone as to when to surface bc it is her life. We expect it within the next 36 hrs.

However, he has already hinted at the allegations when he shared publicly a letter he sent to the Senate Committee’s Chief Counsel, Mike Davis. This letter listed a series of questions for Kavanaugh:

Did you ever target one or more women for sex or rape at a house party?

Did you ever assist Mark Judge or others in doing so?

Did you ever attend any house party during which a woman was gang raped or used for sex by multiple men?

Did you ever witness a line of men outside a bedroom at any house party where you understood a woman was in the bedroom being raped or taken advantage of?

Did you ever participate in any sexual conduct with a woman at a house party whom you understood to be intoxicated or under the influence of drugs?

Did you ever communicate with Mark Judge or anyone else about your participation in a “train” involving an intoxicated woman?

Did you ever object or attempt to prevent one or more men from participating in the rape, or taking advantage, of a woman at any house party?

Avenatti closed this email with a promise to produce evidence relating to the questions in the coming days.

Michael Avenatti has been criticized for the public way he handles cases against public figures, including Donald Trump, and now Brett Kavanaugh, but has expressed confidence in his strategies, and his clients. In this case, his affirmation has repeatedly been that the client he’s bringing forward, likely before Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony on Thursday, is of undeniable credibility, with government clearances and a history of public trust.

Brett Kavanaugh and several classmates at Georgetown Prep referred to themselves as "Renate Alumni" in the 1983 yearbook, NYT reports. It is apparently a reference to a student at a nearby Catholic girls' school.

https://t.co/1LwnBuORD7

https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1044377314128211969

They got an inside joke in their yearbook about all performing anal on this one woman? A woman who also signed the letter in support of Kavanaugh who now is saying K is lying about her? This looks like the one they will have a hard time dismissing as a partisan.


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

The following is a statement from James Roche, Brett #Kavanaugh’s freshman roommate at Yale.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dn5l45EUcAAwMXD.jpg

https://twitter.com/PeterKauffmann/status/1044384650767020033

given that he couldn't corroborate any of the accusations or denials that were made.

Hope he doesn't face anything severe in terms of reprisals from folks on either political side.

"We have hired a female assistant to go on staff and to ask these questions in a respectful and professional way. We want this hearing to be handled very professionally not a political sideshow..." #Kavanaugh

https://twitter.com/cspan/status/1044674389785169923

Rachel Mitchell, an AZ sex crimes prosecutor, has emerged as Senate Republicans' choice to question Kavanaugh's accuser before the Judiciary panel, per two people familiar w/the decision.

https://twitter.com/WaPoSean/status/1044749458939027456

Senate Judiciary Committee schedules Friday vote on Kavanaugh nomination, one day after hearing from accuser.

https://twitter.com/AP/status/1044716021565853696

Then win the floor vote.

He's 1000000% in.

But in the extremely unlikely chance he's not, the next person (male or female) will be exactly the same.

Except for the fact that the seat was stolen, I'm okay with Gorsuch. Or any conservative justice who gets a seat. Republican president and Senate, these are the breaks.

Supreme Court justices are supposed to at least give the illusion of political independence. Kavanaugh is a political operative. Has been his whole career. People like him don't belong on the supreme Court.


>
>But in the extremely unlikely chance he's not, the next person
>(male or female) will be exactly the same.

>Except for the fact that the seat was stolen, I'm okay with
>Gorsuch. Or any conservative justice who gets a seat.
>Republican president and Senate, these are the breaks.

Things are different. Trump lost the popular vote by MILLIONS and there's a fairly credible investigating that is likely to show his campaign (BEFORE HE WAS ELECTED PRESIDENT) took money and help from foreign governments to "win."

Remember: Nixon was re-elected AFTER Watergate happened, I say anything that happened from that time until 2 years later when he resigned is suspect too. At least he didn't get a court pick - although FORD DID!??

And these conservatives now are even more corrupt than Nixon - that's FUCKING CRAZY.

And the people Bush Jr put on after losing the poplar vote are also FUCKING LIARS.

Don't know why that was necessary

Trump is president. We aren't going to turn back time.
As president, he gets to select Supreme Court justices.
There's no point arguing if he is able to do it. Losing the popular vote, being under investigation. It doesn't matter. He (with the help of the Senate) has the power. The only question is who the justice is going to be.

So I don't understand the point of all that you wrote.

My point is that there is something very different between the plethora of conservative justices on the Federalist Society's list that Trump is forced to choose from, and Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh is undeniably political in his background and actions. That type of person shouldn't be on what is supposed to be (in theory) an apolitical court.

There's no room to even pretend he's unbiased.

>>Except for the fact that the seat was stolen, I'm okay with
>>Gorsuch. Or any conservative justice who gets a seat.
>>Republican president and Senate, these are the breaks.
>
>Things are different. Trump lost the popular vote by MILLIONS
>and there's a fairly credible investigating that is likely to
>show his campaign (BEFORE HE WAS ELECTED PRESIDENT) took money
>and help from foreign governments to "win."
>
>Remember: Nixon was re-elected AFTER Watergate happened, I say
>anything that happened from that time until 2 years later when
>he resigned is suspect too. At least he didn't get a court
>pick - although FORD DID!??
>
>And these conservatives now are even more corrupt than Nixon -
>that's FUCKING CRAZY.
>
>And the people Bush Jr put on after losing the poplar vote are
>also FUCKING LIARS.

>My point is that there is something very different between the
>plethora of conservative justices on the Federalist Society's
>list that Trump is forced to choose from, and Kavanaugh.
>Kavanaugh is undeniably political in his background and
>actions. That type of person shouldn't be on what is supposed
>to be (in theory) an apolitical court.

No, ALL OF THE PEOPLE ON ANY LIST OF TRUMP'S WILL BE JUST AS BAD.

PERIOD.

And Kav will get on - there is no way that is not happening.

And the Supreme court IS A POLITICAL COURT - there's no way to pretend even for a second that it is not.

The "left"/Democrats have placed very weak lefties on - and the right has placed super toxic politics at all costs people on.

Make no mistake, we WILL LOSE.


What I'm saying is this: fuck everyone.

But you're falling for the TRICK that there's some acceptable candidate possible under Trump. There is not - they are all liars - liars who have been cultivated for this exact position.

At least Michael Moore's film fucking flopped - he's still blaming the unfair way the Democrats treated the non-Democrat Bernie Sanders.

Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford offers Senate four people who corroborate her assault claims

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/09/25/brett-kavanaugh-ford-has-4-people-corroborate-sexual-assault-claims/1429270002/

Kavanaugh’s ‘choir boy’ image on Fox interview rankles former Yale classmates

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2018/09/25/ea5e50d4-c0eb-11e8-9005-5104e9616c21_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.8ecbc1f4f792

This looks like a prop from Freaks and Geeks

https://twitter.com/Journo_Christal/status/1044806718801281024/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1044806718801281024&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fsplinternews.com%2Fajax%2Finset%2Fiframe%3Fid%3Dtwitter-1044806718801281024%26autosize%3D1

https://twitter.com/cspan/status/1041685089242021894

https://twitter.com/MichaelAvenatti/status/1044960428730843136

different years though. small world.

https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1044934893917081601

https://twitter.com/joshgerstein/status/1044947089971720192

starr office memo from national archives backs up her accusation.

He is a Republican political operative. The person who has demonstrated that he will do whatever it takes to get the political results his people need.
Gorsuch didn't have this type of history. Many other conservatives on the Federalist list are not like this. Kavanaugh is unique.

It would be like having Rahm Emmanuel on the court.

how in the hell did he keep all this under wraps until now?

they havent even started peeling back the layers of how he paid off all of his debt or who paid it for him.

this might just be the beginning.

>they havent even started peeling back the layers of how he
>paid off all of his debt or who paid it for him.

And I really wish this had gotten more attention when it came out

that's what scares the hell out of me

It was all good when dude was one of the most powerful judges in the country

...and would have continued to be if he wasn't nominated for the SCOTUS...

F'n frightening.

https://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/1044964277323534337

he can be a lil hammy and over the top at times but he produces the goods.

a lot of middle of the road dems are tryna knock him down but we need some bomb throwers right now. we gotta stop shunning our fighters (even when we disagree with their tactics).

He's a media personality at this point, let him be that.

and him ultimately cooperating with the sdny and mueller. that also led to trump org cfo allen weisselberg and afi/enquirer head david pecker cooperating with investigators too.

all of that started with stormy daniels and avenatti.

he aint a politician but he aint just a media personality either. dude is doing real damage to trump like most dem operatives could only dream of.

if this new shit derails kavanaugh and pushes women even further away from the gop...dude legit deserves some sort of award.

he might not be the hero a lot of milquetoast dems want but he is the one we obviously need(ed).

what are his policies? honestly talking about anyone for 2020 right now is dumb. i dont see how he should be a candidate though. doesnt mean he doesnt deserve credit or maybe some cabinet position.

https://twitter.com/davidmackau/status/1044965500114153472

it would be crazy if kavy kav thought he could absolve himself of one accusation with his calendars...but they end up corroborating accounts from other accusers.

ex gf of mark judge
https://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/1044965271977566210

this part flew under the radar and barely got discussed by the press...who chose to focus on how flimsy they thought the allegation from the main accuser was (based on no corroborating witnesses).

but his ass might need to worry about going to prison lol.

trump might have fucked this dudes life all up.

they need to expose this clown and hit him with the hard questions

like just the mere association of your client to him could wreck the credibility/image of your client.

kavs lawyer was saying he didnt know who the sloppy drunk 'bart okavanaugh' was who was being referred to in judges book. looks like theyre gonna be spending a lot more time disavowing and disassociating.

Even if his nomination is withdrawn.

that the dems are "using" the me too movement for political purposes. like if bill clinton didnt happen.

like if it doesnt matter what actually happened to these women.

Along with racism, sexism, general bigotry, etc., of course.

https://twitter.com/costareports/status/1044967211495043072

fam the way dems played their hand on this was *brilliant*.

now trump and repubs are all in and tied to this sexual predator even more than they were to roy moore (senate repubs backed away from him...at least publicly). they cant run away now. this is beautiful.

This is admittedly anecdotal, but I’ve heard from several of my center-right friends today who are turned off by the Left’s attacks on Kavanaugh & Cruz. As a result, they have started solidly supporting them both.

https://twitter.com/mattklewis/status/1044689636935782401

it says a lot about a group of people that they constantly duck accountability for their own actions and blame other people for why they do what they do.

too much identity politics so i voted for the racist, too much political correctness so i voted for the asshole, you called me a (insert pejorative) so i proved you right, etc.

shows that conservatism is strictly an extreme reactionary movement now. its a party of shared grievances...not a party of shared values.

bottom line...supposedly iffy republicans always find a way back to supporting republicans. always just in time for an election too lol.

a Dem to earn their votes.

There's always a "well I WOULD have considered voting for the D candidate, but _________ so now I can't." But they never say what it was about the Dem that made them consider it in the first place. They were ok with potentially voting for a pro-choice (even though they're not,) pro-increasing the minimum wage (even though they think the minimum wage should be abolished,) pro-Obamacare (even though they've voted to repeal it and that's assuming the D candidate isn't also pro-M4A) candidate? Really? This was something they genuinely wanted to do, until the Dreaded Identity Politics reared it's ugly head?

If I didn't know better, I'd say this was just bad faith BS from people who can get very credulous reporters to buy it, year after year.

for how to win people like them over. yeah lets spend time, energy, and resources courting the wishiest of the washiest potential supporters.

Damn, guess it IS going to be a red wave.

/sarcasm

its honestly hard to tell if they really believe it or they just gotta supply material to the fox news base.

but if lighter hued women don't vote Republicans out come the mid-terms, I am going to be truly upset.

I know with the results with Trump are upsetting enough on their own given his history and the end results, but the way a good number of powerful Republican senators are reacting to this defies sound logic. Just so outwardly brazen in terms of ignoring how bad and shameful they look trying to force this slimeball down peoples throat.

Even worse when you consider how Merrick Garland got played to the sidelines.

https://twitter.com/KFILE/status/1044983644224393216

dude sometimes you gotta read the room.

THE GOP FEELS it has no time pre-midterms to nominate a new judge; will lose in November; won't get a nominee in '19 due to impeachment; won't get to nominate in '20 per the McConnell Rule; will lose in '20.

So *this debate* is on who controls SCOTUS for *several decades*.

https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1044978621356617728


The prior tweet explains why Republicans are trying to put a man facing multiple serious sex-crime allegations on the Supreme Court. The media needs to make clear *now* the GOP calculus here: that what we're fighting over—literally today—is control of the Court *through 2050*.

https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1044979246467338240

did someone decided they needed this specific dude knowing he had these issues?

do they not have any clean people they could had nominated?

im not convinced the dems win the senate but it will be close.

i wish this was a movie i could skip.

Trump pushed him

he dont get no brownie points for SHIT...FOH with that shit

If anything, just the opposite. McConnell and the people in the Senate would have gotten someone with views just as odious through with no trouble. They knew Kavanaugh's record was too long and had too many loose ends.

But Trump didn't care about any of that. He saw a bro from a prep school, who would defend presidential power, and who also once tormented Bill Clinton, so he could get some childish political revenge on the side. That's all Trump needed, so that's all he saw. It's a microcosm of why Trump is a terrible (and ineffective) executive, in politics and also in business.

the supreme court just happened to tap a case for the next term that governs double jeopardy law...whether a person can be tried in both federal and state courts for related crimes.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-agrees-take-double-jeopardy-issue-n887301

if the supreme court overturns precedence that dates back 150 years then that could essentially mean that trump could pardon anyone for federal crimes...and they couldnt be tried for related state crimes. this would severely handicap the mueller investigation.

well...guess who just quietly signed on in support of the person appealing the law? senator orrin hatch.
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1044927066716745729

people assume republicans just follow trump because they are afraid of the base. but...

personal conspiracy theory: repubs are actively trying to make trump a dictator. they know they theres a good chance they could never win another presidential election ever (woulda lost this one if not for unprecedented interventions on several levels). and no repub politician will captivate/control the base like trump. so their only hope of maintaining power is to shield him and expand his authority via (captured) court rule. this same thing is taking place all over the world now...turkey, hungary, poland, etc.

i bookmarked this article over a year ago.
https://qz.com/897674/congressional-republicans-the-koch-brothers-and-federal-judges-stand-between-trump-and-dictatorship/

its funny how the courts, congressional republicans, and the koch brothers are all painted as checks on trump. when all of them have...or eventually will...become enablers of trump.

if you know the koch brothers m.o...they are great at getting media to buy into narratives of them being moral leaders and upholding long-standing american virtues. but their motives are always the opposite.

the kochs (and their congressional allies) arent fighting trump on tariffs. they arent fighting him on immigration. and these are issues they supposedly champion. they are fully behind the trump agenda.


this quote stood out to me:
-------------------------------
“We have a tremendous danger because we can go the authoritarian route … or we can move toward a free and open society,” Koch reportedly told a closed-door meeting of Republicans.
-------------------------------

well it looks like they made their choice.

.

but i think we suffer from a real lack of imagination when it comes to the possible outcomes in front of us.

I was a big time conspiracy theorist during the early part of the Bush admin but got over that as I got older.

But now with Trump I truly feel like anything's possible and if anything, like you mentioned, we're not concerned ENOUGH about the damage that's being done, and the possibilities that lie in front of us, as we should be. Anything's on the table at this point. People love to say things like "you can't compare anyone to Hitler" and usually, these folks are right - it's hyperbolic, folks tend to overreact, etc. But in the case of Trump and modern Repugs, the parallels are too numerous to ignore. The narcissism, his crippling insecurities/inferiority complex he displays multiple times daily, his impulsiveness, the extremist nationalism, immigration policies, pandering to modern Nazis and KKK, etc. etc. etc. I mean it's all there. Not to mention the guy has literally mentioned that he'd like to be a dictator (in reference to China, IIRC). The evidence is all there. And you can never be too careful with someone like this. Which is why it blows my mind how otherwise intelligent people, whether they support this serpent or not, can shrug all this shit off or dispute it as hyperbole.

doesn't show anything new, but just a well put-together segment on the historical parallels. Like you said it's crazy how many smart ppl still dismiss Trump's dictatorial tendencies

... Moore was the catalyst for my afore-mentioned conspiracy-theorist phase during the early Bush years. All the "inside job" 9/11 stuff, etc. I was on board with all of that. Haha. And his documentaries from the early 2000s were the start of my thinking like that.

In other "funnily enough" news, just saw this on Bernie Sanders' fbook page and it has some more already-known-but-not-yet-mentioned-in-this-convo parallels between authoritarians of the past and present, and the 45* administration. Scary fucking shit.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/ng-interactive/2018/sep/13/bernie-sanders-international-progressive-front

not a sense of patriotism, a sense of lawfulness, a sense of basic decency, etc. zero sense of personal moderation.

its just been aides, courts, etc that have been providing some sort of speed bump against his worst impulses.

and slowly but surely...those other people are being pruned and swapped with people more obedient and in line with his agenda.

>not a sense of patriotism, a sense of lawfulness, a sense of
>basic decency, etc. zero sense of personal moderation.
>
>its just been aides, courts, etc that have been providing some
>sort of speed bump against his worst impulses.
>
>and slowly but surely...those other people are being pruned
>and swapped with people more obedient and in line with his
>agenda.
>


Brock Turners grow up to be Brett Kavanaughs who make the rules for Brock Turners.

https://twitter.com/emrazz/status/1045102831760486401

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/09/26/merkley-injunction-stop-kavanaugh-vote-843080

Merkley to seek injunction to stop Kavanaugh vote
By ELANA SCHOR 09/26/2018 11:23 AM EDT

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) on Wednesday will announce that he's seeking an injunction in federal court designed to stop a final vote on Brett Kavanaugh, asserting an obstruction of his constitutional duty to advise and consent on nominees.

