Me too. As I said the other day, we’re going to have two sexual harassers on the Supreme Court and one in the White House. And God knows how many in Congress.
2.
WaterGirl
I believe her, too, and my blood is boiling over this. I don’t normally have high blood pressure, but I would hate to see a reading right now.
3.
Mary G
Reposting from below just a minute ago:
I believe her and I believe DiFi did the right thing. If it was a Democratic judge up for confirmation and a Republican senator had received that letter, it would be on the Drudge Report 60 seconds later. DiFi believed the woman, and respected her desire for anonymity, so all the people screaming that she should have told the other Dems immediately can fuck right off. This nomination reeks, and I have set a goal to write a postcard today for every senator on the Judiciary panel, plus the Republican leaners, today so I can mail them and be sure they receive them before Thursday. The fact that Grassley delayed the vote a week shows that they are afraid.
I believe her too, and admire the fact that she came forward, because the deplorables are going to make her life hell on earth. She’s a brave and strong woman.
4.
trollhattan
“Boys will be boys and anyway, it didn’t happen so neener-neener, Democrats.”
–Everybody on Fox, et cetera
5.
WaterGirl
I want 65 MILLION women to sign that letter.
Someone should start one on the internet and put that up against their 65 women.
I also wonder how each of those 65 women feels after reading this woman’s account of the attempted rape.
6.
dmsilev
Posted this in the previous thread. The official GOP response is basically a raised middle finger:
BREAKING: Senate Republicans signaled they plan to move ahead on Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination despite a decades-old sexual misconduct allegation.
The statement from Judiciary Committee Republicans came shortly after The Washington Post published a story Sunday afternoon that included an on-the-record interview with the woman alleging the sexual misconduct, Christine Blasey Ford. The committee Republicans said it was disturbing that the allegation was never brought to the attention of the full panel previously.
7.
WaterGirl
Sexual misconduct?!?!?!?!!?!?!?
That wording doesn’t even begin to be strong enough.
8.
Mary G
Gilian Flynn, author of “Gone Girl,” “Sharp Objects,” and more, in Time Magazine:
I’d like to scrape up some sense of triumph over the fact that many courageous women have raised their voices. But I don’t feel triumphant. I feel humiliated and angry. They hate us. That’s my immediate thought, with each new revelation: They hate us. And then, a more sick-making suspicion: They don’t care about us enough to hate us. We are simply a form of livestock.
Yes, a form of livestock, or toys. Not human beings.
9.
WaterGirl
Thank god she was wearing a one-piece bathing suit under her clothes. That surely slowed him down.
10.
germy
People on twitter are posting screenshots of Mark Judge’s (Kavanaugh’s accomplice in the bedroom) memoir.
Some really ugly beliefs on display, about women meaning yes when they say no, and men’s power.
11.
anya
I believe her too.
Let’s see if Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski put their party before their conscience and their humanity.
12.
Arclite
On the one hand, I’m glad it’s only one woman, and not more. On the other hand, it would take a Weinstein level of victims to sink him. If there are any others out there, they need to come forward immediately.
13.
opiejeanne
I believe her too, and knew instantly what this was about even though I hadn’t heard her name yet. I have believed her since she was an anonymous reporter.
14.
dmsilev
@WaterGirl: “Sexual assault” at a bare minimum. “Attempted rape” is probably closer.
15.
eemom
I’ll say it again: how the fuck can the “denial” by a blackout drunk be worth anything??
Maybe I’m being too optimistic, but I think there’s a 5% or so chance that this sinks Kavanaugh.
18.
germy
Here’s a page from Mark Judge’s memoir
Damaging to Kavanaugh.
His alleged accomplice and character witness, Mark Judge, wrote the following in a review.
See for yourself how Judge describes "the wonderful beauty, of uncontrollable male passion," how "every man who’s fit to live has his own stories about the time." pic.twitter.com/vEVqHs0iec — Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) September 16, 2018
I don’t follow polls enough to know for certain, but IMHO the Repub incumbent is running scared from William Tanoos in IN-08.
While Dr. Buschon was the doctor who implanted my artificial heart valve and is a competent doctor, he’s a shitty Congressman.
Disclosure: Tanoos was also a partner in the law firm that resulted in the win in my SSDI appeal.
Though from what I’ve read, that’s not much on an accomplishment here in Indiana.
21.
JPL
What about Capito and Ernst? How can they read the story and not show some empathy? Cole needs to call his Senator.
22.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mary G: I believe her and I believe DiFi did the right thing. If it was a Democratic judge up for confirmation and a Republican senator had received that letter, it would be on the Drudge Report 60 seconds later. DiFi believed the woman, and respected her desire for anonymity, so all the people screaming that she should have told the other Dems immediately can fuck right off.
I was thinking this morning that her location, Anna Eshoo’s district, had been pinpointed, and that elite, DC area private school world was small enough that someone was going to track her down. Turns out reporters were calling her colleagues, and one showed up at a class she teaches. And if reporters could do it, so could MAGAts. I hope there’s a police car parked outside her house
23.
geg6
I definitely believe her. Her story is very similar to what happened when I was raped. I wish I’d had a one-piece bathing suit on under my clothes. It would certainly have given me a chance to avoid the rape.
This woman’s account seems credible on its face – but it’s also 35 years ago, there are no corroborating witnesses or similar incidents, and Kavanaugh and Judge have unequivocally denied. So I’m going to wait for more evidence.— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) September 16, 2018
26.
Baud
@Mary G: My guess is that certain people are more interested in defeating DiFi than opposing Kavanaugh. If the GOP Senators up the him on, expect DiFi to be held solely accountable.
@Betty Cracker: but I think there’s a 5% or so chance that this sinks Kavanaugh.
better than that, I think. This gives Collins a chance to back down without looking like it was the fundraising that spooked her. I’ll defer to MomSense and other Mainers, but it looks to me that she had really fucked up by not at least waiting to announce her support, and I suspect Ted Cruz, Dean Heller and several candidates are praying that she and Murkowski get them off the hook, the quicker the better.
I’ll say it again: how the fuck can the “denial” by a blackout drunk be worth anything??
He’s a wealthy white man. We need to know our place.
31.
WaterGirl
Why isn’t there a TV commercial yet?
I believe Christine Blasey Ford. AND I VOTE.
32.
Martin
Christ, what’s not to believe?