Merkley's still-pending filing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia comes as Senate Republicans vow to push ahead with a vote on President Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee in the coming days — and hours before a landmark hearing slated with Christine Blasey Ford, who has alleged a decades-old sexual assault by Kavanaugh.

Merkley's bid for an injunction hinges on the Senate's constitutional duty to provide advice and consent on nominees and charges that he's been prevented from fulfilling that due to the withholding of records on Kavanaugh's past service in the George W. Bush administration.

“The events of the past ten days have only underscored how critical it is that the Senate conduct a careful and comprehensive review of a nominee before giving its consent,” Merkley told POLITICO in a statement.

“The unprecedented obstruction of the Senate’s advice and consent obligation is an assault on the separation of powers and a violation of the Constitution. The President and Mitch McConnell want to ram through this nomination come hell or high water, without real advice or informed consent by the Senate, but that’s just not how our Constitution works.”

Ford's allegation is not directly cited in Merkley's filing, which is unlikely to succeed in stopping the vote. But the entrance of the Oregonian, who's indicated interest in a 2020 presidential bid, into the Kavanaugh debate further heightens the politically charged atmosphere shrouding the nomination. Merkley delivered a 15-hour floor speech last year in an ultimately failed bid to stop the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch.

i think it would be better politically if they just push for more hearings and fbi investigations and draw the process out. it will only get uglier for repubs/kav. and eat into the next supreme court term too (while he isnt seated and cant rule on cases).

but maybe calling for a withdrawal will make trump double down and not withdraw it too. so things could still play out the same way.

Kavanaugh probably would have been confirmed already.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/09/26/kavanaugh-accuser-polygraph-results-844071

Kavanaugh accuser's polygraph results conclude her account is 'not indicative of deception'
By ELANA SCHOR 09/26/2018 03:07 PM EDT

Attorneys for Christine Blasey Ford on Wednesday released a copy of a polygraph test that she took in August regarding her sexual assault allegation against Brett Kavanaugh, with a conclusion that her account of the episode is "not indicative of deception."

Ford sat for the polygraph after relaying her account of the high school-era party where she claims Kavanaugh tried to force himself on her with his friend Mark Judge -- whom the GOP has declined to subpoena for testimony -- in the room.

"Blasey stated that when Kavanaugh put his hand over her mouth that this act was the most terrifying for her," states the polygraph examiner's report, dated Aug. 10 for an Aug. 7 examination. "She also stated that this act caused the most consequences for her later in life."

Republicans have sought Ford's polygraph results ahead of her scheduled Thursday testimony against President Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee, while those who believe the 51-year-old professor's assault allegation have pointed to her submission to a polygraph test as evidence of the veracity of her account. However, the American Psychological Association has said there is little evidence polygraph tests can effectively separate true from false accounts, and the examinations are not admissible in criminal trials in some states.

After Ford shared her account of the assault with the examiner, three separate algorithms were applied to the results of a polygraph examination as she attested to the truthfulness of her story, according to the report. All three concluded that Ford was speaking truthfully, with one scale registering a 0.002 percent probability that her answers were deceptive.

Ford's attorneys provided the test results to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, along with a note stating that "under no circumstances" would they share their client's medical records, which "contain private, highly sensitive information that is not necessary for the Committee to assess the credibility of her testimony."

"Our client has already been forced to compromise her privacy and safety in order to provide the Committee with important information about the nominee’s past conduct, and she will be available to answer any questions the Committee may have when she testifies tomorrow," the attorneys, Debra Katz and Lisa Banks, wrote to the panel.

I want to like ... write her a letter to thank her for essentially risking her life for what amounts to an exceptionally unlikely chance that it sinks the nomination and subsequently saves the country from a generation of supreme court fuckery.

regurgitates everyday all the talking points...


there really is no hope for some people


this is the kind person that sees crazy shit happening in mexico like cartel violence and police corruption and says ""They" want to bring that here" smh

https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/26/politics/kavanaugh-prepared-testimony/index.html

https://splinternews.com/i-have-had-to-relive-my-trauma-in-front-of-the-entire-w-1829344318

how can this be real life

Cheeto jus said about George Washington....

He may have had a bad past, who knows. He may have had, I think some accusations made. Didn’t he have a couple of things in his past?




was he referring to slave owner??

but im gonna really need a transcript of this whole thing

>Cheeto jus said about George Washington....
>
>He may have had a bad past, who knows. He may have had, I
>think some accusations made. Didn’t he have a couple of
>things in his past?
>
>
>
>
>was he referring to slave owner??


In response to President Trump's allegations, George Washington has released his calendar from the summer of 1749.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DoDkEMAV4AA3ekQ.jpg

https://twitter.com/TheDailyShow/status/1045086461199044608

I only caught one exchange

Q; 'you've defended men accused of sex crimes like roger ailes and brett kavanaugh...have you ever defended a woman'

A; 'I've known those guys for a long time'

lie 378,992

I'm going to have to watch the whole clip, because it sounded like they were really going to give him some work

What I don't understand about the media...if you ask a question...and the answer is evasive...why doesn't the next reporter ask the same question until you get an answer

?

thats why a lot of these fools get away with so much bullshit and lies in interviews

and she feels the need to tell the backstory of everyone and everything...before she gets to the meat of the story

dude just keeps spinning these answers...I forget what the question is to begin with

I got back to the office...and dude was still talking...SMH

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYANrJn87Go

^^^ if you need help sleeping.

A bad thing is that the headlines from this press conference will be “President Trump Questions Kavanaugh Accusers” when a more accurate description is “Incoherent President Rambles Like Crazy Shoeless Man in Public Park"

https://twitter.com/gilbertjasono/status/1045067655659638784

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/senate-probing-new-allegation-misconduct-against-kavanaugh-n913581

Senate probing new allegation of misconduct against Kavanaugh

Supreme Court Nominee has been asked privately about an accusation of physical assault, sources tell NBC News.

by Kasie Hunt, Leigh Ann Caldwell and Heidi Przybyla / Sep.26.2018 / 5:37 PM CDT


WASHINGTON — The Senate Judiciary Committee is inquiring about at least one additional allegation of misconduct against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, according to a letter obtained by NBC News and multiple people familiar with the process.

Republican Senate investigators asked Kavanaugh about the new complaint, NBC News has learned, during a phone call on Tuesday between Kavanaugh and committee staff. Sources told NBC News that Kavanaugh denied the allegation in the letter during the call and a spokesman for the committee declined to comment.

A Republican aide on the committee said the conversation took place shortly after noon. While Republican staff posed questions to Kavanaugh, their Democratic counterparts were also on the call but did not ask any questions.

According to an anonymous complaint sent to Republican Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado, Kavanaugh physically assaulted a woman he socialized with in the Washington, D.C., area in 1998 while he was inebriated.

The sender of the complaint described an evening involving her own daughter, Kavanaugh and several friends in 1998.

“When they left the bar (under the influence of alcohol) they were all shocked when Brett Kavanaugh, shoved her friend up against the wall very aggressively and sexually.”

“There were at least four witnesses including my daughter.” The writer of the letter provided no names but said the alleged victim was still traumatized and had decided to remain anonymous herself.

A Democratic source said the minority wasn’t satisfied by the Republicans’ questions about the incident during the call, calling them cursory, and believed it should be investigated more deeply.

NBC News reached out to the White House for comment.

Kavanaugh, a federal judge who was nominated to the Supreme Court on July 9, has staunchly denied public allegations from three women alleging sexual misconduct.

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump said he could consider withdrawing Kavanaugh’s nomination if he “thought he was guilty of something like this.” Earlier Trump said the public accusations against Kavanaugh were false.

One of the accusers, Christine Blasey Ford, is set to testify before the committee Thursday. She has said that in 1982, when she and Kavanaugh were in high school, he pinned her down while they were in a suburban home in Maryland, attempted to remove her clothing and put his hand over her mouth when she tried to scream.

In a letter to the committee, Ford says that she thought she would be killed and that he had attempted to rape her. She has also said that Mark Judge was a witness and participant in the alleged assault. Kavanaugh has said it is possible he may have met her but he denied the accusation.

Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, who sits on the Judiciary Committee, would not say Wednesday whether there were any additional information she was aware of, but added, “there are certain areas that I’ve been interested in. He could be perjuring himself because of his response to my question about whether he had ever” engaged in sexual misconduct "as an adult. He could have perjured himself.”

A college classmate from Yale, Deborah Ramirez of Boulder, Colorado, has accused Kavanaugh of exposing himself and humiliating her at a party when they were in school together. Kavanaugh has said this incident didn’t occur.

On Wednesday, a third woman informed the Senate committee that she had been the victim of a gang rape in approximately 1982 in which she says Kavanaugh was present. The woman, Julie Swetnick, did not name Kavanaugh as an assailant.

Kavanaugh called this allegation “ridiculous,” and said he doesn’t know her.

A spokesman for Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, told NBC News that members of the panel will hold another phone call with Kavanaugh on Wednesday to ask him about Swetnick’s allegation. In two previous calls with Kavanaugh, he has denied allegations from Ford and Ramirez.

The calls are not under oath, but Kavanaugh will be reminded at the beginning of the call that lying to the Congress is against the law.

On Wednesday, Trump said he “can't tell” yet whether Kavanaugh’s known accusers are “liars” because he’s waiting to watch the hearing on Thursday. Trump admitted it’s “possible” they could be “convincing.”

Senior Senate Dem aide tells me there's a concern the GOP is "now releasing anonymous allegations in an effort to make all allegations look frivolous. We’re focusing on the ones that have names attached."

https://twitter.com/eschor/status/1045096168370393090


Senate Judiciary Rs have now released the anonymous 4th complaint -- noting this: "We have no reason to assign the letter credibility, and even if we did, we’d have no way to investigate the allegation as it was made anonymously and cannot be corroborated."

https://twitter.com/eschor/status/1045102236932681729

Senate Judiciary Cmte staffers have now spoken to two men, each of whom believes he — not Kavanaugh — assaulted Christine Ford.

https://twitter.com/PeterAlexander/status/1045151386063831040


Democratic Judiciary Cmte aide responds: “Republicans are flailing. They are desperately trying to muddy the waters...”

https://twitter.com/PeterAlexander/status/1045165494150533120

this could legit be a genre of journalism/entertainment at this point.

https://twitter.com/AC360/status/1045114825280376832

this is a good window into the mindset of the republican party right now. basically galvanizing behind a sexual predator to own the libs/dems/media.

whole party devoid of any sense of morality or social conscience at this point. an obvious precursor to outright fascism.

which begs the question...has the democratic party gone too far left? (smh lol)

Can we ship that ancient creep out on an ice floe yet?

>Can we ship that ancient creep out on an ice floe yet?

No.

I love how you fucking dipshits buy this line from Republicans: Take your most successful and leaders and get rid of them: Dump Biden, the Clintons, Pelosi, Schumer/etc.

Unless of course you ARE a trick.

Now that's being flipped on his party and this woman, who's being more brave right now than he has in his entire political career. If he had a spine in 1991, maybe we wouldn't be in this mess.

>Take your most successful and leaders and get
>rid of them: Dump Biden, the Clintons, Pelosi, Schumer/etc.

They can go screw as well. Old, useless fucks.

how did grassley think him interrupting and talking down to feinstein in the beginning was gonna play to the public (especially women)? dude looked like an abusive husband.

Having to relive this shit in front of the whole country just so Lindsey Graham and Chuck Grassley can shit all over her tomorrow.

i have a feeling repub senators might grow frustrated with this lady for not being forceful and partisan enough.

Interrogating her like she's a criminal suspect.

Why don't people come forward, smh

because they limited everyone to 5 minutes...this prosecutor cant develop any flow.

misremembering what happened?

have blown it by picking a prosecutor to ask the questions. A Prosecutor will have way more experience treating delicately an accuser of sex crimes than grilling them like a defense attorney.


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

would point out that's turrible.

Doing 12 things at once. (Work, Listening to Hearing, Typing here)


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

trump supporters on my twitter timeline are already getting mad/restless because she isnt lighting into dr ford.

she is spending her time pouring over semantic details like she is in a courtroom making sure the facts add up and testimony is consistent. that doesnt really have much use in this setting.

these hearings are political performances that are used to sway public opinion and garner partisan sway. it already looks silly as shit that you have a whole group of grown ass men sitting idle and looking useless. republican voters aint gonna get the kill they really want.

>she is spending her time pouring over semantic details like
>she is in a courtroom making sure the facts add up and
>testimony is consistent. that doesnt really have much use in
>this setting.
>
>these hearings are political performances that are used to
>sway public opinion and garner partisan sway. it already
>looks silly as shit that you have a whole group of grown ass
>men sitting idle and looking useless. republican voters aint
>gonna get the kill they really want.

They obviously (and fairly explicitly) picked her because she's a woman and the optics of a bunch of dudes grilling Ford would be terrible. But I guess the thing that didn't occur to me is that she'd also have to be a light touch too.

So yeah. She's just picking around the edges, not really putting together any kind of case, but it kind of feels like that's the best she's been authorized to do. Just find one memory hole that gives the GOP guys plausible deniability. Any conservative partisan that thought she was going to get in there and murder was probably asking too much.

... to avoid a subpoena.

I work at Georgetown Prep. And this is the most Georgetown Prep thing to have ever happened.

Because who does he think Superman looks out for?

Just utter lack of self-awareness.

>Just find one memory hole that gives the GOP guys
>plausible deniability.

these repub senators are most likely desperately looking for some type of cover fire. something they can cling to to make her look like a liar ('con job' (c) trump). nothing so far makes her look even anywhere near a liar. and im not sure what the goal of the line of questioning is. is it to make her seem like a liar or to just make her seem like her memory is bad and she earnestly identified the wrong person?

kavys testimony is gonna look so phony compared to this. especially since he *can* be easily potrayed as a liar since we already know he has given verifiably contradictory statements.

>s it to make
>her seem like a liar or to just make her seem like her memory
>is bad and she earnestly identified the wrong person?

The closest thing Mitchell seems to have had with a real purpose is what you've highlighted here, a mistaken identification. They'll never go in on the bonkers doppelganger theory, but it really seemed like they were trying to say she was assaulted another, separate time.

Like, that seems like it's their best play at the moment, which until I remember this is America in 2018, makes this seem done for Kavanaugh. But the fix is probably in, unless Trump just says "fuck it" (Gabriel Sherman reported a source saying that Trump thinks she's credible and the GOP looks like shit) and bails.

so awful that she has to go thru this stuff in public (mentioned the death threats, etc)

>so awful that she has to go thru this stuff in public
>(mentioned the death threats, etc)

she wouldnt have to spend so much time fact gathering.

Fox's Chris Wallace: "This is a disaster for the Republicans."

https://twitter.com/davidfolkenflik/status/1045335062001143809


Unsolicited text from a GOP source:

'There's no way we can go forward with this nomination hearing this account. It's brutal.'

https://twitter.com/HeidiPrzybyla/status/1045323338866921479

that this is something someone would do for attention/fame/money.

And then know that between 30-45% of this country's electorate will absolutely still think that.

of the park.

She's got the relatable, believable, upper middle class, adorable white mother thing down pat. It might be enough to persuade Collins.

I can barely distinguish between the bots from the morons. All i know is there are a lot of unwell people in our country right now.

>I can barely distinguish between the bots from the morons.
>All i know is there are a lot of unwell people in our country
>right now.
>
>
>
>

I mean yea you could say this is going as well as possible, but this serpent is still getting confirmed tomorrow. I've never been so sure of anything.


>RE: which is a good sign..theyre upset so the outcome is promising

the result isnt even that important.

its more about the fact that she was even willing to subject herself to one.

... make Kavanaugh look like shit when he explains why he declines to take a polygraph. Particularly when her answers were that she wasn't prepared they hooked "my body" up to a machine, and she cried throughout it.

I assume there was a plan in those questions, but they look really dumb.

Pissed that he hadn't been warned about the COMPLETELY OBVIOUS FACT that Ford would be a compelling witness.

https://twitter.com/gabrielsherman/status/1045350130080239616

He's also blaming Don McGahn for the fiasco.

https://twitter.com/gabrielsherman/status/1045351935589658624

I'm not sure Kavanaugh makes it through the day.

You're giving people false hope haha. I mean shit - if you optimistic types turn out to be right, I'll be back and I'll sing your praises.

But this dude is getting confirmed. Only hope is that this whole debacle (and undoubtedly more bullshit in the next 40ish days) results in massive Dem turnout at the midterms and a total takeover of Congress.


>I'm not sure Kavanaugh makes it through the day.

I'm just not letting myself get my hopes up.

There a plenty of reasons that this nom should be pulled and it only takes one or two people to step up.

Even trying to be guarded, i'll be hella disappointed if dude is confirmed. Not just because of the sex assault stuff (yuck), but because of the lack of transparency, the fact that he's lied in the hearings on substantial issues, and the fact that he's clearly a Republican operative. Under any normal system of proper checks and balance we couldn't possibly confirm this fuck w/the limited info we have available.

McConnell probably is good with either outcome, ironically. He didn't want Kavanaugh, but that probably had more to do with baggage, not philosophy. If he gets confirmed, McConnell will be happy, if he's denied, he'll be happy, because that would effectively end the circus instantly and then they could focus on someone else.

there isn't much reason to pull his nomination anymore.

A month ago, the GOP was hoping they could *run* on this appointment. Nobody's gonna run ads with Kavanaugh pictures anymore. (Except attack ads from Dems)

If they'd pulled the nomination one or two weeks ago, they could have headed off most of the public consciousness of this controversy, quickly replace him with whoever Senate leadership is convinced would fly through most quickly, and finally have that glowing new face for GOP candidates to run on.

But now, from what I hear, there just isn't time to roll out someone new. And even if there was, the public is primed to be skeptical of whoever they put forward. People aren't gonna take those "Judicial Crisis Network" ads at face value anymore.

So in the short run, they're fucked over no matter what they do. Still, in the long run, they pay more of a price if they push this guy through than if they dump him and let it all recede into history.

But nobody cares about the long term, even their own long term. So who knows.


None of this strategy even matters, though, because this is all up to Trump, and Trump doesn't strategize. He defers to his lizard brain on every decision. The reason I think things don't look good for Kavanaugh is purely because Trump does not like being made a fool. He's been made a fool a lot this week, and while he always tries to deflect, I think he's taking all this personal. He desperately needs someone to say nice things about him, and ending all this trauma might be a way to do it.

... he's happily looked like a fool while pushing ahead with an agenda anyway. Or, like yesterday, standing in front of a crowd and rambling like an incoherent drunk.

Dude go play in traffic with your pessimism

You been in a coma the last 2 years or something ? Keep riding the roller coaster of emotions though. Hope you're still enjoying the ride. I had to hop off a while ago for my mental health.

How you feeling today ?

https://twitter.com/kateirby/status/1045354070658232320

To the point where I'm wondering if he's got a paint-huffing problem.

now he is back to pure nutcase.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/27/politics/massachusetts-governor-kavanaugh-investigation/index.html

Washington (CNN)One of the country's most popular Republican governors on Thursday called for an independent investigation into the allegations made against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and said the Senate should hold off on a vote.

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker made the comments as Professor Christine Blasey Ford testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that Kavanaugh sexually and physically assaulted here.
"The accusations brought against Judge Kavanaugh are sickening and deserve an independent investigation," Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker tweeted. "There should be no vote in the Senate."
Baker, who faces re-election this November, is one of only a few Republican governors, all political moderates, to express dissatisfaction with the committee's handling of the allegations made against Kavanaugh. In July, Baker was one of three Republican governors, along with Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan and Vermont Gov. Phil Scott, to not sign a letter to Senate leaders offering support for Kavanaugh's nomination.
In an interview with the Burlington Free Press, Vermont's Republican governor encouraged senators to conduct a full investigation and "take your time."
"This is a lifetime appointment," Scott said. "And I'm not taking a position on Judge Kavanaugh himself, but we owe it to Americans to make sure that they get it right because this doesn't happen every day."
"And it's their obligation to do so. So take your time. Investigate," he said. "And make sure you're doing it for the right reasons."
Ohio Governor John Kasich, a Republican, has urged the Senate to slow down its confirmation process and said he would not support Kavanaugh's nomination unless a full investigation is carried out.
"In the absence of a complete and thorough investigation, and hearing from all parties involved, moving this nomination forward would be a mistake," Kasich said in a statement. "In the best interest of our country and the integrity of the court, the Senate needs to hold on this confirmation. Without an investigation, and with so many serious issues involved, I can't support this nomination if they choose to move forward."
Ford has alleged Kavanaugh physically and sexually assaulted her at a party during their high school years. Kavanaugh has denied the allegation.
On Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee scheduled its vote on Kavanaugh's nomination for Friday morning at 9:30 a.m. -- less than 24 hours after Ford and Kavanaugh's testimony would conclude.
A spokesman for Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley said committee rules require these types of votes must be posted three days in advance.
"An executive business meeting is being noticed tonight in the event that a majority of the members are prepared to hold one on Friday," Taylor Foy, a spokesman for Grassley, said.
Grassley suggested in a tweet that a committee vote could be further delayed.
"Judic Cmte noticed POTENTIAL exec mtg for Friday. Still taking this 1 step at a time. After hrg Dr Ford & Judge Kavanaugh's testimony- if we're ready to vote, we will vote. If we aren't ready, we won't. Cmte rules normally require 3 days notice so we're following regular order," Grassley, an Iowa Republican, said.

i can already see it in kamalas eyes.

the Democrats give Kavanaugh enough rope to himself and are clever with how they proceed with him and not just go in guns blazing so that there's a shred of a chance that slimeball is posed as a victim of getting grilled.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DoHppq6U4AAQE7e.jpg

https://twitter.com/digby56/status/1045373534606831616

That or he blacked out all memory of Merrick Garland ever existing.

**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

If I can't, insert the correct word on my behalf.

Nobody grandstands like Kamala Harris. It's remarkable. And not a knock here. This is a political event and she's behaving like a politician. Maybe Elizabeth Warren gets a nod for when she's got a corrupt bank executive in front of her and smells blood. That's fun too.

I was thinking of "performing" but that also sounds negative, like she's just acting. But showing up with the right words to say and the right way of saying them in these big, public moments is absolutely a useful skill that more people should have.

Yeah, good call.

She's...not going to have a good day tomorrow. If you're picking up on it, MAGA chuds have to be howling.

just don't care.

This is solely for show. Not one of these idiots care whether Kavanaugh is a rapist or not.

Chris Matthew described her "Dr. Blasey Ford is a breath of fresh air in this tragic story. It's impossible not to like her and believe her."

Even Trump has acknowledged how credible of a witness she is.

She's seems straight from central casting as person who people would believe. If I were to cast her today I would cast Debra Jo Rupp, Mom's from the 70s Show.

She is a hero and don't want to tear her down but we just know Anita Hill simply did not get the same consideration. I am doubtful Deborah Ramirez with her latin sounding last name will get it.




**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

And even today Anita Hill would never get this kind of consideration

link: https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/408800-graham-after-ford-testimony-i-feel-ambushed-by-dems

swipe:

Graham after Ford testimony: 'I feel ambushed' by Dems
By Michael Burke - 09/27/18 02:57 PM EDT

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Thursday said that he felt "ambushed" by Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee following Christine Blasey Ford's testimony regarding her sexual assault claims against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

“All I can say is that we’re 40-something days away from the election and their goal, not Ms. Ford’s goal, is to delay this past the midterms so they can win the Senate and never allow Trump to fill the seat. I believe that now more than ever," he told reporters.
ADVERTISEMENT

"And here’s what I’m more convinced of. The friends on the other side set it up to be just the way it is. I feel ambushed as the majority. We’re going to hear from Judge Kavanaugh," he added.

Sen. @LindseyGrahamSC on Dr. Ford: "A nice lady who has come forward to tell a hard story that's uncorroborated, and this is enough. God help anybody else that gets nominated." https://t.co/005BvMqW3Y pic.twitter.com/OLYAyOJvFy
— Fox News (@FoxNews) September 27, 2018

Ford gave several hours of testimony on Thursday about her accusations against Kavanaugh, who will speak later Thursday afternoon. Ford has said that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at a high school party in the 1980s. Kavanaugh denies the allegation.

Graham was visibly angry following Ford's testimony Thursday as he attacked Democrats for not bringing Ford's allegations to the attention of GOP senators earlier in Kavanaugh's confirmation process.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (R-Calif.), the ranking member on the Judiciary Committee and the first senator to learn of Ford's allegations, has said that she did not disclose the accusations sooner at the request of Ford, who originally wanted them to be kept confidential.

“I’m really upset that they knew about this in August and never told anybody," Graham said. "I’m really upset that Dianne Feinstein believed this was a credible allegation, that she wouldn’t do Mr. Judge Kavanaugh the service of saying, ‘I’ve got this, what’s your side of the story?’"

Graham also cast doubt on Ford's allegations during his remarks, calling them uncorroborated.

Ford has said that Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed during a party, tried to remove her clothes and put his hand over her mouth as she attempted to yell for help.

“I’ve been a judge, a prosecutor and a defense attorney, and here’s what I’ll tell you. When it comes to where it happened, I still don’t know. I don’t know when it happened. She said she’s 100 percent certain it did happen. I’ll bet you Judge Kavanagh will say, ‘I’m 100 percent sure I didn’t do it,'" Graham said.

He added that "if this is enough, God help anybody else who gets nominated."

"Based on what I heard today you could not get a search warrant or an arrest warrant because you don’t know the location, you don’t know the time, and you don’t have any corroboration," he said. He also said the FBI would not be able to investigate based on the information Ford provided. The FBI is not investigating the claim because it does not involve a federal crime.

Graham has been a strong advocate of Kavanaugh even as several sexual misconduct allegations have been made against the nominee. The South Carolina senator has been among the Republicans who question why the accusers didn't come forward sooner and has suggested the allegations are part of a coordinated "smear" against Kavanaugh.

Kavanaugh during his testimony before the committee is expected to deny Ford's accusations as well as the sexual misconduct accusations against him made this week by Deborah Ramirez and Julie Swetnick.

angry white male privilege personified

Trump tol him to get mad....never back down..

good riddance.

... THIS BUFFALO WILD WINGS WILL NOT RECEIVE MY PATRONAGE ANY LONGER!

but it'll be wiser on her part to let this dude implode on his own. Or at least play chess with him so that she leads him to giving himself L's rather than try to overtly go in guns blazing.

----------

IG @h_n_z

he used that back in the day to keep his mother from finding out where he was getting drunk

cringe
tear
howl
tear
pauses

Oh yeah! I had girls as friends because I didn't have a sister.

cringe
tear
howl
tear
pause
drink water

Trump told this bamma that tears would help make him more believable.

Even before all this, he was criticized over temperament and anger.

Does yelling at specific senators, and crying about how much he cares about his calendar, really help his case?

Anger, emotion, the GOP victim complex is probably the only way to hold the Trumpy Republicans together. But it hurts his case with Collins, Murkowski, Flake, Corker, Heitkamp, McCaskill, Tester, Nelson, Manchin, ... He will need at least a couple of these people, and he's been waving them away.

>
>Even before all this, he was criticized over temperament and
>anger.
>
>Does yelling at specific senators, and crying about how much
>he cares about his calendar, really help his case?
>
>Anger, emotion, the GOP victim complex is probably the only
>way to hold the Trumpy Republicans together. But it hurts his
>case with Collins, Murkowski, Flake, Corker, Heitkamp,
>McCaskill, Tester, Nelson, Manchin, ... He will need at least
>a couple of these people, and he's been waving them away.
>

was involved in the process for coaching dude through this, no? If so, what an abject failure.

He might have stepped away when he was named to the Senate.

But yeah, he was the main guy training him for earlier hearings.

It would be an understatement to say that the mood has changed since then, though.

This nigga crying too much to not have done what Dr. Ford's accused him of.

Mofo acting like the person he is today has something to do with the no-pussy getting, per his own words, teen he was.

You aint' going to jail, B!

You just won't be on the Supreme Court. And sure, you may lose some of your friends who invite you to nice parties where they serve bread with no crust and mayo dip.

He seems off, something aint right. Nervous is one thing but this man crying over calendars

after having drank to the fullest on the blood-alcohol limit chart.

This shit is writing itself!

I am cracking up at some of this as I"m listening to it like it's already an SNL sketch.

He crossed out lifting weights! lol and the whole 'we drank, guys drank, girls drank, I like drinking, I still like drinking' bit was a mess.

He says "whatever it says on the charts."

And that's supposed to help his case that he was never blackout drunk?

before.

She's had to live with the reality of what happened her entire life. He's had the luxury of being able to forget and move on to the next girl he was going to do this to.

https://goo.gl/images/jBz683

it going to be a no

I've never heard ground use as a past tense for that kind of grinding before lol, had it sounding like he placed his nuts in a coffee grinder.

fuck it

GROUND your genitals on Dr. Ford?

Which is as it should be, but I'll bet it's not when they were expecting.

Everyone's been talking about how ineffective she was with Ford, but now she's sounding more serious with him.

Some of it's the optics of it all, the fact that he's coming in red-faced and angry, the fact that he's the one against whom accusations have been made, the fact that she's in the business of prosecuting sex criminals.

But this was a risk the GOP senators didn't seem to see. Senators know how to give softball questions. Prosecutors aren't as into that. I'm honestly surprised they didn't go back to having GOP senators do the questioning for him.

>I'm honestly surprised they didn't go
>back to having GOP senators do the questioning for him.

I didn't think:

a)they'd have a line of "this would look bad"
b)this is where they'd draw it

in his 30s
what a weak fuck

This is who Trump nominated and the guy's doing EXACTLY what Trump would do in the same situation.

85% of Republicans approve of Trump - they'll approve this too.

This dude is on the court, no doubt in my mind.

I mean on one hand, he's playing this how Trump would - deny, deny, deny. No morsel of the truth.

On the other, he IS tearing up a lot.

But I agree, this shitbag is going to get confirmed.

The chuds are probably loving Kavanaugh even moreso after today.

A red-faced bloviating white guy who looks like he's about to cry-scream at a waiter for being too slow with his mistress' cheesecake and frames everything as a direct attack on his inherent goodness is every single right wing talk radio host. They live for this shit.

Yeah, he's definitely shoring up the base.

But that's now who he needs right now.

is pure high school.

Which they absolutely love.

>A red-faced bloviating white guy who looks like he's about to
>cry-scream at a waiter for being too slow with his mistress'
>cheesecake and frames everything as a direct attack on his
>inherent goodness is every single right wing talk radio host.
>They live for this shit.

sigh at this dude acting like he has a moral high ground

How did @LindseyGrahamSC’s stemwinder during the Kavanaugh hearing play with fellow Rs? When he walked into a meeting of Republican senators post-hearing not long ago, he was greeted with raucous applause.

https://twitter.com/npfandos/status/1045460065703088128

I mean I think he's guilty but these Dems simply don't have enough. Waste of time.

************************

I mean, I don't think he literally shit his pants, so you gotta hand it to him there. His wife *might* even let him sleep on the couch tonight.

So uh, nah.

is they put him up, and he gets voted down.

It could actually be the thing to galvanize their base for the midterms.

I almost wonder if Kavanaugh's rant was meant to play into that dynamic. If the GOP voters come out they could not only hold the Senate but actually GAIN seats there (that's about as likely as D's taking the Senate, I think, even under current conditions), and it wouldn't surprise me if Trump put him forward AGAIN once he finally has votes. I almost wonder if a promise was made to him that it'd happen as long as he effectively plays the victim.

He is so replaceable with someone just a vile but without this baggage, but they might be able to rally the base with him getting shot down.

The best case scenario for dems, isn't happening (shot down, not time for replacement, win senate, stall nomination until 2020) is so remote and unlikely.

I hate to say it but I think Dems might be better off with his tainted butt on the court that they can impeach AFTER they win the Senate because the base is motivated once he gets the appointment.


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

well, duh

Think I'm gonna go listen to some Coltrane and try to ignore this whiny manchild crysplain why he is entitled to control over millions of his compatriots

Which I think was the goal of his performance. In order for him to get confirmed, senators have to think that their electoral prospects won't be hurt. It's business for them, not personal.


They are talking about how he was angry. Seemed authentic. They could relate to how he feels. He put people in their place. Comparing him to Michael Jordan in 1997.

https://twitter.com/ClayTravis/status/1045394057030250498

doesn't look good and I wish they would have done this in a less obvious way.

why are their lines of questioning so repetitive between them?

they should have just all yielded their time to 2 or 3 senators...especially to harris.

and i cant believe they let this dickhead run all over them.

>why are their lines of questioning so repetitive between
>them?
>
>they should have just all yielded their time to 2 or 3
>senators...especially to harris.
>
>and i cant believe they let this dickhead run all over them.

IKR? Hes being questioned and they letting him treat them like less than lol..except Booker.

you can see it on his face.

decades of animosity and vengeance from the bench.

>

Please expound.

>Please expound.

https://twitter.com/rebeccaballhaus/status/1045328308186095616

What did it say? The question was if Kavanaugh watched Ford's testimony, right?

https://twitter.com/akarl_smith/status/1045445322883952642

She caught something in his testimony that contradicts his answer.

No doubt in my mind.

The ONLY thing that could have changed that is Trump going after him, which was....well, beyond a long shot.

Ugly times.

Beginning tomorrow, every nonwhite criminal defendant should demand that, in lieu of an investigation by law enforcement, their case—up to charges of attempted rape—should be handled via a self-serving statement by them and a 6-sentence exculpatory statement by their co-defendant

https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1045451690776891392

>

https://twitter.com/davidenrich/status/1045400578757742593

also

https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1045434842438144002

Not an open and shut case (I certainly don't want to Ed Whelan this story), but there's a record on Kavanaugh's own calendar that could very well be the day all this happened.

“to Timmy’s for skis w/Judge, Tom, PJ, Bernie, Squi.”

Presumably "skis" means "brewskis"

Blasey-Ford said, well before anyone saw the calendar, that Kavanaugh, Judge, and PJ were at the house.

Kavanaugh insisted that this couldn't possibly have happened, because he had alibis on the calendar for every weekend night that summer. And of course it would have HAD to be a weekend, because everybody had summer jobs! The alibi makes sense if you don't spend even a split second to think it over. But then if you do think it over, you realize (a) high schooler's jobs aren't 9 to 5 weekdays (Kavanaugh mowed lawns! Judge bagged groceries.), and (b) really, high schoolers would never go to work hungover? (Judge said in his book that he routinely did just that.)