She told her husband and therapist in 2012. Both corroborate that. The therapist has contemporaneous notes. That puts us in legally admissible territory.
She wrote the letter in July, before Kavanaugh was even the nominee. Early enough that his nomination could have been avoided or quietly withdrawn.
She passed a polygraph.
Parallel to this, the GOP built a character narrative – soccer dad, girls basketball coach, mentor. Everything was focused around what a great guy he was to women. And they had lined up 65 female character witnesses from a time when Kavanaugh attended an all boys school. Not from his high school, but from other ones in the area. Who the fuck is so well known that you could line up 100+ character witnesses (we have to assume at least some males knew him as well) from neighboring high schools decades later?
This was known by the GOP. McConnell said it would be difficult to confirm him. McConnell knows. They build a campaign specifically designed to win over women. There’s nothing here not to believe. The GOP alone is signaling that this is believable.
No need to depress ourselves by reflecting what the chance would be in a sane world.
35.
hells littlest angel
Putting a sexual assaulter in the White House got them tax cuts and deregulation. I don’t think Republicans can resist the temptation to find out what they can get from putting one on the Supreme Court.
Our only recourse is to vote the Republican party out of existence — and it will still take decades to fix the damage they’ve done.
@Betty Cracker:
I hope you aren’t but I’m not holding my breath.
These republican scum don’t care what you or I think. They only want one thing, the money they get from their benefactors, who care even less about it. They care about money, having the most of it. That Mercer old man who owes 7 fucking billion in back taxes? He gives a flying fuck about anything other than keeping money, his yours, mine it makes no difference. The wealthy are used to buying what they want, whenever they want and they get pissy when they don’t get their way. They’ve bought and actually paid for a congress, they aren’t taking no for an answer.
But I hope you are right, that they lose.
Also, I’m certain you didn’t mean it this way, but what you wrote could sound like you’re saying geg6 should have known better. I am guessing she got enough of that from her mom.
39.
opiejeanne
@geg6: Me too, and alas for the lack of aa one-piece bathing suit.
40.
WaterGirl
@WaterGirl: Re:that extra \ after the end of the sentence was a typo. In case ./ means something!
41.
germy
Everyone who falls into PEETUS’s orbit gets burned.
Kavanaugh trotted out his daughters and his white girls’ basketball team. Before this shitshow, none of those kids had any idea of any of this.
Now it’s common knowledge. I’m sure the girls will be told “it’s all lies” but I wonder if any of them will look at him the same way again.
Maybe at some point he’ll feel something approaching shame.
@zhena gogolia: That’s possible, but I’m recalling a discussion in college about the various ways one might thwart a too-aggressive date. It was advice to a friend who was concerned. Tight girdles and several tampons were also recommended.
43.
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I don’t follow Collins. Has she ever bucked the party line? For anything important?
Alaska’s weird and IICR Murkowski got her seat back via write-ins when the tea party dude proved too lunatic even for them. Going against the nomination may not harm her future but again, any history of doing the right thing against party wishes?
44.
Schlemazel
This will have as much impact on Kavana’s nomination as Anita Hill’s had on Thomas’s. Yeah, times have changed so this time the Dems will side with Ford but it is Elefant Uber Alles and charges like these will only sink a Dem nominee because they have not changed enough yet.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: They should be furious at Trump for putting them through this. This shouldn’t be this hard. They already scrapped the filibuster; Republicans have the majority. Gorsuch sailed through, regardless of his hostility to Roe v. Wade. Now they’re trying to ram this through before they lose the Senate (they clearly believe it really might happen) and Ol’ Spankee gives them Kavanaugh, a colossal piece of shit, because Spankee needs the absolute worst he can install on the Supreme Court.
A standard conservative hack just isn’t awful enough. Spankee needed a total partisan hack fascist. So now Republican Senators have to either vote to support a candidate who is clearly unqualified for the Supreme Court and deeply unpopular right as they’re going into a tough election, or they potentially sink their last (hopefully!) opportunity to install a hard-right Court for a generation.
I went back and looked, and she doesn’t remember exactly how she ended up at the party, but the house was near the pool they all used to go to. I assumed that’s why she was in the suit.
48.
WaterGirl
From a LGM article:
Ian Millhiser
✔
@imillhiser
So, to summarize, a confessed serial sexual predator nominated a man who is credibly accused of attempted rape to be the key vote to strip women of reproductive freedom.
49.
trollhattan
@germy:
The day Trump rolled out his new pet justice and the dude immediately gave a politburo-style ass kissing about Trump’s bestest, biggest vetting process evah I knew the dude has no soul. The hearings only reinforce that.
@WaterGirl: No, I didn’t mean it against geg6. It’s just a data point in what women dealt (and deal) with. It would be easy to ask why we went out with guys with whom we had to worry about such things. That was the way it was. And it would have been silly, even then, to have taken such preventatives with every date. But as we know, a lot of women have been raped by guys they never thought would do such a thing.
51.
Schlemazel
@Cheryl Rofer:
Such a thing never occured to me. It is shitty anyone would have to consider that.
My stupid mother raised me to treat everyone with respect so I guess a lot of shitty things never occured to me until late in life when I am forced to find out about them.
52.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@Arclite: I doubt it’s only one woman; it’s one woman who’s come forward publicly. Thus far.
In my professional experience, it’s rarely a singular incident.
53.
trollhattan
@Baud:
Okay, thanks. So there’s a sliver of possibility here.
Does make me wonder who the Federalist Society has on deck, just in case.
54.
WaterGirl
@Cheryl Rofer: As I said, I was certain you didn’t intend it that way. It just made me uncomfortable to leave that hanging out there without saying something.
55.
debit
So, any of the GOP assholes who couldn’t wait to crucify Franken weigh in on this yet? I have to assume that Kavanaugh has squeezed at least one woman by the waist in his adult life.
@trollhattan: IIRC there were three or four names floating around from that list, including two women. Kavanagh is said to have been McConnell’s last choice, because of his history in the Bush administration, and a lot of people thought that would torpedo him with trump. I think The Beast was persuaded that BK would protect him in the event of a subpoena or some other Mueller-related case going to the SC
61.
Alain the site fixer
As someone who attended a DC prep school (all boy) in the ‘80’s, this is not hard to believe at all. We were a few years younger and more enlightened, but the privilege and attitude was real. I had a couple of friends at Prep, but never liked their classmates. I found that I didn’t much care for the Catholic boy’s schools, but loved the girl’s schools. Go figure.