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/09/brett-kavanaughs-calendar-for-july-1-1982-go-to-timmys-for-skis-with-judge.html

https://twitter.com/SenBobCorker/status/1045475440528412678


Donnelly, Manchin, Murkowski and Collins are all expected to vote the same way, per senators and aides

https://twitter.com/burgessev/status/1045482455078236163


A source close to Senator Manchin tells me now, "Short of claims that definitively prove Dr. Ford's allegations or a realization that Kavanaugh will gut the healthcare law, Manchin will side with the overwhelming number of people in WV who want Kavanaugh confirmed."

https://twitter.com/elainaplott/status/1045478279220797440

George W. Bush has called several moderate Republican senators and Manchin to whip votes for Kavanaugh, per people briefed. Trump, who doesn’t like Bush, has far less sway with the key voters.

https://twitter.com/jdawsey1/status/1045505280086331393

Make me so fucking angry.

There's a nonzero chance that when Trump leaves office, he still won't be worse than Bush.

Flake Will Vote to Confirm Judge Kavanaugh

https://twitter.com/seungminkim/status/1045666167900327937

cushy lobbying job where he never has to think about what he's done.

A sexual assault survivor just confronted Jeff Flake (who just announced he's voting for Kavanaugh): "Don't look away from me! Look at me and tell me that it doesn't matter what happened to me, that you will let people like that go into the highest court of the land"

https://twitter.com/davidmackau/status/1045669475524038656

(longer video)
https://twitter.com/RobertMaguire_/status/1045670584854761472

Jeff Flake stuck in an elevator while being yelled at for something he doesn't really believe in might be peak Jeff Flake

GOP on Judiciary votes down effort to subpoena Mark Judge on a party-line vote, including Flake

https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1045671215418015745

WHAT IS HAPPENING IN JUDICIARY NOW. GOP has clearly instructed their clerk to:

- almost instantly move to votes before Democrats can object.
- keep reading the roll call over them if Dems attempt to speak
- if Democrats pause to not vote, their vote will not be recorded.

https://twitter.com/LisaDNews/status/1045671805590163456

Dudes up above saying he’s going to lose his
current job, etc.

I fell for it. Having election flashbacks and shit.


Fucking awful.

I’m happy the Dems finally fought, but damn
they really fucked it up at the end.

>I’m happy the Dems finally fought, but damn
>they really fucked it up at the end.
>
>
>

Just wish they would have been more coordinated
on questioning Bart and I wish they had immediately
called him out for his behavior yesterday....

and will still get every R to vote for him.

I personally wanted to see the whole Ed Whelan thing explored more, but I don't think it would've actually swayed any Rs in the Senate. They called Rachel Mitchell off because (paraphrasing their own words) "she wasn't advancing our message the way we wanted." They were never going to be swayed.

The American Bar Association—whose “well qualified” rating has been cited by Kavanaugh—calls on the Senate to delay a vote on his SCOTUS nomination until after the @FBI conducts a background check on the Ford allegations.

https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/1045522659386314753

Dean Gerken Joins the ABA in Calling for Further Investigation.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DoMQ6Q9XsAA_lwc.jpg

https://twitter.com/YaleLawSch/status/1045698389961318400

ABA says it is reopening evaluation of Kavanaugh’s well-qualified rating, which the GOP hailed during confirmation process. It says it is evaluating “temperament” issues

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dov-nJfX0AEZWca.jpg

https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1048211299304443905

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OItl7xZgEgA


that coward still is going to vote to confirm..but this just shows the cowardice of these clowns

this combined with Cheeto hating the FBI really could be detrimental

I haven't felt this much disdain for 'murica in a while

probably since the 16' election

I know, I know...plenty of other $hit to be upset about

But...this just has me all types of defeated

300M people...and this is the guy that we're stuck with for the rest of our lives

WTF

>I haven't felt this much disdain for 'murica in a while
>
>probably since the 16' election
>
>I know, I know...plenty of other $hit to be upset about
>
>But...this just has me all types of defeated
>
>300M people...and this is the guy that we're stuck with for
>the rest of our lives
>
>WTF


^^^I feel the same way.

I saw a tweet last week (can't find it now) that said, if there's one thing the GOP learned from the Anita Hill hearing is that Clarence Thomas is on the SC.

^^^That was a punch to the gut.

policy or overall approach to governance.

It's reality. We can't agree on the concept of reality.

I don't know how you come back from that as a country. Maybe we shouldn't, I don't know. But it's hard not to feel permanently defeated.

Next few weeks are going to be fun. Lindsey Graham talking about if he is the Judiciary chair there will be a new process for judges.

There are so many other issues at stake. The Kavanaugh-Kennedy-Trump connection has not even been explored by the Senate. The all out assault on the government by the Trump administration is not just about Blasey-Ford, it's about the future of the country.

Republicans haven't cared about norms, or the good of the country, or compromise, etc since at least 2000.

Probably started with the Clinton sh!t (and I'm no Clinton defender, but...)


We all need to stop expecting/hoping that any Republican official will do what's right.


Every optimistic thought in here (no way he gets out of committee, he might f*ck around and lose his current job, he just sunk his nomination, etc)

Every single statement like that- assumes that a couple Republican officials will do what is right.


And everyone in here needs to stop doing that. It becomes like an echo chamber where we convince ourselves and each other that we know what is going to happen and that things aren't as bad as they are.


Only hope I see is massive Dem wins in 18 and 20...and then the Dems have to let go of norms as well. They need to fight just as dirty- impeach Bart, pack the court, expand voting rights- any and all ideas to defeat Republicans permanently need to be on the table.

>Only hope I see is massive Dem wins in 18 and 20...and then
>the Dems have to let go of norms as well. They need to fight
>just as dirty- impeach Bart, pack the court, expand voting
>rights- any and all ideas to defeat Republicans permanently
>need to be on the table.

I'm kinda not kidding. Even if it's not an arms war but just an all out political uprising on behalf of good people everywhere I want it. Make these serpents suffer for their misdeeds however it has to happen.

Telling people to stop being optimistic, etc

I thought "Cmon Brew, maybe this time..."

Nope


You were right. All of us need to stop tricking ourselves/each other.


I wouldn't say this is worse than the election cuz there was so much shock that night

But its damn close.

>
>Telling people to stop being optimistic, etc
>
>I thought "Cmon Brew, maybe this time..."
>
>Nope
>
>
>You were right. All of us need to stop tricking
>ourselves/each other.
>
>
>I wouldn't say this is worse than the election cuz there was
>so much shock that night
>
>But its damn close.

That's the thing. The election was the catalyst for all of this. So yea - the election is far worse just because had *that* not happened, then this (and the last 2 fucking years of horror) would not have been possible.

But yea to your point - this is a lifetime of fucked. I don't know how we come back from this during our lifetime. And it's only gonna get worse from here. As hard as I try to avoid the emotional highs and lows, when something like *this* happens it's hard not to feel that utterly hopeless pit in my stomach ... like "why bother." My life is pretty damn good on a personal level but the events of the last 2 years (on top of the 8 years of Bush, which helped lead to this) really hit me in a way I can't really explain. I know we all feel the same way.

But then you remember all the "tree of liberty" talk from the right when Obama was president and how their elected officials encouraged it.

They're ready for it.

There is nothing like what would occur if this were to happen which is why it should always be avoided. The wars we are engaged in and the rhetoric around them have changed the people of this country. Every war has been in this country's psyche and historical memory.
The Pentagon's generals and the lawyer-warriors in the Republican white supremacist movement feel like they can dictate to the white working class what is and isn't cruel, demeaning, and offensive. But the people who have actually fought and survived these wars and have seen the destruction and demoralization associated with them are more aware than any that their leadership is not telling the whole truth. They see how the white supremacists treat the soldiers once they return. They are not totally immune to the truth, which is why the support for the Iraq War went down in 2006. It's why they wonder now, what really is the goal in Afghanistan. They want to retract from being the world's police as well. There are other factions at work who are pushing these people towards these extremist positions and they are the ones who want war but aren't willing to fight it.

>I'm kinda not kidding. Even if it's not an arms war but just
>an all out political uprising on behalf of good people
>everywhere I want it. Make these serpents suffer for their
>misdeeds however it has to happen.

finish the job that Sherman was kept from doing because of moderation.

>RE: I actually want to see some of these red states burning.

I would not miss a single one of my conservative acquaintances. Fuck them all, the world would be a FAR better place with them gone.

And yea - I'd like to watch it happen. I'd love to personally witness someone like Lindsay Graham shot in both kneecaps then his forehead. Same with the lot of them. Repugnantcans are truly soulless, spineless, hopeless pieces of shit with zero redeeming qualities. They make the world a worse place for everyone.

Can my name be scrubbed off of this post?

These are the posts we see on the news. Full on crazy up in here

you can either be scared, or realize this is the place we're in now.

"I'd love to personally witness someone like Lindsay Graham shot in both kneecaps then his forehead."

http://i.imgur.com/c7c8aDx.jpg

yeah that's definitely not it

I'm definitely not that, at this point.

these people and the ideas behind them need to be eliminated, no matter the cost.

because they deserve to have the same education, healthcare, housing, and right to make a living as anyone else. There is always a chance for redemption for these people and I think that if the leadership of this country actually tried to go into these communities and provide positive alternatives to hate, anti-intellectualism, greed, envy, and division, there would actually be positive results.

>because they deserve to have the same education, healthcare,
>housing, and right to make a living as anyone else. There is
>always a chance for redemption for these people and I think
>that if the leadership of this country actually tried to go
>into these communities and provide positive alternatives to
>hate, anti-intellectualism, greed, envy, and division, there
>would actually be positive results.

that culture war sitting atop the policy is an obstacle of which I see few alternatives to clearing.

there is no such thing.

anything to the right of (and in some cases, including) Bill Clinton is illegitimate, bankrupt, bereft of any sort of integrity.

right-wing politics is tantamount to rape.

John McCain - spineless, all talk. Good riddance.
Collins, Murkowski, Donnelly, Corker, Flake ... spineless worthless pieces of (allegedly) human (definitely) shit. Fuck them all.

>RE: let this be the end of the myth of the 'good conservative'
>there is no such thing.
>
>anything to the right of (and in some cases, including) Bill
>Clinton is illegitimate, bankrupt, bereft of any sort of
>integrity.
>
>right-wing politics is tantamount to rape.

first bringing palin to the table then they tryin to make it look like hes the lone maverick that went against trump...HOW IS THAT WHEN HE STILL VOTED FOR HIM??

... but fucking grandstanded everywhere about cabinet appointments, policy votes, etc... then voted with Trump every. Damn. Time.

Useless fuck.

But yea - the POW shit, credit where due ... but you nailed it. Fuck everything else about him.

you constantly argue about some swamp being filled with elitists but this man who comes from an elite family and went to elite prep schools and elite ivy league schools and is filled with such a deep sense of entitlement that he will cry and shout at elected leadership, a man who doesn't give a damn about you or your children, this is who you fight for? conservatism has always been a misnomer for their brand of neo-confederacy but the idea that these aristocratic assholes are somehow legitimate bearers of an ideology beyond self aggrandizement is what makes me wonder why they would fight for these people.

We shouldn't forget that Clinton's sexual misdeeds went essentially unchecked, save for an impeachment hearing that ended ultimately in a decision to not remove. The problem is he should have never even been ELECTED.

So while it is a tired deflection, "what about Clinton?" is pretty fucking strong.

For Hillary to be a meat grinder to all of Bill's accusers/mistresses did her no favors. She'd have earned the respect of many more people, but I suspected long ago that their marriage was a power play with the proviso to him "don't embarrass me"

And as someone alluded to above, Joe Biden had no problem keeping Anita Hill's claims at bay and allowing the biggest slap in the face to replace Justice Marshall on the court.

That being said, all the feelings don't mean a goddamn thing. Use the right that those non-felony convicted citizens over 18 have. It is not perfect, not pure, republicans suck, democrats suck, but voting DOES BEAR CONSEQUENCES.

To all the patriots who were protesting by sitting out the last vote because of the poor "selection," there is no other generation lasting and impacting act as a judicial appointment. If that is the ONLY reason you vote for someone (it was for me), that is a GREAT one, actually the BEST one.
And while the dems and repubs are the two major crime families of America rather than political parties and need eradicating, THIS wasn't the time. WE KNEW one seat on the court was up for grabs. You can't make no principled stand on that shit!! Everything else can be executive ordered or legislatively replaced/amended. This shit is for life. If you think impeachment of him AFTER getting on the bench will be easy, i wish you good luck on your journey.

I wasn't close to excited to vote in 2016. But I knew the stakes if Agent Orange had the ability to shape the federal bench.

So, as the next piece of news sucks away the housefly attention span, remember that every November, stand the fuck up. There needs to be a new party that actually represents the will and needs of people of color, women, and others in search of a more just and equitable nation, but PAY ATTENTION. Sometimes you gotta play fucking chess with this shit. SUPREME COURT NOMINATIONS, UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE, ARE ALWAYS A THIS SIDE OR THAT SIDE TYPE OF VOTE.

Because people on our side STILL need to be reminded of how important the judiciary is. I would've thought Bush v Gore changed that forever, but two years ago some of the same people mad today said voting for Hillary because SCOTUS was "political blackmail."

I want to believe this time will be different, but I know it won't.

why do people who generally recognize that Bill Clinton was a sexual harasser and is an accused of rape, keep bringing up voting in the 2016 election as a cudgel to people who sat out the election?

>why do people who generally recognize that Bill Clinton was a
>sexual harasser and is an accused of rape, keep bringing up
>voting in the 2016 election as a cudgel to people who sat out
>the election?

and because in a dirty game like politics, where the stakes affect all three branches of government, there is the need to compromise.

sitting out is brought up as a rebuttal for those people who sat out and are openly outraged, terrified, despondent, etc.
their refusal to pick a side where they knew what certain stakes were played a role in that.

if someone who sat out isn't really that put out one way or the other because they say damn the system, then cool. but don't come with this powerless rage just because the power wasn't properly aimed.

That's true. However the dirty game of politics is what makes it even more confusing as to why one would think that Bill wouldn't taint Hillary.

Mark Judge, who allegedly witnessed Ford's assault, told the Senate Judiciary Committee that due to depression and anxiety, "I avoid public speaking." Yet his author page lists him as "available for media and speaking engagements." More on Judge here:

https://t.co/MKYyba5vAB

https://twitter.com/johnkruzel/status/1045715441837101056



New from @RonanFarrow and me: E-mails Show That Republican Senate Staff Stymied a Kavanaugh Accuser’s Effort to Give Testimony

https://t.co/iK2eql8AWA

https://twitter.com/JaneMayerNYer/status/1045675179366653953

Asked why GOP doesn't just give it another week on Kavanaugh, former WH aide Marc Short calls it "another week where people could come forward with unsubstantiated allegations.”

https://twitter.com/AaronBlake/status/1045729597009088512

Flake mightve flaked on em

He probably is just playing hard ball for a higher salary from whichever conservative consulting firm he is going to work with and is using his vote for leverage.

She'll have accomplished more than all of the earnest attempts to appeal to the "decent conservatives" did in one minute.

Jeff Flake says that he thinks it would be proper to delay the floor vote for up to a week to let the FBI investigate.

https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1045732914749730816

>

Or is it all dependent on a promise from McConnell?

they aint got no choice

in the committee.

He basically punted to McConnell (lol lol lol) and a few other moderates to join him on this request.

Or did I read something wrong?

If he knows he has them, he'll put it to a floor vote ASAP. No investigation necessary.

If he thinks he's dependent on Flake to get to 50, then he might be at his mercy. Or McConnell might just play chicken and put it to a vote anyway and see if Flake has gut to defy him

couldn't Flake have used the 'Yes' vote he gave today as leverage to pursue the FBI investigation? It seems to me he gave away any possible leverage he had if he felt the FBI investigation was so necessary.

I don't get it.

>couldn't Flake have used the 'Yes' vote he gave today as
>leverage to pursue the FBI investigation? It seems to me he
>gave away any possible leverage he had if he felt the FBI
>investigation was so necessary.
>
>I don't get it.

Vintage Jeff Flake. Heroically giving proven bad-faith dealers the chance to do the right thing, as though he wasn't in a position of power himself.

to celebrate a conservative, when he could have ensured an FBI investigation in committee.

AND he isn't even running for reelection, so he has no reason to fear Trumpsters.


The only hope now/still is that a few more moderates do the same and call for an investigation.


Seems like people are jumping to assume the best PLUS the headlines that I'm seeing are misleading

Nothing is going to happen.

Collins is still waiting for McConnell to follow through on his promise after she voted for the tax cuts.

Please GOP by moving it to a floor vote. Please Dems by making it seem like he's calling for an investigation. There's no guarantee that once the vote is there for the floor an investigation takes place.

In case you're confused, any hope of the Senate doing the right thing on Kavanaugh's confirmation vote relies on Mitch McConnell doing the right thing, which of course he won't.

And you can thank Sen. Jeff Flake for that, because he voted for it.

https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/1045738802017423360


Sen. Klobachar: If Flake is joined by one or two other Republicans in his request, then they won't have the votes to confirm Kavanaugh unless there is an FBI investigation. It's as simple as that.

https://twitter.com/KenDilanianNBC/status/1045736767406657538


Sen. Coons says proposed agreement would see FBI investigate allegations of Ford "and others" over next 7 days (*and others*)

https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1045739816988659714

Do we actually have anything real? Or is this all based on IF they decide they want an investigation?

McConnell could take it straight to the floor if he wanted. Even if Kavanaugh was voted down in committee.

Clarence Thomas didn't get a favorable recommendation in the committee, but got voted in on the floor.

>couldn't Flake have used the 'Yes' vote he gave today as
>leverage to pursue the FBI investigation? It seems to me he
>gave away any possible leverage he had if he felt the FBI
>investigation was so necessary.
>
>I don't get it.

>McConnell could take it straight to the floor if he wanted.
>Even if Kavanaugh was voted down in committee.
>
>Clarence Thomas didn't get a favorable recommendation in the
>committee, but got voted in on the floor.

Thanks for the key bit of info. I believe McConnell plans to keep the Senate open for the weekend for the very purpose of voting Kavanaugh in. Should be interesting to see how this all goes down.

But Kavanaugh isn’t his pick so...maybe.

But probably not.

Life is meaningless!

like 'here Mitch, you do it'.

At this point, after what i witnessed this week, i have no faith that this shit is going to end well.

That being said, i respect the fight at least.

Since they get to write the history

... America's been "winning" for 300 years but we can still see through our own bullshit, know what I mean. Like everyone knows that right wing/conservative policies are terrible and always have been, and even though they've always been dominant and have typically been winning and therefore writing the history, the "right side of history" is still always the folks who are progressive and value people.

I hope that makes sense. I feel like it doesn't read as well on the page as it does in my head.

Particularly for something like this. There are foul dudes on both sides of the aisle and if there's any ambiguity about what actually happened, we base our belief in them on whether they're on "our team" or the other. see: William Jefferson Clinton

>Particularly for something like this. There are foul dudes on
>both sides of the aisle and if there's any ambiguity about
>what actually happened, we base our belief in them on whether
>they're on "our team" or the other. see: William Jefferson
>Clinton

... that folks on the left are at least willing to ACKNOWLEDGE Clinton's transgressions even if they're willing to overlook them.

Repugs will outright tell us their people aren't terrible human beings when the evidence is right in front of our faces. Insulting our intelligence and shit.

Plus I wouldn't really compare what Clinton did (consensual affairs) with what Kav's accused of doing.

So nah I can't really ride with the "both sides" argument. We are *not* the same. I used to try and do that diplomatic shit but Repugs aren't really redeemable at this point.

it happened many years ago. People were on drugs while having sex back then, plus boys will be boys. Plus, why did she wait all of those years if anything did happen? Where are the facts? It is all hearsay.

But DO believe the women who accused Cosby. Let Cosby rot and die in jail and let him, as well as people who look like him, be the face of rape. When people think of rape, a famous Black face will be synonymous with that word.

White supremacy is fantastic.

The original 'Birth of a Nation' had it right. Blacks are out hear raping and we need the Klan to come in and save the day. This is what it boils down to.

45, a supreme court justice, and countless others out here chillin'. I can't truly get behind feminism until it is just more than Black faces that get punished. White dudes get slaps on the wrist. Feminists have roots in white supremacy; sometimes they may use Black women to advance their own agenda. The same way Fox news use Larry Elders, Jason Whitlock, Candace Owens,etc. to push their own agenda.

This year has been sickening.

https://i.imgur.com/3Z3sTMu.jpg

there wasnt crazy drugs back then..lol...lotta drinking..i can remember 1983,84,85 pretty clearly

>it happened many years ago. People were on drugs while having
>sex back then, plus boys will be boys. Plus, why did she wait
>all of those years if anything did happen? Where are the
>facts? It is all hearsay.
>
>

Cops protect power. They're not interested in the truth, and aren't going to bail us out.

>Cops protect power. They're not interested in the truth, and
>aren't going to bail us out.

regarding Russia has to be of the most amazing displays of cognitive dissonance, ever. the FBI, a gang of liberal conspirators.

I've read that the Senate can't function unless at least 2 minority party members are present.

Is that true?

If so, this is the type of "playing dirty" I'm talking about.


If Mitch tries to ignore Flakes half-assed request and tries to hold a vote Saturday, they should be no shows and say "even members of your own party want an investigation, lets do our job"

or...something.


As far as how that might "play" in the mid-terms, that ship has sailed. Both bases are pissed now, may as well go all in.

Nothing about parties.

Also, stuff like this is what the Sergant at Arms is for. They can compel senators to appear.


>
>I've read that the Senate can't function unless at least 2
>minority party members are present.
>
>Is that true?
>
>If so, this is the type of "playing dirty" I'm talking about.
>
>
>
>If Mitch tries to ignore Flakes half-assed request and tries
>to hold a vote Saturday, they should be no shows and say "even
>members of your own party want an investigation, lets do our
>job"
>
>or...something.
>
>
>As far as how that might "play" in the mid-terms, that ship
>has sailed. Both bases are pissed now, may as well go all in.
>

I should know better than to trust some random tweet, but thank you.

MURKOWSKI tells me she spoke with Flake before he made his decision in Judiciary committee and they are in agreement. She says she supports having an FBI investigation that is “limited in scope”

https://twitter.com/byrdinator/status/1045742787227013122

Joe Manchin says that he supports Jeff Flake's call for a delay and FBI investigation.

https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1045750534739619840

Kavanaugh friend Mark Judge says he'll cooperate with any law enforcement agency that investigates 'confidentially.'

https://twitter.com/AP/status/1045753235129200641

He did it. It's obvious that he did it. But it was already obvious from what was established in committee. The Republicans sticking by him are either (to be very generous) oblivious, or (to be honest) they simply don't care.

But the case depends on a certain amount of circumstantial evidence, evidence that will be specifically ignored by the "limited-scope" inquiry that McConnell and Trump set up.

Everyone's been saying the investigation into Anita Hill's accusations took only three days. That's true. And also, it was *inconclusive*, because it was so limited in scope and duration.

Clarence Thomas was also obviously guilty, maybe not in a legally prosecutable sense, but a confirmation hearing isn't a prosecution. But it didn't matter that he was guilty. That investigation wasn't a search for truth, it was an excuse for ignorance. And this will be too.

What MIGHT matter is if voters and victims make their voices heard between now and then. This decision will lie with Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Joe Manchin, Heidi Heitkamp, and Jeff Flake. My guess is Flake will flake, so those other four need to find some humanity.

his behavior during the hearing, etc.

The assaults alone should be enough.


However, there is so much more.


I really doubt a lawyer or witness in Bart's courtroom could have acted the way he acted yesterday.

And he has been caught red handed in multiple (though some silly) lies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOuZddmhzko

>his behavior during the hearing, etc.
>
>The assaults alone should be enough.
>
>
>However, there is so much more.
>
>
>I really doubt a lawyer or witness in Bart's courtroom could
>have acted the way he acted yesterday.
>
>And he has been caught red handed in multiple (though some
>silly) lies.
>
>

Senate Judiciary Cmte. says it will request Trump admin. to instruct FBI to conduct a supplemental FBI background investigation on Kavanaugh nomination "limited to current credible allegations against the nominee and must be completed no later than one week from today."

https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1045765296181653505

Emerging from McConnell’s office, GOP senators made clear that the FBI will determine what constitutes “credible” allegations against Kavanaugh - and how many accusers that entails. Also McConnell would wait to file cloture once FBI report is submitted to Hill and WH, they said

https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1045783948700332032

As a constituent of hers, she can be pretty frustrating with her "what's important is we follow a bipartisan process that works for everyone" stuff sometimes (though I'll concede that attitude plays really well with voters when she's up for reelection.)

She's clearly pissed off and let everyone know it these past two days, clearly laying out WHY Kavanaugh hiding from an investigation is bullshit as plainly as possible.

I had to avoid this thread with all the pessimism, even though I started it.

I believe Kavanaugh drops out when the first whiff of the report being negative for him come.

And I guarantee it will be negative.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BoQ3RYIFEGB/

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/us/politics/jeff-flake-kavanaugh-confirmation.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

A Tumultuous 24 Hours: How Jeff Flake Delayed a Vote on Kavanaugh
By Michael D. Shear, Nicholas Fandos and Michael S. Schmidt
Sept. 28, 2018

WASHINGTON — Surrounded by his colleagues in a cramped corridor behind the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Jeff Flake was in agony, getting pounded on all sides.

He had already released a statement that he would vote “yes” in the committee and advance Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court to the full Senate floor. But two angry and tearful women had confronted him soon afterward in a Senate elevator, accusing him of telling girls that “assault doesn’t matter.”

Now, as the committee was on the verge of approving the nomination, Mr. Flake, Republican of Arizona, was having second thoughts, according to a half-dozen lawmakers and Senate staff aides who witnessed the scene. Why not accept Democratic demands for a one-week delay in the confirmation vote, he asked his fellow senators, and reopen an F.B.I. background investigation into sexual misconduct accusations against Judge Kavanaugh?

Republicans crowded around him, alarmed. Senators Thom Tillis of North Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas implored him not to waver. This is just a delaying tactic, they said, and would only lead to more allegations that they believed to be false, hurting the judge’s family.

Democrats were on the other side, coaxing him to put off the vote. Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, a longtime friend, broke in: This is a mess, he said, and to lift the cloud over Judge Kavanaugh, an investigation was necessary.

But what could really be done in a week? There was a scramble to call Christopher Wray, the F.B.I. director, who could not be reached. The second choice was Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general.

Mr. Coons and Mr. Flake squeezed into an oversize phone booth — a few still exist on Capitol Hill — to make the call. They needed privacy rather than a landline, so held a cellphone on speaker between them. Mr. Rosenstein told them the F.B.I. could complete a background check in a week, although it was unlikely to unearth much more than was already known.

Minutes later, Mr. Flake, a pained expression on his face, returned to the committee room and made the announcement ensuring that the F.B.I. investigation would go forward — and once again upending Washington.

Trump Thinks It’s Over

The drama began 24 hours earlier, right after Christine Blasey Ford told the committee that she was sexually assaulted by Judge Kavanaugh when she was 15 years old. President Trump, aides said, believed she was persuasive and informed the aides that he believed the judge’s confirmation was in jeopardy. Maybe, he said, the F.B.I. should spend a week to investigate the accusations as Democrats were demanding.

Some of the aides pushed back on Mr. Trump, including the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, who saw the investigation as a delay tactic cooked up by the Democrats to give them more time to dig up dirt on Judge Kavanaugh.

Mr. Trump heeded the advice, and in a rare moment of political restraint, his Twitter feed stayed quiet.

The strategy worked.

That afternoon Judge Kavanaugh delivered a fiery and emotional defense of his own character, prompting what looked by Thursday night to be unstoppable political momentum toward his confirmation to the Supreme Court.

Mr. Trump, who just hours earlier had appeared defeated to his aides, triumphantly tweeted after Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and the chairman of the judiciary committee, gaveled the hearing to a close.

“Democrats’ search and destroy strategy is disgraceful and this process has been a total sham and effort to delay, obstruct, and resist,” Mr. Trump wrote. “The Senate must vote!”

The president’s Republican allies on Capitol Hill were determined and confident. After a meeting of Republican senators late Thursday, Mr. Grassley scheduled a 9:30 a.m. hearing for Friday. Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, began talking about a final vote early next week.

But the first evidence of a possible revolt came that same evening. As the president celebrated Judge Kavanaugh’s performance, Mr. Flake slipped away to the office of Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine. He huddled there with Ms. Collins, Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, and Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia.

All four had publicly expressed angst about deciding Judge Kavanaugh’s fate. In a Senate divided by the narrowest of margins — 51 Republicans and 49 Democrats — it would take only two of the Republicans to stop his nomination.

But what to do was not clear.

They knew that Dr. Blasey, a research psychologist, had captured the nation’s attention with a credible and heart-rending story that, if true, should disqualify anyone from service on the nation’s highest court. Yet Judge Kavanaugh’s angry proclamations of innocence and tearful pleas for fairness could not be ignored either.

The decision was wrenching, even before considering the politics. A vote to put Judge Kavanaugh on the bench could infuriate women — the very demographic Republicans were already struggling with in the midterm elections. But blocking his nomination to the Supreme Court would be like declaring civil war on conservatives.

The group made no final decisions, and Ms. Collins and Ms. Murkowski avoided reporters as they left the Capitol later that night. Senator Manchin told reporters that the group had concerns about moving forward with the nomination, but did not elaborate.

Mr. Flake went home for what he later described as a sleepless night. He said his struggle to come to a decision was “awful.”

“I want to support him. I’m a conservative, he’s a conservative judge,” Mr. Flake said. “But I want a process we can be proud of and I think the country needs to be behind it.”

‘Look at Me’

By 9:29 a.m. Friday, one minute before the scheduled start of the Judiciary Committee meeting, Mr. Flake’s office sent a statement by email with a subject line that left no doubt about his position: “Flake Will Vote to Confirm Judge Kavanaugh.”

But moments later, as he boarded an elevator on his way to the meeting, Mr. Flake was confronted by two women, Ana Maria Archila and Maria Gallagher. The video of the encounter went viral.

“I have two children,” one of the women yelled at Mr. Flake as an aide said he needed to go. “I cannot imagine that for the next 50 years they will have to have someone in the Supreme Court who has been accused of violating a young girl. What are you doing, sir?”

Mr. Flake looked dejectedly at the floor of the elevator as the second woman lectured him. “You are telling all women that they don’t matter, that they should just stay quiet because if they tell you what happened to them, you are going to ignore them,” she shouted. “That’s what happened to me.”

“Look at me when I’m talking to you,” she added.

Mr. Flake’s face was grim as he arrived in the committee room and took his seat on the right flank of the dais.

Democrats made a motion to subpoena more witnesses to the sexual misconduct accusations, but that was defeated, 11 to 10, with Mr. Flake’s support. The senators began offering their statements. Republicans said they were encouraged to be moving Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination forward, to an expected vote early next week. Democrats assailed the process, again insisting on a one-week delay and an F.B.I. investigation.

Almost three hours passed before Mr. Flake — looking increasingly uncomfortable — and Mr. Coons slipped out of the hearing room to begin discussing a possible delay. Senators crowded around, and the arguments continued as Mr. Flake made his decision.

Quickly, he held a conference call with Ms. Collins and Ms. Murkowski to ensure that he still had their support and that they agreed to a one-week delay. They did.

Accepting a Delay

Mr. Flake returned to the committee room and announced his intention: He wanted a one-week delay for an investigation but said, “I will vote to advance this bill to the floor.”

Democrats were initially confused, and some objected. It took a few minutes for the reality to sink in: Mr. Flake had given the Republicans the majority they needed to advance Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination. But with some help from his like-minded Republican colleagues from the previous night’s meeting, he also had the power to hold up a final vote until an F.B.I. inquiry could be conducted.

In a meeting Friday afternoon with members of the Judiciary Committee, Mr. McConnell vented. Make no mistake about it, he said, more accusations, false ones, will emerge while we wait on this. But in the end, he had to accept the delay.

So did Mr. Trump. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, posted a statement from the president to her Twitter feed at 4:56 p.m. Friday.

“I’ve ordered the FBI to conduct a supplemental investigation to update Judge Kavanaugh’s file,” Mr. Trump said in the statement. He had been pushed into doing what he mused about 24 hours earlier.

“As the Senate has requested,” Mr. Trump said, “this update must be limited in scope and completed in less than one week.”

https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1045683641416802310

these folks got all the money and power in the world and still feel oppressed.

>

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DoRS9L1XkAECEkp.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DoMBzUSWkAIdTyQ.jpg

Bruce MacKinnon

https://twitter.com/CH_Cartoon

"i feel sorry for men and the mothers of young boys who could end up falsely accused..."


ya its a damn epidemic! all those people falsely accused of rape every day! such a travesty


god i hate the world sometimes

and you really didn't do it, you should be the first one out there SCREAMING for a federal investigation to clear your name... But instead he's lying under oath, throwing tantrums and sulking about beer.

shit


but false accusations of rape arent some epidemic future generations need to be worried about

as long as we take it upon ourselves to not be scumbags, rape and harrass women then we'll be ok


i'd also recommend that any of those mothers worried about their future sons being falsely accused of rape should probably be having a DIFFERENT kind of conversation with their sons

... abused/raped/assaulted/etc. women who are ignored, or disbelieved, or abused further after reporting their abuse, outnumber falsely accused men about 10 trillion to 1. So.

This is the same thing I've always said to these Blue Lives Matter clowns, and their ilk. Sure, people killing cops isn't great. But to use that as the "anti-Black Lives Matter" movement is so backwards on its face. Because minorities harassed/abused/falsely imprisoned/murdered by police outnumber good police killed by citizens 10 trillion to 1.

The main talking point on the right is how would you react if you were falsely accused. You would probably lose your shit too.. and yeah I would but...

unlike most people accused of sexual assault or rape, he has every resource at his disposal to prove his innocence. I cant imagine being falsely accused on that public of a scale and not wanting anything more than I wanted to prove this was bs. Please investigate me because I know I'm innocent, investigate my accusers.. all of it..and thoroughly because I need my family, friends colleagues and the world to know I didn't do this.

But hes more on some overpivlaged brat shit..so either, as someone pointed out has never had to answer for anything in his life, or he knows he did some shit. It seems obvious enough its both.