But seriously, I worked as a late teen with a woman who was about 7 years older than me and she had horrible stories to tell of DC boy’s school grads acting like this when adults. It was yet another encouragement to expand my circle of friends, lest I absorb the sexism and shitty attitude about women. It was also a reminder that I was an ally, not a threat, and that I needed to be sure I was seen like that, so I dropped a lot of sexist crap I didn’t really believe. Having a strong, amazing mom as an example was a great reminder, too.
62.
Schlemazel
BTW – the ‘stupid mother’ line was bitter sarcasm. I mean, think of all the sex I could have had if she had not done that. I’m sure I could have forced myself on plenty of girls . . .
63.
Betty Cracker
@germy: For this kind of crime, shame (if the perp is capable of feeling it) is the only justice available. I suspect it’ll be the same with the Trumps. They’ll never get what they deserve, but they’ll rue the fucking day. It’s not enough, but it’s probably gonna have to do.
64.
sdhays
@Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho: I wonder if those 65 women who supposedly knew him in high school were rounded up for this specific accusation or if the handlers were more concerned about others that have yet to surface.
65.
Another Scott
I believe her, too.
Others have made the point that there’s no statute of limitations on rape in Maryland. And Montgomery County is in Maryland. IANAL, but…
In Maryland, most statutes provide both the crime and the applicable penalty. The penalties for the crimes listed above are:
Rape
First Degree – Generally, life imprisonment is the maximum sentence for this crime or attempt of this crime. However, if a person commits the rape on a kidnapped child under 16, had a prior conviction for first-degree rape or sexual offense, or raped a child under 13 while over 18 years old then life imprisonment without the possibility of parole is the maximum sentence available.
She thinks she was 15.
He could be in a load of trouble, beyond possible impeachment. It’s hard to believe that there won’t be other collaborating evidence coming forward if he doesn’t withdraw. Will he? Dunno…
Cheers,
Scott.
66.
B.B.A.
I believe Christine Blasey Ford.
and I’m a filthy cishet white dude so even the Repubs ought to listen to me. Of course I’m also an elitist Jewish New Yorker so they won’t.
67.
Gelfling 545
I’m sure he could have come up with some acceptable (to Republicans) folderol about how there may have been exchanges between them in hs and some unfortunate teenage drinking but ay, youth and who among us, etc. and it was much less serious than she describes, if only they hadn’t gone out and hunted up those 65 women. Now it looks like a pre-arranged cover up, otherwise known as lying the committee.
68.
Schlemazel
@Baud:
What the hell was she thinking then? I doubt very much then or now
69.
Suzanne
I also believe Christine Blasey Ford.
And I also would not be surprised in the slightest to hear that she is not the only Kavanaugh accuser.
She got back because of natives, who are very climate change aware. Apparently that may affect her.
But we need someone else other than Collins and Murkowski, right?
71.
smintheus
It’s interesting to observe this afternoon how Republicans are trying to forestall the collapse of Kavanaugh’s nomination. You have hoards of flying monkeys, some obviously bots, making dismissive comments on line. You have a *very* small number of Republican staffers throwing up flak and pretending that it’s too late to delay even the committee vote. I also noted a single GOP senator saying that he thought the vote would not be delayed (that’s the opposite of a show of strength, that’s more along the lines of “guys, hey, somebody else come out and help me here”). And nearly all the other Republican senators are going as silent as the grave. Even the White House is playing it cautiously.
I realize that Democrats love to play Eeyore, but this is not the time for gloom and doom about Kavanaugh’s supposed inevitability. All the signs today are that Republicans are terrified that the nominee will be defeated or have to withdraw. For that matter, he might have some serious problems explaining this to his family. The accusation looks to have validity, to judge by the facts reported by the Post.
72.
Fleeting Expletive
I want those 65 who signed the letter for Kavenaugh to be called as witnesses, reopen the hearings. Withdraw his nomination. I’ve called my Republican senator three times on this–the nominee just isn’t good enough. In addition to being part of a corrupt process from an illegitimately elected president.
73.
B.B.A.
Also, I don’t want to hear another word against Senator Gillibrand again.
74.
Imelda
I am sure she is not the only woman assaulted by him
Let’s see if Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski put their party before their conscience and their humanity.
Doubtful that they have conscience or humanity.
77.
Schlemazel
@sdhays:
My first thought was “this is overkill. He has more bodies hidden” then it occured to me that they had to have this before the story came out so they KNOW there are
78.
Gator90
Everyone believes her. Some people care, and some don’t.
Everyone who falls into PEETUS’s orbit gets burned.
It’s not coincidental. I’d be willing to bet that once that letter made it to the Senate, it quickly became known to Trump. That increased the likelihood that Trump would pick Kavanaugh, because Trump knew he’d have leverage over him. That’s how Trump operates – he doesn’t attract dirty people – he relies on their dirtiness. It’s no secret that loyalty is the most important thing to him, and the best way to ensure loyalty is to have dirt on the person.
The problem is that in the world of NY real estate and reality TV doesn’t attract a lot of scrutiny. It’s not that the dirt isn’t important, it’s that it’s overwhelmingly common, so if it does get reported its generally by the tabloids. You get to the WH and everything gets reported, and by WaPo and ProPublica, not the National Enquirer. Trump doesn’t know how to operate in that environment and can’t accept that a strategy that worked for 50 years suddenly doesn’t.
Fuck them all. Burn them to the ground.
80.
germy
@Schlemazel: She also showed up at the hearings to personally testify for him.
Important: Overall, 38% said the Senate should vote to confirm Kavanaugh, 39% that they should not, per the most recent CNN poll BEFORE the allegations broke. That is the lowest support for a Supreme Court nominee in CNN polling back to Bork’s nomination in 1987. per @jennagiesta
I also wonder how each of those 65 women feels after reading this woman’s account of the attempted rape.
They already knew they were bullshitting when they pooled together to impugn the credibility of the accuser. They had no way of knowing whether the accusation they were dismissing was true, but they hoped we wouldn’t notice that.
83.
sdhays
@Walker: No, I thought the same thing. We just need two Republican votes to sink the nomination.
84.
WaterGirl
@Cheryl Rofer: Thanks for being so gracious about it.