But yeah... to both your points people trying to act like false accusations is THE problem or anywhere equally common is some horseshit

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/white-house-limits-scope-fbi-s-investigation-allegations-against-brett-n915061

White House limits scope of the FBI's investigation into the allegations against Brett Kavanaugh

The FBI has not been permitted to investigate the claims of Julie Swetnick, a White House official confirmed to NBC News.

by Ken Dilanian, Geoff Bennett, Kristen Welker, Frank Thorp V, Hallie Jackson and Leigh Ann Caldwell / Sep.29.2018 / 3:33 PM CDT


WASHINGTON — The White House is limiting the scope of the FBI’s investigation into the sexual misconduct allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, multiple people briefed on the matter told NBC News.

While the FBI will examine the allegations of Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez, the bureau has not been permitted to investigate the claims of Julie Swetnick, who has accused Kavanaugh of engaging in sexual misconduct at parties while he was a student at Georgetown Preparatory School in the 1980s, those people familiar with the investigation told NBC News. A White House official confirmed that Swetnick's claims will not be pursued as part of the reopened background investigation into Kavanaugh.

Ford said in Senate testimony Thursday that she was "100 percent" certain that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were both in high school. Ramirez alleged that he exposed himself to her when there were students at Yale. Kavanaugh has staunchly denied allegations from Ford, Ramirez and Swetnick.

Instead of investigating Swetnick's claims, the White House counsel’s office has given the FBI a list of witnesses they are permitted to interview, according to several people who discussed the parameters on the condition of anonymity. They characterized the White House instructions as a significant constraint on the FBI investigation and caution that such a limited scope, while not unusual in normal circumstances, may make it difficult to pursue additional leads in a case in which a Supreme Court nominee has been accused of sexual assault.

The limited scope seems to be at odds with what some members of the Senate judiciary seemed to expect when they agreed to give the FBI as much as a week to investigate allegations against Kavanaugh, a federal judge who grew up in the Washington DC area and attended an elite all-boys high school before going on to Yale.

President Donald Trump said on Saturday that the FBI has "free reign" in the investigation. "They’re going to do whatever they have to do," he said. "Whatever it is they do, they’ll be doing — things that we never even thought of. And hopefully at the conclusion everything will be fine."

The president also said he thinks Flake's role in delaying the vote is fine. "Actually this could be a blessing in disguise," Trump continued. "Because having the FBI go out, do a thorough investigation, whether its three days or seven days, I think it’s going to be less than a week. But having them do a thorough investigation, I actually think will be a blessing in disguise. It’ll be a good thing."

"I don't need a backup plan," Trump said, adding that he thinks Kavanaugh is "going to be fine."

Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said Saturday that he supports the week-long scope of the investigation. “The FBI works at the direction of the White House in investigating the background of an administration nominee like Judge Kavanaugh," he told MSNBC's Chris Hayes at Global Citizen Festival in New York. "So it’s the White House Counsel or the president who says, ‘This is the scope of the further investigation.'"

Sen. Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, who led an 11th hour move in the Senate committee for an FBI inquiry, said he thought the bureau would decide how to carry it out. His Democratic colleague Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island said he expected the FBI probe to include "adequate staffing," support from the committee for "rapid immunity and subpoena decisions as needed, plus the ability to investigate claims of a "penchant for drunkenness and inappropriate treatment of women, particularly where specifically related to incidents under investigation."

An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment, referring questions to the White House.

A White House official did not specifically dispute limitations on the scope of the FBI's investigation but denied the White House was “micromanaging” the inquiry.

White House spokesman Raj Shah said that "the scope and duration has been set by the Senate. The White House is letting the FBI agents do what they are trained to do.”

The Senate has only said that supplemental FBI background investigation “be limited to current credible allegations against the nominee and must be completed no later than one week from today.”

White House counsel Don McGahn, who has shepherded Kavanaugh's nomination since President Trump chose him for the high court on July 9, is taking the lead for the White House in dealing with the FBI on the investigation, those involved in the process told NBC News.

A U.S. official briefed on the matter said its not unusual for the White House to set the parameters of an FBI background check for a presidential nominee. The FBI had no choice but to agree to these terms, the sources told NBC News, because it is conducting the background investigation on behalf of the White House.

If the FBI learns of others who can corroborate what the existing witnesses are saying, it is not clear whether agents will be able to contact them under the terms laid out by the White House, the two sources briefed on the matter said.

Some areas are off limits, the sources said.

Investigators plan to meet with Mark Judge, a high school classmate and friend of Kavanaugh's whom Ford named as a witness and participant to her alleged assault.

But as of now, the FBI cannot ask the supermarket that employed Judge for records verifying when he was employed there, one of the sources was told. Ford said in congressional testimony Thursday that those records would help her narrow the time frame of the alleged incident which she recalls happening some time in the summer of 1982 in Montgomery County, Maryland.

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. Those details may be pertinent to investigating claims from Ramirez who described an alleged incident of sexual misconduct she said occurred while Kavanaugh was inebriated. Ramirez's lawyer said Saturday that she had been contacted by the FBI and would cooperate.

The conditions under which the FBI's reopened background check are occurring appears to differ from the one envisioned by Flake, who used his leverage as a swing vote to pressure the Trump administration to order the FBI investigation.

Flake said Friday he thought the FBI should decide the scope of the investigation.

“They’ll have to decide — the FBI you know, how far that goes,” he told reporters. “This is limited in time and scope and I think that it's appropriate when it's a lifetime appointment and allegations this serious and we ought to let people know that we're serious about it.”

Caught Trying to Limit the FBI Investigation of Kavanaugh, Trump Reverses Himself and Blames NBC

https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1046237787995951105

https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1046391473569243136

I dare anyone to read the first 5 paragraphs of the new NYT story by @maggieNYT and say it makes sense. She writes that Trump's team has chosen 4 witnesses the FBI can interview, and that Trump saying the FBI can interview *anyone* is consistent with this.

https://t.co/q3Y3NjMtGl

2/ "The White House can order investigators to further examine the allegations if their findings from the four witness interviews open new avenues of inquiry—and Mr. Trump seemed to stress that part of the plan in a tweet late on Saturday."

What? How stupid do they think we are?

3/ How is Trump tweeting the FBI can interview anyone it wants AT ALL CONSISTENT with the truth—that he's letting them speak to only 4 people, and then he'll decide what if any follow up they can do? Why would @maggieNYT say that Trump's tweet was CONSISTENT with the actual plan?

4/ What we have is a White House that lied to and is scamming the media and the country—and a group of moderate Republican senators who lied to the media, the country, and their peers—being written of in the NYT as though they haven't lied at all. What kind of reporting is this?

5/I'll simplify:

1. Trump, Flake, Collins and Murkowski said the FBI had free rein to investigate all current allegations.
2. They lied.
3. Instead, Trump is picking 4 witnesses the FBI can interview and will decide whether to allow followup—and if so what. The Senators agreed.

6/ At this point the NYT is assisting the White House and Senate Republicans in hoodwinking America, and I have absolutely no idea why. The White House GLEEFULLY and GREGARIOUSLY lied to us. Why can't this plainly be said when it's so plainly true? This is a sham "investigation."

7/ The FBI is interviewing a suspect—Mark Judge—INSTEAD OF and AS A REPLACEMENT FOR his accuser, Julie Swetnick. In a decade working in the criminal justice system I NEVER ONCE saw investigative malpractice of this sort in an investigation involving a sex crime—I'm beside myself.

8/ Moreover, America watched, in the last 3 days, a prospective Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court committing *perjury* over and over again. Media reports confirm it. Yet this somehow lies *outside* the scope of the FBI investigation the White House authorized.

This. Is. A. Sham.

9/ How scared of the truth does Trump have to be for him to limit the FBI to 7 days and then—because that insane limitation wasn't enough—to also limit the number of witnesses it can interview to 4, when media reports tell us there are at least 25 people to speak to, likely more?

Now that Trump has tweeted this, Senate Republicans no longer have any excuse for privately negotiating limits on FBI inquiry w/ White House.

This includes @JeffFlake and @SenatorCollins.

If Trump says he wants FBI to have free rein, what's their excuse for wanting limits?

https://twitter.com/ThePlumLineGS/status/1046374609774411777


More evidence that @AndyMcCanse is correct: That the buck stops at Senators @JeffFlake @lisamurkowski @SenatorCollins.

WSJ: "The Senate 'has made clear who should be interviewed and who should not,' the official said, and the White House has conveyed that message to the FBI."

https://twitter.com/rgoodlaw/status/1046456785144619008


This is why the WH doesn't want the FBI to inquire about K's drinking at Yale. Bc there are classmates ready to directly contradict him, which would open him up to perjuring himself to the Senate (and therefore a disqualifier separate and apart from the Ford allegation). 👇🏽
(https://twitter.com/CuomoPrimeTime/status/1045487271451885568)

https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1046232682743705600



CONFIRMED: Trump's Saturday-night tweet was a LIE.

2/ To clarify, it was BOTH an official presidential pronouncement that the FBI cannot technically ignore (as it's in an area of presidential authority and, per a prior White House statement, all presidential tweets are official presidential statements and/or directives) AND a lie

3/ So Trump's tweet was the DIRECT DELIVERY of OFFICIAL government-sponsored disinformation to the American people on the most important political issue to the bulk of American voters at the moment

And per usual, there will be NO significant repercussions from media or otherwise

4/ Repercussions could include:

* using the word "lie" in reporting of the story

* refusing to use anonymous White House sources anymore, due to systemic White House use of disinformation

* refusing to report in a week's time that there was the "FBI investigation" promised us

https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1046461480563085312

Times says McGahn, working with McConnell/Senate GOP, is indeed setting FBI limits: only 4 people are approved for FBI interviews: Judge, Keyser, PJ Smyth & Ramirez. FBI to ask Judge about Swetnick allegations, but not Swetnick. Question of Kav downplaying drinking are off limits

https://t.co/aaivDdakBH

https://twitter.com/PGourevitch/status/1046390823510831104

https://youtu.be/VRJecfRxbr8

https://www.axios.com/brett-kavanaugh-white-house-replacement-discussion-4f24b604-4af4-48b8-92a2-928024e09815.html

Brett Kavanaugh is "too big to fail"
Jonathan Swan2 hours ago


For the White House, it's Brett Kavanaugh or bust. They have no Plan B and there's not even discussion of one, according to five sources with direct knowledge of the sensitive internal White House talks.

What they're saying: "He's too big to fail now," said a senior source involved in the confirmation process. "Our base, our voters, our side, people are so mad," the source continued. "There's nowhere to go. We're gonna make them f---ing vote. Manchin in West Virginia, in those red states. Joe Donnelly? He said he's a no? Fine, we'll see how that goes. There will be a vote on him . ... It will be a slugfest of a week."

"There's no time before the election to put up a new person," a White House official close to the process told me.

Why this matters: When Trump spoke to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House Saturday afternoon, he told them, "I don't need a backup plan," in case Kavanaugh's nomination collapses.

Between the lines: That's just as well, because the small team working to confirm Kavanaugh has not been looking for a backup candidate, let alone vetting one.

Sources close to the White House legal operation complained that even if they did want to rush through a new nominee, they couldn’t be sure any male nominee wouldn’t have what one called a “Kavanaugh problem.”

"You nominate any man and how do you guarantee ... How do you vet for that?" said that source. "For an accusation that's 36 years old? You can't."

There's been plenty of speculation that, after the elections, Trump could put up a female judge such as Amy Coney Barrett, who was on his shortlist last time. But two sources involved at a senior level in Kavanaugh's confirmation told me they worry Barrett might end up being "too conservative" for the pro-choice Republican senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski.

All that speculation reflects the anger and tension filling the White House.

The bottom line: As of this weekend, sources close to Kavanaugh seemed optimistic the limited weeklong FBI investigation would give the three wavering Republican senators — Jeff Flake, Collins and Murkowski — the confidence they need to vote yes. But a week is an eternity in this political environment. And if Kavanaugh's nomination collapses, there are no easy alternatives.

"Not a chance" -- @JeffFlake @60Minutes on whether he could have done what he did this week if he was seeking reelection

https://twitter.com/davidgrayrhodes/status/1046550732017733632

60 Minutes: “If #BrettKavanaugh is shown to have lied to the committee, nomination’s over?”

Jeff Flake: “Oh, yes.”

Chris Coons: “I would think so.”

Brett Kavanaugh lied to the committee. Repeatedly.

This is not an unresolved or debatable point.

https://t.co/ENXKcJgmR8

https://twitter.com/NicholsUprising/status/1046553343466893312

But this dude been lying from jump

When does that matter?

Alleged sexual assault shouldn't even need to be investigated

He's lied, under oath, repeatedly = nay.

https://www.gq.com/story/all-of-brett-kavanaughs-lies

https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1046536476215795712

Like what I saw from the Dems seemed rather timid and backing down from BK's bluster. Did I miss anything?


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

New from ⁦@JaneMayerNYer⁩ ⁦@RonanFarrow⁩: several people who believe they have useful information for FBI have had trouble reaching agents.

https://t.co/r0UkWqbFvh

https://twitter.com/michaelluo/status/1046599152321404928

“It’s not an investigation if the FBI is going to accept the dictates of the White House in terms of who you can interview and who you can’t,” John Mindermann, a former FBI special agent who investigated the Watergate break-in, told me. Mindermann added that the idea of such a limited investigation is “ridiculous” and that if this holds, “it would be unprofessional, it would be grossly incomplete, and it would be unfair to the American public.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/10/01/another-trump-cover-up-former-fbi-agents-question-limits-on-probe-of-kavanaugh/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.ad111fa2aa42

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/mutual-friend-ramirez-kavanaugh-anxious-come-forward-evidence-n915566

Text messages suggest Kavanaugh wanted to refute accuser's claim before it became public

A former classmate of the Supreme Court nominee has reached out to the FBI but hasn't received a response.

by Heidi Przybyla and Leigh Ann Caldwell / Oct.01.2018 / 4:39 PM CDT


WASHINGTON — In the days leading up to a public allegation that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh exposed himself to a college classmate, the judge and his team were communicating behind the scenes with friends to refute the claim, according to text messages obtained by NBC News.

Kerry Berchem, who was at Yale with both Kavanaugh and his accuser, Deborah Ramirez, has tried to get those messages to the FBI for its newly reopened investigation into the matter but says she has yet to be contacted by the bureau.

The texts between Berchem and Karen Yarasavage, both friends of Kavanaugh, suggest that the nominee was personally talking with former classmates about Ramirez’s story in advance of the New Yorker article that made her allegation public. In one message, Yarasavage said Kavanaugh asked her to go on the record in his defense. Two other messages show communication between Kavanaugh's team and former classmates in advance of the story.

The texts also demonstrate that Kavanaugh and Ramirez were more socially connected than previously understood and that Ramirez was uncomfortable around Kavanaugh when they saw each other at a wedding 10 years after they graduated. Berchem's efforts also show that some potential witnesses have been unable to get important information to the FBI.

On Monday, a senior U.S. official confirmed that the White House has authorized the FBI to expand its initially limited investigation by interviewing anyone it deems necessary as long as the review is finished by the end of the week. The New York Times first reported the change in scope.

NBC News reached out to Berchem for comment after obtaining a copy of a memo she wrote about the text messages. In a statement to NBC News, Berchem, a partner in the law firm Akin Gump, said: “I understand that President Trump and the U.S. Senate have ordered an FBI investigation into certain allegations of sexual misconduct by the nominee Brett Kavanaugh. I have no direct or indirect knowledge about any of the allegations against him. However, I am in receipt of text messages from a mutual friend of both Debbie and mine that raise questions related to the allegations. I have not drawn any conclusions as to what the texts may mean or may not mean but I do believe they merit investigation by the FBI and the Senate."

On Sunday, Berchem emailed FBI agent J.C. McDonough her memo. After getting no response, she resent the summary on Monday morning along with screenshots of certain texts that she thinks raise questions that should be investigated. “I’m sure he’s really busy and expect that he’ll get back to me,” said Berchem.

Berchem’s memo outlining her correspondence with Yarasavage shows there’s a circle of Kavanaugh friends who may have pertinent information and evidence relevant to the inquiry who may not be interviewed. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has already set in motion a vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination on the Senate floor for later this week.

Kavanaugh has strongly denied the allegation by Ramirez as well as accusations by Christine Blasey Ford that he sexually assaulted her when the two were in high school and by Julie Swetnick that Kavanaugh engaged in sexual misconduct at parties while he was a student at Georgetown Preparatory School in the 1980s.

Berchem, 51, a graduate of Yale and a Connecticut resident, reached out to Sen. Richard Blumenthal's office last week. Blumenthal, a Democrat, sits on the Judiciary Committee.

“We heard from Kerry late on Thursday and submitted her summary to the Judiciary Committee early Friday,” a spokeswoman for Blumenthal said in a statement to NBC News. “After we were made to jump through several hoops that delayed our moving forward, it became clear that the majority Committee staff had not turned this summary over to the FBI and, in fact, had no intention of turning it over to the FBI. With our assistance, Kerry submitted her summary to the FBI herself.”

George Hartmann, a spokesman for Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said that “the texts from Ms. Berchem do not appear relevant or contradictory to Judge Kavanaugh’s testimony."

"This appears to be another last-ditch effort to derail the nomination with baseless innuendo by Democrats who have already decided to vote no," Hartmann said.

Berchem's texts with Yarasavage shed light on Kavanaugh’s personal contact with friends, including that he obtained a copy of a photograph of a small group of friends from Yale at a 1997 wedding in order to show himself smiling alongside Ramirez 10 years after they graduated. Kavanaugh was a groomsman and Ramirez a bridesmaid at the wedding.

Berchem hired a lawyer on Sunday to help her get her information into the right hands. She has twice sent her memo to the FBI and has yet to hear a response, according to her lawyer, who spoke on condition of anonymity. He flagged two texts in particular

In a series of texts before the publication of the New Yorker story, Yarasavage wrote that she had been in contact with “Brett's guy,” and also with “Brett,” who wanted her to go on the record to refute Ramirez. According to Berchem, Yarasavage also told her friend that she turned over a copy of the wedding party photo to Kavanaugh, writing in a text: “I had to send it to Brett’s team too.”

Bob Bauer, former White House counsel for President Barack Obama, said: "It would be surprising, and it would certainly be highly imprudent, if at any point Judge Kavanaugh directly contacted an individual believed to have information about allegations like this. A nominee would normally have been counseled to leave to his legal and nominations team the job of following up on any questions arising from press reports or otherwise, and doing so appropriately."

Further, the texts show Kavanaugh may need to be questioned about how far back he anticipated that Ramirez would air allegations against him. Berchem says in her memo that Kavanaugh “and/or” his friends “may have initiated an anticipatory narrative” as early as July to “conceal or discredit” Ramirez.

Kavanaugh told the Senate Judiciary Committee under oath that the first time he heard of Ramirez’s allegation was in the Sept. 23 article in The New Yorker.

Kavanaugh was asked by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, when he first heard of Ramirez’s allegations. Kavanaugh answered: “In the New Yorker story.”

A Sept. 24 text shows Yarasavage clarifying that she did not refute Ramirez’s claims to the New Yorker. Republicans and Kavanaugh have said that his former classmates, who gave an anonymous statement to the New Yorker, have refuted Ramirez’s claim.

“I didn’t say I would have known. … I said she never told me, I never heard a word of this ever happening and never saw it. The media surmised (that I was saying she is lying),” said Yarasavage.

Yarasavage declined to speak to NBC News as did other classmates named in Berchem’s memo who may have information pertinent to the investigation.

Finally, Berchem is concerned about what she witnessed at the 1997 wedding where Ramirez and Kavanaugh were both in the wedding party.

According to the information Berchem provided, Ramirez tried to avoid Kavanaugh at that wedding of their two friends, Yarasavage and Kevin Genda.

Ramirez, “clung to me” at the wedding, Berchem wrote to Yarasavage in a Sept. 24th text message. “She never went near them,” a reference to Kavanaugh and his friends. Even in the group photo, Berchem wrote, Ramirez was trying to keep away from Kavanaugh.

>Further, the texts show Kavanaugh may need to be questioned
>about how far back he anticipated that Ramirez would air
>allegations against him. Berchem says in her memo that
>Kavanaugh “and/or” his friends “may have initiated an
>anticipatory narrative” as early as July to “conceal or
>discredit” Ramirez.
>
>Kavanaugh told the Senate Judiciary Committee under oath that
>the first time he heard of Ramirez’s allegation was in the
>Sept. 23 article in The New Yorker.
>
>Kavanaugh was asked by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, when he first
>heard of Ramirez’s allegations. Kavanaugh answered: “In
>the New Yorker story.”

https://twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/status/1046906911516446721

We can argue to our face is blue what a Devil's triange is, but this right here is unequivocal.



**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

https://mobile.twitter.com/SenatorLeahy/status/1037753403856887808

Kavanaugh, lying under oath since 2006.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/01/us/politics/kavanaugh-bar-fight.html

Kavanaugh Was Questioned by Police After Bar Fight in 1985
By Emily Bazelon and Ben Protess
Oct. 1, 2018


NEW HAVEN — As an undergraduate student at Yale, Brett M. Kavanaugh was involved in an altercation at a local bar during which he was accused of throwing ice on another patron, according to a police report.

The incident, which occurred in September 1985 during Mr. Kavanaugh’s junior year, resulted in Mr. Kavanaugh and four other men being questioned by the New Haven Police Department. Mr. Kavanaugh was not arrested, but the police report stated that a 21-year-old man accused Mr. Kavanaugh of throwing ice on him “for some unknown reason.”

A witness to the fight said that Chris Dudley, a Yale basketball player who was friends with Mr. Kavanaugh, then hit the man in the ear with a glass, according to the police report, which was obtained by The New York Times.

The report said that the victim, Dom Cozzolino, “was bleeding from the right ear” and was later treated at a local hospital. A detective was notified of the incident at 1:20 a.m.

Mr. Dudley denied the accusation, according to the report. For his part, speaking to the officers, Mr. Kavanaugh did not want “to say if he threw the ice or not,” the police report said.

The report referred to the altercation, which occurred at a bar called Demery’s, as “an assault.” It did not say whether anyone was arrested, and there is no indication that charges were filed.

The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday. Mr. Dudley did not respond to phone and email messages. Reached by text message, Mr. Cozzolino declined to comment.

The outlines of the incident were first referred to in a statement issued on Sunday by Chad Ludington, one of Judge Kavanaugh’s college classmates and a member of the Yale basketball team.

“On one of the last occasions I purposely socialized with Brett, I witnessed him respond to a semi-hostile remark, not by defusing the situation, but by throwing his beer in the man’s face,” Mr. Ludington said in the statement. Mr. Ludington, a college professor at North Carolina State, said he came forward because he believed Judge Kavanaugh had mischaracterized the extent of his drinking at Yale.

Mr. Ludington said that he had been in touch with the F.B.I.

He said that the altercation happened after a UB40 concert, when he and a group of people went to Demery’s and were drinking pints. At one point, they were sitting near a man who, they thought, resembled Ali Campbell, the lead singer of UB40.

“We’re trying to figure out if it’s him,” he said.

When the man noticed Mr. Ludington, Mr. Kavanaugh and the others looking at him, he objected and aggressively asked them to stop, Mr. Ludington said.

It was then, he said, that Mr. Kavanaugh “threw his beer at the guy.”

“The guy swung at Brett,” Mr. Ludington continued. At that point, Mr. Dudley “took his beer and smashed it into the head of the guy, who by now had Brett in an embrace. I then tried to pull Chris back, and a bunch of other guys tried to pull the other guy back. I don’t know what Brett was doing in the melee, but there was blood, there was glass, there was beer and there was some shouting, and the police showed up.”

Demery’s, which closed in 1994, was a well-known local bar that served big slices of pizza, and cheap beer, especially after 9 p.m. It drew a crowd that included “older Yalies and younger ones with good fake IDs,” according to thepolitic.org.

Mr. Dudley, who after Yale went on to the N.B.A. and was the Republican nominee for governor of Oregon in 2010, has spoken out in support of Judge Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination and disputed reports that he drank excessively.

Several Yale classmates, including a former roommate and Mr. Ludington, have described Judge Kavanaugh as sometimes aggressive when he was drinking.

Like, why?

‘I have argued to you that when you found that a judge was a perjurer, you couldn’t in good conscience send him back in a courtroom because everybody that came in that courtroom thereafter would have a real serious doubt’
— @LindseyGrahamSC (January 1999)

https://twitter.com/RetroNewsNow/status/1045702133088178179

is funny. the white nationalists are playing the card that kavanaugh is not a balls and strikes kind of guy but actually politically motivated. They're saying that Kennedy's less virulent sexism and racism are done with and the culture war has escalated. Also, it's interesting to me that Trump has not left the country to visit the war zones at all. It's like he's been installed here as the puppet to make sure that the division within the country is constant.

https://www.thecut.com/2018/10/republican-senator-ignores-assault-survivors-in-bathroom.html

Republican Senator Hides in Men’s Bathroom When Confronted by Sexual-Assault Survivors
By Sarah Nechamkin
10:32 A.M.

Last week, two sexual-assault survivors confronted Republican senator and key Senate Judiciary Committee member Jeff Flake in an elevator, urging him to reconsider his decision to approve Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation as Supreme Court justice. Flake went on to change his position, delaying his vote until a weeklong FBI investigation is completed. Meanwhile, survivors have not quieted down.

On Monday, three women approached Republican senator David Perdue of Georgia at the Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., asking whether he would vote to approve Kavanaugh. One informed him she was a sexual-assault survivor; another asked him about the millions of women who have come out about their own experiences: “You don’t feel like you have to answer any questions to people who have come out about their sexual assaults?”

The three women — sexual-assault survivors Patti Serrano and Jennifer Epps-Addison, of the Center for Popular Democracy advocacy group, along with Arizona State Representative Isela Blanc — also asked Perdue whether he supports a full FBI investigation into the allegations against Kavanaugh.

Perdue ignored the women, even pushing one — she can be heard saying “Don’t push me” on the escalator — before literally dodging them to hide in the men’s bathroom. When the survivors tried to introduce themselves and shake his hand, Perdue said, “Don’t touch me.”


https://youtu.be/D-LjFgji9Sg


“Senator, how can you not talk to women who have been assaulted?” Epps-Addison said while Perdue was in the bathroom. “How can you ignore our pleas? You have to exit at some point.”

Blanc added, “You represent not just your state’s choice, but every American in this country, and every person that is vulnerable. This is a legacy, and a moment in history that will not be forgotten.”

Advocates also approached Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell at the airport. “How many stories of sexual violence do you need to hear in order to believe women?” Naina Khanna, the executive director of Positive Women’s Network USA, asked him. McConnell ignored her and others, stopping to shake another man’s hand before continuing forward and up an escalator. “Senator McConnell, do you always turn your back on women like this?” Khanna said.


How many stories does @senatemajldr need before he finally believes women like @traceyecorder & @nainadevi ? pic.twitter.com/BSF85xMMHH

— Ady Barkan🔥🌹 (@AdyBarkan) October 1, 2018
https://twitter.com/AdyBarkan/status/1046834101653659648


When two sexual-assault survivors confronted Republican senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, he said, “I know this is enjoyable to y’all.” “It is not enjoyable,” Tracey Corder, the director of Racial Justice at the Center for Popular Democracy, responded. “It is not fun for us to tell our stories.”


https://youtu.be/2N6oU8ew3Jw

https://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/409516-mcconnell-says-only-senators-will-see-fbis-kavanaugh-report

McConnell says only senators will see FBI's Kavanaugh report
BY JORDAIN CARNEY - 10/02/18 03:01 PM EDT

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on Tuesday that only senators will see the FBI's report on its investigation into the sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

"We'll get an FBI report soon. It will be made available to each senator and only senators will be allowed to look at it," McConnell told reporters.

He added, "that's the way these reports are always handled."

The FBI is investigating allegations that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford when the two were high school students more than three decades ago. Under a deal reached by GOP senators they have until Friday to wrap up their investigation.

Blasey Ford went over her allegations in dramatic testimony last week. Her charges were then refuted by Kavanaugh during a hearing that transfixed much of the nation.

The White House and Republican senators asked the FBI to reopen its investigation the next day, after Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and other senators called for it. Flake and two other GOP senators are undecided on Kavanaugh's confirmation, as are two Democrats.

Shortly after McConnell's comments, GOP Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), McConnell's No. 2, said that he expected a "public statement" on the FBI's findings but not for the report itself to be released.

Republicans, leaving a closed-door lunch, said they did not know when the FBI would finish up its investigation but floated that it could happen as early as Wednesday.

Whether or not the report will be publicly released is becoming the latest point of division between senators.

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said there was "growing" support within the Senate for publicly releasing the FBI's report.

"Why are our Republican colleagues so afraid of making this public?" he asked.

Some damning stuff comes out of it. They say Brett, withdraw and go away or this report comes out...and Brett goes away.


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

is because he knows theres some disqualifying shit in there.

if it was gonna be completely exculpatory...id think mitch would want it blasted out to every media outlet.

he made this announcement the same day that mark judges lawyer said their fbi interview was completed. maybe mitch got the heads up on the details.

if they claim victory and take back power.

https://twitter.com/LisaDNews/status/1047201391675105283

if dems win the senate in 2018 with a hellacious map against them...we could conceivably get a dem president with a padded senate majority in an election year with a hellacious map against repubs and dems fired up to vote trump out.

so of course lets restore the filibuster to make it harder for that dem prez to get his nom(s) confirmed...just so repubs can nuke it again when they get power and ram through whoever they want.

why is our party like this? lol.

That genie's not going back in the bottle.

It looks like a bullshit answer to a question he wasn't expecting. He will walk alway from that tomorrow.





**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1047220302713954304




**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

itd be dope to do that for judicial nominations and essentially shut down any trump nominees while protecting red state dems from having to vote. then reopen the flood gates with a dem prez.

but its way too nakedly partisan/cynical for our side (unfortunately). only repubs get rewarded for that.

if dems restore the filibuster...its staying until repubs bat it down again immediately when they regain power.

Letter from Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s attorneys to the FBI saying they offered her full cooperation and have not heard back from the agency. They also say they don’t know who the supervisory special agent in charge of the investigation is.

https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1047229441653452800


Debbie Ramirez spoke to the FBI for over two hours this past Sunday. It was a detailed and productive interview, and the agents were clearly motivated to investigate the matter in any way they were permitted. Ms. Ramirez identified a number of witnesses, and, 1/

at the end of the interview, her lawyers provided the FBI the names and known contact information of additional witnesses (totaling more than 20) who may have corroborating information. Although we do not know the status of the investigation, 2/

we are not aware of the FBI affirmatively reaching out to any of those witnesses. Though we appreciated the agents who responded on Sunday, we have great concern that the FBI is not conducting—or not being permitted to conduct—a serious investigation. 3/

https://twitter.com/CluneEsq/status/1047219945539493888


Sources tell WSJ that the FBI could finish its Kavanaugh investigation as early as tonight.

https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1047251162997710849

“I sense a degree of frustration inside” the bureau “with the public’s expectation that the FBI is conducting a full court press when they’re not being permitted to do so,” Figliuzzi said. There is also “increasing concern that the White House and Senate will use the FBI as an excuse to say, ‘this has been fully investigated,’” when it actually hasn’t been. It is not conceivable, moreover, that the bureau has decided to ignore walk-ins and calls made to tip lines, Figliuzzi said. (The New Yorker reported recently that people purporting to have information about Kavanaugh were having difficulty communicating with agents.) But, he added, “the White House is still tightly controlling this investigation” in a way that may preclude agents from pursuing tips.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/10/fbi-thrown-political-football-with-kavanaugh-probe/571975/

We obtained a handwritten 1983 letter that Brett Kavanaugh wrote to his high school buddies: "We're loud, obnoxious drunks with prolific pukers among us." My story with @katekelly @RebeccaRuiz @SteveEder

https://t.co/wLkn7T5nlL

https://twitter.com/davidenrich/status/1047254608752660480

It's not the most explicit stuff, but the Renate stuff is heartbreaking. They tried to use her to build up this fucker's reputation even though Kav basically hated her for the crime of being willing to have sex with him.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/will-the-fbi-ignore-testimonies-from-kavanaughs-former-classmates

Frustrated potential witnesses who have been unable to speak with the F.B.I agents conducting the investigation into sexual-assault allegations against Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, have been resorting to sending statements, unsolicited, to the Bureau and to senators, in hopes that they would be seen before the inquiry concluded. On Monday, President Trump said that the Bureau should be able to interview “anybody they want within reason,” but the extent of the constraints placed on the investigating agents by the White House remained unclear. Late Wednesday night, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced that the F.B.I. probe was over and cleared the way for an important procedural vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination to take place on Friday. NBC News reported that dozens of people who said that they had information about Kavanaugh had contacted F.B.I. field offices, but agents had not been permitted to talk to many of them. Several people interested in speaking to the F.B.I. expressed exasperation in interviews with The New Yorker at what they perceived to be a lack of interest in their accounts.

Deborah Ramirez, one of two women who have accused Kavanaugh of sexual abuse, said in an interview that she had been hopeful that her story would be investigated when two agents drove from Denver to Boulder, Colorado, last weekend to interview her at her lawyer’s office. But Ramirez said that she was troubled by what she perceived as a lack of willingness on the part of the Bureau to take steps to substantiate her claims. “I am very alarmed, first, that I was denied an F.B.I. investigation for five days, and then, when one was granted, that it was given on a short timeline and that the people who were key to corroborating my story have not been contacted,” Ramirez said. “I feel like I’m being silenced.”

Ramirez, a classmate of Kavanaugh’s at Yale, says that he exposed himself to her during a drunken dormitory party and thrust his penis in her face, which led to her touching it against her will. Kavanaugh has denied the allegation, along with that of Christine Blasey Ford, a professor from California who said that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at a party when they were teen-agers. Several former Yale students who claim to have information regarding the alleged incident with Ramirez or about Kavanaugh’s behavior at Yale said that they had not been contacted by the F.B.I. Kenneth G. Appold was a suitemate of Kavanaugh’s at the time of the alleged incident. He had previously spoken to The New Yorker about Ramirez on condition of anonymity, but he said that he is now willing to be identified because he believes that the F.B.I. must thoroughly investigate her allegation. Appold, who is the James Hastings Nichols Professor of Reformation History at Princeton Theological Seminary, said that he first heard about the alleged incident involving Kavanaugh and Ramirez either the night it occurred or a day or two later. Appold said that he was “one-hundred-per-cent certain” that he was told that Kavanaugh was the male student who exposed himself to Ramirez. He said that he never discussed the allegation with Ramirez, whom he said he barely knew in college. But he recalled details—which, he said, an eyewitness described to him at the time—that match Ramirez’s memory of what happened. “I can corroborate Debbie’s account,” he said in an interview. “I believe her, because it matches the same story I heard thirty-five years ago, although the two of us have never talked.”