The problem is that in the world of NY real estate and reality TV doesn’t attract a lot of scrutiny. It’s not that the dirt isn’t important, it’s that it’s overwhelmingly common, so if it does get reported its generally by the tabloids. You get to the WH and everything gets reported, and by WaPo and ProPublica, not the National Enquirer. Trump doesn’t know how to operate in that environment and can’t accept that a strategy that worked for 50 years suddenly doesn’t.
True.
86.
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Think you have a compelling argument that his doctrine of “Leave the sitting president alooooone!” leapfrogged Kavanaugh to the head of the pack.
Stupid Ken Starr is still damaging the country.
87.
Schlemazel
@B.B.A.:
Yours is the first time her name has come up in any discussion of this. I have heard nothing out of her or about her on this topic
@Betty Cracker: I think the chance is now much higher than 5%.
90.
trollhattan
@Walker:
Admit I don’t have a head count, only that Jon Kyl will be seated by the time the entire senate would take a vote.
91.
Ruckus
@Another Scott:
Well someone would have to make a complaint and a prosecutor would have to file for him to be tried and if she was going to make a complaint, wouldn’t she have done so already? And if she made a complaint how much of the story is admissible evidence? Of course just making the complaint might be enough to make him ineligible for the office, but in this atmosphere?
92.
sdhays
@James E Powell: I think at this point a vote for Kavanaugh could finally cost Senator Collins her seat in 2020; he is just that toxic. I think she’ll eventually vote no. I have no idea on Murkowski since she doesn’t have to face voters until 2022, but if Collins is voting no, I think she’s a more likely “no”.
I believe I heard reporting that Kavanaugh wrote a long list of questions for Starr to ask President Clinton, many of which were sexually very graphic. That seems in keeping with his high school “highjinks.
94.
WaterGirl
@B.B.A.: You’re not the boss of me. Fuck Senator Gillibrand.
* Though I would vote for her if she was the nominee.
95.
Mart
Clearly if amoral liberal Catholics had not infiltrated the true Church, these boys would not have had decadent rapey thoughts. I completely understand their deep held belief it was the young woman’s fault for her being there, so they had nothing to do with it. With Kavanaugh, six of the nine justices will be raised Catholic, five of them not liking icky women parts. The dead people in Chicago never should have started all this by electing Kennedy.
96.
smintheus
@Martin: Exactly. This for Republicans is the start of the feared meltdown. Democratic timidity might hand Republicans a victory, but the drumbeat to get to the bottom of the attempted rape accusation otherwise is only going to keep getting stronger.
97.
Schlemazel
@trollhattan:
The split is 51/49. We need all Dems & at least 2 Rs to vote no.
98.
opiejeanne
@Cheryl Rofer: I never heard that. My experience was in 1976 when I was 26 and married. Maybe my girlfriends knew about it, but I wasn’t even at a party.
99.
Bruuuuce
@sdhays: I’ve heard suggestions that Collins intends to step down from the Senate and run for Governor next time around. If that’s the case, she needs to be stomped hard; she won’t be quite as bad as LePage, but then, that’s a ridiculously low bar to clear.
100.
patrick II
I am not surprised at all. Kavanaugh, whenever he has the power, he uses it as serial abuser of women. He abused Monica Lewinsky when he and Starr not only made her, under penalty of a prison sentence, detail the sexual particulars of her relationship with Clinton, but then publicly used questions about those details to humiliate Clinton. To them the young women Lewinsky was just collateral damage. The fact that Clinton had an affair was enough to establish his testimony in the Jones trial was misleading (although no less misleading than testimony Kavanaugh has given in his hearings). But Lewinsky was publicly humiliated even more and took years of therapy and finally self-assertion to live a pridefull life again. Clinton had sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky, Starr and Kavanaugh sexually abused her.
The republicans on the judicial committee were so worried about what Kavanaugh’s daughters heard during his hearings, did Kavanaugh give a thought to what a young Chelsea Clinton heard during her father’s opprobrious questioning?
He also took advantage of his position to lead a two year faux investigation pretending that Vince Foster’s suicide might have actually been a murder masterminded by Hillary Clinton, once again abusing his position to put a woman in her place.
And most recently ruling from the bench in a totally non-legal manner in the case of a you hispanic immigrant who had every legal right to an abortion, to stop her from exercising that right and forcing her to have a baby against her will. He said she needed a sponsor, he could have said she need a blue hat or needed to whistle dixie with every bit as much legal relevance. He did it because she was locked up and he could, and it would help fill out his resume with the right birth control extremists for his acceptance as a Supreme Court judge. Once again, the affect on the victim of his abuse of the law to abuse a woman was not something he considered as important.
He sexually assaulted someone when he was younger? Nothing could be more true to form.
101.
Ruckus
@Bruuuuce:
That’s not a low bar, that’s an underground tunnel.
102.
Adam L Silverman
@eemom: You can’t. And that’s going to, if used properly, be a powerful tool for Professor Ford, for her attorney, for her family, friends, and other supporters, and for the Democrats on the committee and in the Senate.
I’ve read that this guy has been groomed for years for this appointment. The Repubs certainly seem to be all in on it. In past years I’ve suspected them of putting up a lousy first candidate (e.g. Bork, Miers) so the second one could sail through easily but they don’t seem to have a backup guy this time. ???
104.
TS (the original)
What is there not to believe. I was at college in the 1960s and remember the parties and the drinking. If the girls complained they ended up leaving and going home because they were always blamed for whatever happened.
105.
sdhays
@Bruuuuce: If she wanted to do that, she should have done it this year (and I remember rumors that she was flirting with switching to governor this year in 2017, but ultimately decided to stay put). Now she has to wait until 2022, so her reelection campaign will come first. Hopefully she’ll get stomped regardless, but I think she’ll be in real danger if she ends up voting for Kavanaugh.
106.
Llelldorin
Collins and Murkowski have taken “brave” votes in the past precisely once they were sure that their supposed bravery wouldn’t actually affect anything. I’m reminded of their “brave” votes against Betsy DeVos, taken after voting _for_ the nomination in committee where their votes would have been determinative.
This one’ll be interesting. Now that Jones represents Alabama they can’t safely pull that stunt together unless they really mean to stop Kavanaugh.
107.
Ruckus
@patrick II:
Very reasonable take on the history of this totally unqualified ass.
Ah! Thank you for reminding me that that despicable twat exists, so I can gleefully imagine what a shitty Sunday SHE must be having.