Appold, who won two Fulbright Fellowships, and earned his Ph.D. in religious studies from Yale in 1994, also recalled telling his graduate-school roommate about the incident in 1989 or 1990. That roommate, Michael Wetstone, who is now an architect, confirmed Appold’s account and said, “it stood out in our minds because it was a shocking story of transgression.” Appold said that he initially asked to remain anonymous because he hoped to make contact first with the classmate who, to the best of his recollection, told him about the party and was an eyewitness to the incident. He said that he had not been able to get any response from that person, despite multiple attempts to do so. The New Yorker reached the classmate, but he said that he had no memory of the incident.

Appold reached out to the Bureau last weekend but did not hear back. Frustrated, he submitted a statement through an F.B.I. Web portal. During his first year at Yale, Appold lived in the basement of Lawrance Hall, one of the university’s freshman dormitories. He was in the same suite of bedrooms as Kavanaugh, sharing a common room. Appold said of Kavanaugh, “We didn’t hang out together, but there was no animosity between us either.” He said he believes that “there were two sides to Brett.” Those who have described the judge as studious and somewhat reserved or shy are correct, he said. He added, “that was true part of the time, but so are the other things that have been said about him. He drank a lot, and when he was drinking he could be aggressive, and belligerent. He wasn’t beating people up, but there was an edge and an obnoxiousness that I could see at the hearings. When I saw clips” of Kavanaugh’s Senate testimony, Appold said, “I remembered it immediately.”

Appold said that he learned about the alleged incident with Ramirez during the winter of the 1983-84 school year. He recalled being told that, during a party in a first-floor common room in Lawrance Hall, Kavanaugh went over to Ramirez, who had been participating in a drinking game, “and opened his pants, and pulled out his penis, and tried to put it in her face.” But she waved him away. Appold recalled hearing that Ramirez said something like, “It’s not a real penis.” He said that the remark made no sense to him at the time, and he understood it only after reading Ramirez’s allegation in The New Yorker and learning that people had been playing pranks with a fake plastic penis at the party.

In an interview with The New Yorker last month, Ramirez said, “I remember a penis being in front of my face,” and that “I knew that’s not what I wanted, even in that state of mind.” She recalled remarking, “That’s not a real penis,” and that other students were laughing at her confusion and taunting her; one encouraged her to “kiss it.”

Appold recalled being “shocked” when he was told of Kavanaugh’s alleged behavior. “The person who saw it was taken aback by what he had seen,” too, he said. Appold added, “It was a disturbing thing. I think everyone recognized that a line had been crossed here.”

Looking back, Appold said, “The thing I ask myself is, why didn’t anybody do anything about it? Why didn’t anybody report it?” But, he added, “The times were different then. Today, I’m an educator, and if something like this happened, I’d know exactly where to go to the Title IX people. But back then there was no place to report these uncomfortable things—we tried to forget about them.” Kavanaugh has argued that, if he had behaved as Ramirez described, the whole campus would have talked about it, but Appold said that, to the contrary, “It was more like, ‘Don’t talk about it.’ ”

Appold said that he did not initially oppose Kavanaugh’s nomination for the Supreme Court. Since he had not witnessed the alleged misconduct himself, Appold said, he had not been sure whether to regard it as an assault, in legal terms, or as something less serious, although he saw it as “morally wrong, either way.” After seeing Kavanaugh’s blanket denials of Ford and Ramirez’s allegations, and his assertions of his rectitude during his high-school and college years, Appold said, “I had concerns that there was a good chance he wasn’t telling the truth.” He was certain, he said, that “what he said about drinking was not accurate.”

Beth Wilkinson, Kavanaugh’s attorney, said, “There is no new information here. The Judge stands by his denial.” The F.B.I. declined to comment on its investigation.

Ramirez said that the F.B.I. agents she spoke to interviewed her in a comprehensive and sensitive manner. Several of their questions appeared to mirror Republican speculation that the allegations against Kavanaugh were coördinated by Democrats or were otherwise politically motivated. (Ramirez said that neither was true.) “They asked me if I’d ever been in touch with Dr. Christine Ford,” Ramirez recalled, “and if I knew how reporters got my name.” She told the agents that she has never had contact with Ford and began receiving calls from reporters unbidden. Ramirez said that her main concern, after her F.B.I. interview, was that the agents who interviewed her might not be the same ones talking to people who could corroborate her account—she felt that continuity was important. But she had not anticipated that people she believed had relevant information wouldn’t even be interviewed. “Being told that these people haven’t even been contacted,” Ramirez said, “it’s very troubling to me.”

In addition to Appold, several other former Yale classmates said that they had reached out to the F.B.I. about Kavanaugh but had not received a response. Stephen Kantrowitz, a former Yale classmate, said in a text message that, “No one who lived in Lawrance Hall (so far as I know) has been contacted by the FBI What a charade.”

Two high-school acquaintances of Kavanaugh’s have also submitted sworn declarations to senators and to the F.B.I. A classmate of Kavanaugh’s at Georgetown Preparatory School, who asked to remain anonymous because of the intensity of the partisan fight over Kavanaugh’s nomination, submitted a signed declaration to the F.B.I. after visiting the F.B.I. field office nearest his home, where he was told they didn’t do “in-person interviews.” He said that he was hoping to hear something back, but hadn’t yet. In his statement, which his attorney also sent to several members of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, he described Kavanaugh as part of a clique of high-school athletes, most of whom were on the football team, who “routinely picked on” less physically fit or popular students. He said that he never witnessed Kavanaugh physically attacking another student, but he recalled him doing “nothing to stop the physical and verbal abuse.” Instead, he said, Kavanaugh “stood by and laughed at the victims.” Both Ford and Ramirez have said they remembered Kavanaugh laughing during their ordeals. “It was so wrenching for me when I heard Dr. Ford mention how they were laughing,” the Georgetown Prep classmate said, in a phone interview. “That really, really struck a chord. I can hear him laughing when someone was picked on right now.”

In his statement, the classmate also said that he recalled, “on multiple occasions, Brett Kavanaugh counting on his fingers, how many kegs they had over the weekend.” The amount that he heard Kavanaugh describe, he said in the statement, “seemed to be an extreme amount of beer drinking for someone to consume at any age, let alone someone in high school.” He said that he also recalled Kavanaugh participating in general conversations “where the football players were bragging about their sexual conquests over the prior weekend.”

His statement also challenges Kavanaugh’s assertion in last week’s hearing that he never denigrated a female student named Renate Schroeder, whose married name is Renate Dolphin, and who attended Georgetown’s sister school, Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart, in Bethesda, Maryland.

Kavanaugh and thirteen other Georgetown Prep boys described themselves in their high-school yearbook as “Renate Alumnius,” which other classmates have told the Times was a crude sexual boast. During his Senate hearing, Kavanaugh said that the reference was an endearment, saying, “she was a great friend of ours. We—a bunch of us went to dances with her. She hung out with us as a group.” He said that a “media circus that has been generated by this, though, and reported that it referred to sex. It did not.”

But the classmate who submitted the statement said that he heard Kavanaugh “talk about Renate many times,” and that “the impression I formed at the time from listening to these conversations where Brett Kavanaugh was present was that Renate was the girl that everyone passed around for sex.” The classmate said that “Brett Kavanaugh had made up a rhyme using the REE NATE pronunciation of Renate’s name” and sang it in the hallways on the way to class. He recalled the rhyme going, “REE NATE, REE NATE, if you want a date, can’t get one until late, and you wanna get laid, you can make it with REE NATE.” He said that, while he might not be remembering the rhyme word-for-word, “the substance is 100 percent accurate.” He added, “I thought that this was sickening at the time I heard it, and it left an indelible mark in my memory.”

Reached for comment, Dolphin noted that she had asked for her name to be removed from a statement signed by female supporters of Kavanaugh’s nomination. “If this report is true, I am profoundly hurt,” she said, of the account in the affidavit. “I did nothing to deserve this. There is nothing affectionate or respectful in bragging about making sexual conquests that never happened. I am not a political person, but my reputation matters to me and to my family. I would not have signed the letter if I had known about the yearbook references and this affidavit. It is heartbreaking if these guys who acted like my friends in high school were saying these nasty, false things about me behind my back.”

Angela Walker, who was in Dolphin’s class at Stone Ridge, also submitted a declaration to the F.B.I. Though she did not mention Dolphin in the declaration, Walker voiced support for her in a phone interview. “It’s really horrifying what they did to her,” Walker said, “it’s a terrible betrayal.” She noted, too, that the depiction of Dolphin reported in the classmate’s statement “is not the Renate that I knew—it’s not possible.” Walker’s declaration described attending a large house party with Georgetown Prep boys, where, she wrote, “A friend from Prep warned me not to go upstairs, where the bedrooms were, cautioning me that it could be dangerous.”

I hope they get chased out of every restaurant they attempt to eat in.

Delay for an "investigation" to keep up appearances, knowing it'd be a sham ... then vote yes like he was always going to.

Collins is a fucking waste of human flesh.

They all are.

I am a bit disappointed that the so-called on the fence senators are going to go along with the sham and vote this dude in. Why no use their leverage to force/shame the White House to do a proper investigation? What do the on the fence senators have to loose?

it's all about appearance with these folks

>RE: because they never were on the fence to start with?
>it's all about appearance with these folks

Any asshole in the seat could protect their agenda,
but that isn’t enough.

They also need to send a big fuck you to assault
survivors, “political correctness”, and women
in general.

It’s not enough to win, they have to own the libtards.


And now their voters are fired up. They saw how this
belligerent, privelaged, entitled, prep school frat
boy was “treated” and now are dying to vote.

Their voters are terrible people too.

How can you watch Bart’s testimony and say “I
feel so badly for him” ???

Fuck this world man.

Many of them have tried over the last 2 years to play the "well I don't agree with everything they do/say, I just agree with their agenda ..." but that's not good enough anymore. I mean it was never good enough to be honest, because their agenda fucking sucks too. But now you can't hide behind "well I just agree with their politics" because their politics are inextricably tied to their shitty worldviews, racism, sexism, general bigotry, classism, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.

And on top of that and everything else you said above, they are openly trolling us on purpose. People who have other people's well-being at the top of their priority lists, they are OK-symboling us on live TV in front of the world, denying it with a straight face, and laughing all the way to the bank/hell.

The world is burning, it's their fault, and they don't care and/or clearly just don't understand reality/history. Fuck them all. Every last one of them.


>Any asshole in the seat could protect their agenda,
>but that isn’t enough.
>
>They also need to send a big fuck you to assault
>survivors, “political correctness”, and women
>in general.
>
>It’s not enough to win, they have to own the libtards.
>
>
>And now their voters are fired up. They saw how this
>belligerent, privelaged, entitled, prep school frat
>boy was “treated” and now are dying to vote.
>
>Their voters are terrible people too.
>
>How can you watch Bart’s testimony and say “I
>feel so badly for him” ???
>
>Fuck this world man.

They pushed SO hard for an FBI investigation, which essentially puts faith in the FBI (lol) and the Whitehouse (lol lol lol).

So GOP surely said "lol, ok" and the sham investigation was okay'd.

Now, dumb Murricans everywhere will think "they got their investigation, what else do/did they want? Libtards!"


They should have pushed for his outright dismissal- should have gone scorched earth.

Yes, on the assaults. (Plural. They should have questioned Bart more about the other allegations as well)


But also on the lying.


AND on his behavior. They should have clapped back right away on some "Judge, would you accept this kind of behavior in your courtroom?" etc etc


They should have coordinated, and had one of their last Senators use their 5 minutes to list times Bart lied to the committee.


And, when they saw him acting that way, they should have tried to push him further.


Instead, they spent a ton of time asking Bart to call for an investigation himself (lol) and questioning him about drinking.

They let him off on a few questions even then, such as his bullshit answer for Devils Triangle.

They were a mess.


Rather than ask "will you support an investigation" they should have spent 1-3 minutes asking "Judge, why haven't you called for an investigation? Why haven't you taken a poly?" etc etc

"Judge, please understand we are talking about a lifetime appointment to our highest court, the American people deserve these answers"

etc etc


They should have been the aggressor, and pushed the GOP to drop this accused sexual assaulter who ALSO lied to the committee, lied to Fox News, is blatantly partisan, and does not have the temperment etc etc


Then two things happen-

1. The GOP drop him/ he doesn't get the votes (still, probably not)

or

2. The GOP vote him in last Saturday (likely)


If #2 happens, the Dems have A LOT to run on in the midterms and beyond.

Hell, in 2020, they could even run on impeaching Bart.


But instead, they "pushed" for norms via an FBI investigation (controlled by the Whitehouse!!!) and now they look like they got what they wanted and still aren't happy.

PLUS they woke up the GOP base


Add to that Schumer saying he'd like to raise the threshold again, and Nancy saying Dems would't push for Bart's impeachment, etc....


They STAY trying to play fair with their enemy who hasn't played fair since at least the 90s.


Don't get me wrong, GOP is evil- every last one of them. There are no moderates when it comes to white supremacy, etc.

BUT


The Dems keep trying to play fair, and they keep underestimating how low the other side will go.

Where do job applicants get to write about them wanting a job in the damn Wall Street Journal?

speak on the floor of the Senate today.

Fuck these horrible drama queens forever.

not sure if thats a good signal as to her vote on confirmation but it seems like it.

He's cruising in the polls right now. Heidtkamp's not and she still risked her seat by announcing she'll be a no. There's zero political reasons for him to vote yes.

n/m

especially with heitkamp and donnelly voting no (and they are much more vulnerable).

if he votes yes then it was basically a throwaway vote with nobody other than murkowski voting no on the repub side imo.

i think collins is the pivotal vote here (hence the speech/announcement).

but i have a lowkey suspicion that a vulnerable 2020 repub senator like cory gardner might be kinda waffling too. which is why repub leadership is so angry.

He's safe.

For optics alone, he should vote no.

"Bart is confirmed without a single Dem vote"

"Bart needs tie-breaking vote from mother-may-I to advance"


etc etc


He should have voted no on cloture, and he should definitely vote no on Saturday.

This is only relevant for the 2018 elections because the timing. There's not enough time for people to forget.

2020 folks are good either way

in press conferences, news shows, etc makes me think they know they dont have the votes.

its a far cry from all of that cocky shit about 'plowing through' they were talking not too long ago.

either way...the fact they are struggling to get to an even tie without the filibuster says a lot.

@SteveDaines has a scheduling conflict this weekend. He says he'll be walking his daughter down the aisle at her Montana wedding, regardless of the #KavanaughVote that could take place this weekend. #NBCMontana #mtpol #mtnews #Kavanaugh

https://twitter.com/MaritsaNBCMT/status/1047980282446409729

if he doesnt have the votes then i would think he would just let it tank on saturday.

At least that's what I understood from the radio earlier. So the vote has to go down before 5pm tomorrow

>in press conferences, news shows, etc makes me think they
>know they dont have the votes.
>
>its a far cry from all of that cocky shit about 'plowing
>through' they were talking not too long ago.
>


Meh, old rich white men in shock that people are questioning this younger rich white man.

Entitled demons just angry that even had to pretend to give half a shit for a day.

Upset that they actually had to interact with real people- especially women.

>either way...the fact they are struggling to get to an even
>tie without the filibuster says a lot.

It SHOULD say a lot, but it won't mean shit- especially if DINO votes yes for literally no reason.

her vote at 3pm on the floor.

Grassley now echoing Trump's bullshit about how George Soros Rootless Cosmpolitan'd the women who confronted Flake last week. None of these people are good.

jesus please let them vote no.

Seems like there is a comfortable margin for him to get voted in. The also have Pence waiting in the wings if it somehow ends up 50-50

Complaining about how unfair this has been to the doofus attempted rapist

spoke with him and various attorneys about him.

But this is pure malice right now

calling any objections to BK bullshit 'special interest groups'.

Might as well shit on people who still have a conscience while you do your dirt.

fuckin yuck.

in addition to countless amounts of other dark money.

these people are so fucking fake.

.

threatening to primary her in 2020, and this is her way of placating those elements by showing how over the top loyal she is.

That or she's going for McCain's "Hey Media, Look at Me, Look at Me" status.

didn't interview Ford, so what's the justification for this renewed attack?

justice in recent memory?

Kind of makes you wonder why all these gross scumbags support him.

this lady trying to do that right now. fuckin incredible.

is going to have to become a mainstream Dem strategy sooner rather than later.

and put a lid on trumps transformation of the lower courts.

then elect a dem prez with a dem senate majority in 2020 to prevent any repub from appointing any more sc justices for at least another 4 years. and of course pray nothing happens to rbg in the next 2 years.

if trump continues to transform the lower courts along with this hard right conservative majority on the sc...they will essentially hand him the presidency in 2020 via decisions on voting rights, campaign finance, and most likely the mueller probe.

a Dem President/Congress can possibly accomplish. It's either force some more liberal justices on there or hope John Roberts does the right thing more often.

with a conserv dying or retiring.

and it was stolen.
by this idiotic clinging to "moderation".

same idiocy that ceded the federal government to a bunch of far-right shit bags in the 2010/2014 midterms.

and continues to be the battery in the back of the Dum-Dum Left.

this place is fucked.

should be harrassed in public, private, and basically bullied out of existence.

the actual elected officials should be deported if not jailed.

Any "yes" vote to this clod should be doxxed (at the very least).


and fuck every member of the Dum-Dum Left who "whatabouts" their way to aid and abet this travesty.

to experience all that even though you were basically forced to, and in the end get this spit in the face of a speech by Collins, wow

edit: post 666, we should just archive now lol

a public figure for the rest of her life, all so the guy who tried to rape her could free future rapists.

I truly do

They have 1 code...it's 'fuck you'