109.
Adam L Silverman
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: And remember the crowd we’re dealing with. These are the folks that legitimate believe that the Clintons, the Obamas, James Comey, Robert Mueller, DNI Clapper, DCI Brennan, and a number of other elites and notables are running a global pedophile ring out of the non-existent basement of a DC area pizzeria. These people are the type to SWAT her and her family. They’re the type to take a shot at her or to shoot up her house. We are facing a toxic and deadly combination of tribalism and conspiracism.
Senate Republicans signaled they plan to move ahead on Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination despite a decades-old sexual misconduct allegation
As usual it’s the coverup and lying that is part of the issue. They ALL lie, all the time. They always blame the victim. What she thought would happen – is happening. Even today – 50 years after I was at college, they still blame the woman. Upstanding man sowed a few wild oats.
111.
smintheus
From Politico:
The White House issued the same statement on Kavanaugh’s behalf that it did last week: “I categorically and unequivocally deny this allegation. I did not do this back in high school or at any time.”
That’s a good sign the WH is politically paralyzed over the WaPo article.
112.
El Caganer
@smintheus: Timidity? There’s blood in the water – no time to be a goldfish.
@TS (the original): That is a statement by a staffer on the Judiciary Committee. It doesn’t mean that “Senate Republicans” as a whole have any plan, it means that at least some of the leadership would like to use an obscure staffer to try to convince us that they won’t cede anything. Republican senators are not lining up publicly today behind Kavanaugh – that’s the most important evidence we have for assessing the GOP’s plans, the absence of coordinated pushback.
115.
Ruckus
@Bruuuuce:
@sdhays:
The mood in Maine seems to be not on her side. So if she votes not to confirm that might end her career on the conservative side and if she votes yes then it will probably end her political future as well. I’d call that rock and hard place. But then I may be underestimating the Maine voters and their desires. So she may be done anyway and she’ll follow her conscience. OK I see the flaw in that line of thought.
@sdhays: Logistically, it makes sense. But if she’s facing a tough fight for her Senate seat (which she is, considering the GoFundMe set to fund her opponent as well as opposition from the state’s most influential resident, Stephen King, if she votes to confirm), she might take the opportunity to exit and then hope the public’s memory fades in the couple of years before she runs again.
117.
Bruuuuce
@Ruckus: I hope you’re right, but would put money on the side of her marching in lockstep with the rest of the crooks.
118.
smintheus
@El Caganer: Which is why I can’t understand all the defeatism today from Democratic commenters on line. Kavanaugh’s nomination is in mortal danger now.
@opiejeanne: Seeing your comment and others, I guess it wasn’t all that common knowledge. The women in my dorm must have been ahead of their time.
121.
zhena gogolia
If (if!) his nomination goes down, I’m going back to watch that clip where he sneers at the Parkland father again and again.
122.
Brachiator
@TaMara (HFG): I find Ford’s story to be credible, but I thought that lie detectors are unreliable, and inadmissible in court. I don’t know that either Slate or the Washington Post can use the lie detector results as corroborating anything. The other aspects of their reporting appear to be solid.
Ms Ford is brave. Maybe she hoped that her confidential letter would spur further investigation.
I understand her caution. I wonder how the Intercept got info on her letter. And it’s clear that some “journalists” don’t care about Ford or the Supreme Court nominee, and want to take down Senator Feinstein.
123.
eemom
“….I did not do this back in high school or at any time.”
Somehow that last clause strikes me as…..not something an innocent person would say.
It’s lawyerly, though. I will give him that.
124.
Adam L Silverman
@germy: Says the man who we know laundered the Israeli government’s attempts, via then Israeli Foreign Minister and long rumored to be Putin’s Russian mob point of contact in Jerusalem Avigdor Lieberman and on behalf of Manafort’s attempts to achieve Putin’s goals in Ukraine, to smear Secretary Clinton and President Obama as anti-Semites in order to get Governor Romney elected in 2012. The only outstanding question is was Shapiro specifically paid and instructed to do this or was he just a dupe. Given he sells survival food packages and supplements, you decide.
Manafort docs reveal he got Ben Shapiro to write propaganda for Breitbart in 2012 to help his Putin-linked interests in Ukraine. Ha. Ah ha ha ha. Ah hahahahahahahaha. pic.twitter.com/XU28JGa4JJ
This Israeli involvement in Manafort's effort to trade on the idea that Obama wasn't sufficiently anti-anti-Semitism is a big deal. "MANAFORT coordinated privately with a senior Israeli government official to issue a written statement publicizing this story." pic.twitter.com/voqCUkyYFQ
In 2012 Israel’s then-foreign minister @AvigdorLiberman published a statement attacking the political rivals of #Manafort’s clients in Ukraine for espousing anti-Semitism. Lieberman denied tonight he had ever met or spoken with #Manaforthttps://t.co/1YyN9xG4kI
We have a combined 30-plus years of experience handling issues surrounding the polygraph, including past congressional testimony on the topic. Relying upon that experience, we can say with considerable confidence that Sen. Paul’s proposal is ridiculous, completely counterproductive and sets a dangerous precedent.
Let’s make one thing absolutely clear: The polygraph is not a lie-detector test. It does not determine if you are telling the truth. The examiner reviewing the readings from the polygraph cannot determine if you are telling the truth. No matter how much Hollywood might try to convince you otherwise, the polygraph is not a mechanized version of truth serum.
The polygraph is merely a device that evaluates various physiological reactions your body makes when answering questions. It measures your heart rate, respiration and perspiration, among other things. Examiners are trained how to “read between the lines” in terms of what those measurements may suggest about the truthfulness of your answers. If their interpretation of the readings suggests deception, the examiners are further trained in how to coax individuals into subsequently divulging more information in order to “put their mind at ease” so that their reactions will be lessened. Polygraph examiners are skillful and trained interrogators, nothing more and nothing less.
As part of our law practice, we represent contractors and federal employees working across the intelligence and law enforcement communities who have run into problems with the polygraph. We routinely have to address the fallout of alleged “admissions” made by our clients during polygraph sessions and which are subsequently used as the basis for personnel or security clearance proceedings.
There are two primary circumstances in which the federal government commonly uses polygraph examinations: one is for the security clearance-screening of individuals being considered for access to classified information (most agencies using polygraphs deal with Sensitive Compartmented Information, some of the government’s most sensitive secrets); and the other is in a more narrow situation where specific allegations of misconduct have been levied against an existing employee or contractor. In both situations, the polygraph is often just one of several investigative tools used to gather relevant and material information.
Moreover, there is no reason to believe that it would even work as intended. History is littered with actual moles and spies working for years within the U.S. government despitebeing subjected to polygraph examinations. Aldrich Ames and Ana Belen Montes, convicted spies who committed espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union and Cuba, respectively, were able to “pass” polygraph examinations on multiple occasions during their careers in the government. The Department of Justice has itself argued before the Supreme Court that polygraph evidence should be inadmissible in court due to its inaccuracy. Government polygraph experts also acknowledge the existence of false positives (innocent people suggesting guilt) and false negatives (guilty people displaying innocence), calling into question any obtained results.
Lie detector tests are indeed inadmissible in court. Actually, the case that held that back in 1923, Frye v. United States, set the standard for admissibility of scientific evidence that is still the law in some jurisdictions.
That being said, the fact that they’re not admissible doesn’t mean they’re not credible.
I’ve read that this guy has been groomed for years for this appointment. The Repubs certainly seem to be all in on it. In past years I’ve suspected them of putting up a lousy first candidate (e.g. Bork, Miers) so the second one could sail through easily but they don’t seem to have a backup guy this time. ???
They have a whole lists of backups. But you’re seeing a fight between the Senate GOP and the WH. McConnell was clear he wasn’t sure he could confirm Kavanaugh. He never wanted him nominated. That’s all on Trump, because Kavanaugh will protect him. But the Senate didn’t have a lot of time. They wanted this done before the midterms, which only gave them 4 ½ months. Trump got them a name in about a week, and had the Senate GOP spiked him, it would have delayed it further.
McConnell wanted someone without all the baggage and who never worked in the WH so that the reviewing documents could be pulled together quickly and a vote completed. But now it’s too late for even that. There were a number of people on that list that would have sailed through, but Trump wouldn’t nominate them.
131.
Tim C.
@John Revolta: No, they don’t and they clearly think there’s a good chance of Democrats getting the Senate. The horrible horrible reality is that this…..man will likely get confirmed 51-49 because they GOP doesn’t have enough time left to get anyone else. Likewise, there will now be four absolutely batshit-insane right wing votes on the court and John Roberts, Who is evil but not stupid, and has the single not-terrible-as-the-others quality of understanding that if he gives the GOP it’s fondest desires, that it has a good chance to destroy the party.
132.
Adam L Silverman
@sdhays: Makes you wonder why he wasn’t on Leonard Leo’s original list.
@Bruuuuce:
The conscience was the flaw in the argument.
She’s shown before that she doesn’t, in the end, have one. And she was really pissed off that that gofund me was announced. She’s a republican, through and through.
The real question is, will she look into the future farther than tomorrow and see what it holds for her and make a decision that gives her a possible career path or just be herself and follow the company line?
135.
Schlemazel
@eemom:
WAIT! You don’t seriously think she will be affected by this news, do you?
Her and the enablers like her are just like Homer Simpson: “[I] who will never get his comeuppance! You hear me? No comeuppance! ” And never a regret because the money is good
136.
Ruckus
@smintheus:
I’ll agree that there is an element of danger to his conformation happening but how do you get to mortal danger?
137.
opiejeanne
@Cheryl Rofer: It never occurred to me that I might be raped when I went to college. I was pretty naive, but when I was first at college I had no problem with boys. They liked me, no one tried to rape me. I got married during my sophomore year and dropped out when I became pregnant.
It was when I went back to finish my degree that a friend who lived in the dorms got me up to his room on a pretext, (come up and see my etchings) and he nailed me. I was so embarrassed and shocked that I didn’t say anything at the time, just got the heck out of there. In fact, I didn’t even classify it as rape at first which seemed so obvious a few hours later. It was essentially that stupid thing called date rape. We had a four hour break between our last class of the day and a concert we were both in that evening, and I lived an hour away. He offered to have supper with me and I jokingly agreed to eat in the commons with him, then he wanted me to listen to something he’d recorded. Dot dot dot.
And my performance in the concert was good that night. But later, when I got home I just started shaking and coming apart.
The story gets worse but I won’t bore you with the details.
138.
Ruckus
@Cheryl Rofer:
It sounds like experience talking more than anything.
Which goes to show just how much of real problem this is.
139.
Llelldorin
@smintheus: It’s in danger, but for that danger to become “mortal” we’d need to see something that we’ve never seen before: Collins and Murkowski willing to buck the party in a case where doing so would actually change the outcome of a vote.
It’s conceivable, but I’ve simply never seen it happen.
140.
Adam L Silverman
@Alain the site fixer: I went to an all male Jesuit high school for three years before we moved to Denver for my Dad’s sabbatical year, which was my senior year that was done at a public school in the Denver burbs. I did not know 65 girls, now women, from our sister school in Tampa. I can remember the name of one. I can remember the names of a couple of dozen girls, now women, I was in a Jewish youth group with while in high school. And I can remember the names of maybe a 1/2 dozen or so of the girls, now women, I went to high school with during my senior year. My then girlfriend and the girls in my AP classes and on the knowledge bowl team. That they were able to get 65 women to issue “we knew him real well” testimonials in less than 24 hours is troubling.
141.
Adam L Silverman
@smintheus: Here’s the reporting on the most recent White House thinking on the matter:
A lawyer close to the White House said the nomination will not be withdrawn. “No way, not even a hint of it. If anything, it’s the opposite. If somebody can be brought down by accusations like this, then you, me, every man certainly should be worried.” https://t.co/aAbYbNVgNj
@opiejeanne:
I have already admitted to being stupidly naive. Painfully so it seems. Is there any woman who has not had unwanted sexual contact? I was just talking about this a couple days ago with my wife of 45 years and she told me an older cousin fondled her when she was 13-14. I was shocked. One that she had never mentioned it and two that she seemed to assume something like that happened to every girl at some time. I have no words for my anger and dismay. I had no idea so many guys could be this way
143.
TS (the original)
So I went looking and found 4 other female senators that belong to the GOP. Out of 51 senators they have 6 women. Old white men voting away women’s rights – and I doubt those other 4 women will vote against Kavanaugh – and they should be out there saying “there but for …. go I”
144.
B.B.A.
If somebody can be brought down by accusations like this, then you, me, every man certainly should be worried.
Damn right.
145.
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
I agree with your point but have to take exception to one flaw in your sentence and that is the concept of thinking, in this WH.
146.
Llelldorin
@Adam L Silverman: I went to a public high school in the late 1980s. The school was roughly half women, as you’d expect.
I _might_ be able to dig up a dozen women who could confirm that I was basically decent back then. There’s no way I could find 65.
That the Republicans had that list ready to go is an admission in its own right.
Polygraph examiners are skillful and trained interrogators, nothing more and nothing less.
And some are not terribly skillful, even foolish. I took a single polygraph test when applying for a job with a federal agency that routinely lied about its own activities. My examiner asked intrusive questions about my love life I was not willing to discuss with a stranger, and he then leapt to conclusion that I must be gay. I finally laughed at his stupidity and obvious incompetence, and told him that I would never agree to work for an agency where I’d have to answer to fools and their ouija boards, much less an agency whose official policy was rampant homophobia.
He then announced that he had changed his mind and I was now considered to be not gay. He actually seemed to imagine that I would find his sudden reversal more reassuring.
Now if they were using a Magic 8 ball to evaluate testimony, I might be able to give it more credence.
Well, the ones who could be charged with assault ought to be worried, FFS.
152.
Adam L Silverman
@smintheus: Like everything else, you get good ones and you get bad ones. Questions about sexual orientation are now off limits in those polygraphic examinations.
@Martin: @Tim C.: Yes, the looming election makes things much more fraught. Who woulda thought the Senate would be in play? Sometimes I feel like I should step away from the news cycle for awhile but ain’t gonna happen..
I went to an all girls Catholic school and I did not know 65 boys when I was in school.
157.
smintheus
@Adam L Silverman: Yeah, but what else are they going to say? “Ok, ok, we’re trying to decide whether to circle the wagons, or go to ground, or panic, or force Kavanaugh to step down, but we may have to wait for the polling to tell us how bad it’s playing.” Of course the first thing you do is to send some kind of full-speed-ahead-damn-the-torpedoes message and see how it plays. If the loyalists don’t rally to it, then it’s on to step 2.
158.
Adam L Silverman
And before anyone asks, yes, I too believe her. She had nothing to gain and everything to loose, including her life given the political moment we’re living in, to come forward about this.
159.
Mnemosyne
I find her story all too plausible, and Kavanaugh not at all credible.
And I would love to see a few of those 65 character witnesses brought before the committee to testify under oath that they knew someone who went to a different school so well that they feel 100 percent confident he didn’t do it.
When I was young and gullible, I allowed the Good Upstanding Citizen schtick the GOP spun about Thomas to make me not entirely sure about Anita Hill, and I’ve regretted it ever since. It doesn’t take an outspoken victim to believe that the P*ssy-Grabber-in-Chief would put forward another sexist entitled misogynistic boor for SCOTUS, but having one willing to point a finger ought to make a difference.
Of course we are talking about the same political party that didn’t bat an eyelash at Gingrich’s double standard, that welcomed back David “Huggies” Vitter and Mark “Appalachian Tail” Sanford, and that has made every single possible excuse for Lord Dampnut. So it’s entirely possible that none of this will matter when the vote is called.
162.
smintheus
@Ruckus: Because Republicans have painted themselves into a corner by insisting they’re going to push Kavanaugh through this month without waiting for normal vetting. Now they have a highly credible attempted rape + forcible restraint – a conspiracy to boot – allegation, and if they refuse to wait to investigate it then they’re sending the unmistakable signal that the Republican Party as a whole doesn’t take rape seriously and doesn’t need or want to know the facts about a SCOTUS nominee’s life. If they do allow an investigation, however, it’s almost certainly opening the floodgates; Kavanaugh is finished and they irk their base which has been encouraged to gloat about how quickly and recklessly they’re ramming Kavanaugh through.
The question I have is, how many rapes has K gotten away with? It looks like T and K bonded over their rapey, grabby pasts.
164.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Sean Sullivan @ WaPoSean
NEWS: Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) tells me in an intv he that doesn’t think the Judiciary Cmte should move ahead with its Thursday vote on Kavanaugh until they hear more from Christine Blasey Ford. “For me, we can’t vote until we hear more.”
One that she had never mentioned it and two that she seemed to assume something like that happened to every girl at some time. I have no words for my anger and dismay. I had no idea so many guys could be this way
I have exactly one female friend who said that she has never been on the receiving end of sexual harassment or abuse or assault. One.
And yet I have a coworker who thinks MeToo is just women angling for advantages because he was assaulted and no one cares. When I pointed out that it was exceedingly likely that his assailant is a man, and therefore sexual misbehavior is an axis of control of men toward women (and yes, all the caveats about how women have raped men, etc.), he didn’t seem to have an answer.
@Adam L Silverman: I went to the other Jesuit high school in DC in the 1960s. Our sister school was across the parking lot from us, and I didn’t know any of the students there. Also, there were about 800-900 students total at my school – Prep was (and is) about half that size. In any case both schools had a student population drawn from all over the DC metropolitan area. The idea that he knew 65 young women at all, let alone well enough to vouch for his character, is ludicrous.
@Schlemazel: There are many incidents I have told no one about. I am pretty sure that I am not the only woman who has done that.
171.
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: It would be a miracle if Jeff Flake did more than just run his mouth about Trump. But I’ll take it if he actually is willing to use the power he has.
@divF: By the time I got there (1969) the girls from across the parking lot could take AP courses with us. Still that was only about 5-6. Getting 65 who had ANY personal interaction with him to sign in a day sounds absurd. Might be interesting to follow up on exactly what the signees thought they were agreeing to.
175.
vhh
@Another Scott: If he had said it was 35 years ago, i was 16, I am not sure, there was a lot of drinking,in any case I am not proud of it, he’d get a pass. But he flat out denied it, and the GOP did know about it (they had a list of women ready).. . he may still get by, but there will be a lot of damage. Could give the Dems the Senate. And if it comes out that he had other victims, he’s toast.
176.
daize
@Llelldorin: Just want to say that I love your nym. :-)
177.
daize
@opiejeanne: I am so, so sorry this happened to you. Thank you for sharing your experience.
178.
WaterGirl
@PAM Dirac: I want all 65 women to be shown the letter and be asked what they think now.
I still believe — with absolutely no evidence yet– that they are 65 women who are willing to lie to save the millions of babies they think are being murdered.
179.
divF
@PAM Dirac: I graduated class of 1969, so I just missed that.
180.
divF
@divF: And I was in the AP Math / Science program, so I would have experienced this directly.
181.
PAM Dirac
@WaterGirl: The accuser is certainly going to have every detail of her story questioned and dissected. I don’t see why the 65 shouldn’t be asked to provide details of the evidence they have to support their statement. I agree that it is likely that all they have is belief that he would be anti-abortion.
182.
Ruckus
@smintheus:
That’s a nice story.
It has all the elements. Unfortunately you left out a couple of things. republicans are in the majority. The can vote him in because of that. Reasonable hearings, or bullshit publicity stunts, it doesn’t matter. It might make it far worse for them politically but they don’t seem to give two fucks about that. Even if they lose the house and the senate, there won’t be enough votes in the senate to overrule any of this. It’s why impeachment is ridiculous but not wrong, it can not be carried out. This can be. And unless a couple of republican senators grow a conscience soon, it will be. It may make the 2020 election a rout for the dems and he could be impeached off the bench but other than those two senators, this is a done deal. The vote was scheduled for the 20th, 4 days away. What do you think might happen in the next 4 days?
183.
PAM Dirac
@divF: You were probably one of the people Fr. Woodward would hang over our head. “The highest score on this test was 38 and the median was 24, but when I gave this test in 1969 DivF scored a 58” :-)
184.
Adam L Silverman
@catclub: Correct, he was added specifically for this opening. Part of the enticement to get Kennedy to retire. And there was reporting that McConnell asked McGahn not to push Kavanaugh forward. My guess is McConnell has had his team do a deep dive into the oppo for everyone on that list and any other possible additions like Kavanaugh and knew there would be problems even if he didn’t know specifically about this.
185.
Barbara
@Llelldorin: I went to the largest public suburban high school in the entire state and I would be hard pressed to come up with more than 30 names I remember without going through the yearbook. I am a few years older tha Kavanaugh. They had a good idea this was coming.
@Adam L Silverman:
Highly likely but is it also possible that drumpf and the republican politicians in general have differing paymasters?
Pretty sure drumpf is under the Russian thumb, money laundering and other corruptions, but the congress members have the republican wealthy to answer to. They may be involved with the Russians, at least a few of them from CA seem to have that angle locked up tight, but most of them seem to get their grift from the republican cash registers.
188.
Ruckus
@Barbara:
In this instance it does seem plausible that they have grown wings.
189.
Dave
@anya: Unfortunately, that’s a no-brainer… neither of those women have a spine. The only possible reason Murkowski might vote against him is that she owes her job to the Alaskan Native Americans who voted for her in a massive write-in campaign, and he threatens their interests. But I doubt even that will be enough for her to follow her conscience and do the right thing. I’ve lost hope that any Republican in either house of Congress has the courage to put our country over their party on any issue facing the country. To quote the Orange Shitgibbon, “sad!”
190.
divF
@PAM Dirac: *Laughs*. You have completely outed yourself as a Fr. Woodward alum. It has probably been decades since I’ve reflected on the fact that all of his exams were scored out of a maximum of 60.
191.
Llelldorin
@Barbara: The most bizarre thing about that list is its sheer pointlessness even when you ignore the fact that it borders on an admission in its very existence. It’s a _literal_ version of the old “but what about all the women he _hasn’t_ raped???” defense. More fool I, I thought that existed only as a joke in particularly poor taste.
@Ruckus: A lot of Russian, Israeli, Saudi, Emirati, Chinese, and other money has flowed (been laundered) through those Republican and movement conservative Super PACs and funders.
194.
Kay
For the Daily Caller, Judge has criticized Barack and Michelle Obama. One article contained this passage, “Obama lacks courage when it comes to politics, but his real lack of spunk is evident in his abject terror of his wife Michelle. It’s not uncommon for a husband to joke about his wife being angry at him, but Obama obsessively returns to the theme in speech after speech…On their first date, the couple saw the violent black rage film ‘Do the Right Thing,’ so that Michelle could make sure Barack ‘was down with the struggle.’ With her love of violent movies, her fixation on fitness, and death glare that appears when she doesn’t like what she’s hearing, Michelle is actually more man than her husband. Oh for the days when president George W. Bush gave his wife Laura a loving but firm pat on the backside in public. The man knew who was boss.”
By all means. Let’s hear from the 65 character witnesses. If they’re like this one, they’ll make it worse for him.
195.
Tazj
@germy: Wow, that’s gross. He’s quite the charmer.
196.
germy
Kavanaugh's accusers letter to @SenFeinstein includes another piece of information about Kavanaugh's alleged accomplice:
"I have not knowingly seen Kavanaugh since the assault. I did see [Mark Judge] once at the REDACTED where he was extremely uncomfortable seeing me." https://t.co/DWHYcPNWQa— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) September 16, 2018
197.
Mary G
“He was drunk, disorderly & assaulting a young girl at only 17 and its ok to lie about it now as a 50+ year old sitting federal judge” bc GOP needs to force this stolen SCOTUS seat confirmation thru is a bar so low we have hit magma. Volcanic #VoteThemOut bc lives depend on it.— Francine Lipman (@Narfnampil) September 16, 2018
Told this poster that “a bar so low we have hit magma” is brilliant, and I would steal it, and she gave permission.
198.
germy
@Tazj: He’s the guy who wrote “A Black Guy Stole My Bicycle”.
It’s a small world among our conservative betters.
My guess is that certain people are more interested in defeating DiFi than opposing Kavanaugh.
The alternative to Feinstein isn’t a Republican, it’s an incompetent Wilmerite.
201.
Tehanu
Two brief thoughts: first, Republikkkans think their party’s anti-woman, anti-human, racist, greedy, belligerent policies are good for the country; it’s just God’s blessing that those policies are (what a coincidence!) good for their pocketbooks, and they simply close their eyes to any evidence otherwise. Second, I went to public school, but I once dated a boy from the local all-boys Catholic school. He was so aggressively all-hands all over me the moment I got in the car… it was almost pathetic — and he was actually not a bad kid; I got to know him rather well much later, and once his hormones calmed down he was a good guy. He wasn’t trying to rape me, he was just desperate and unthinking. But after that I turned down every boy from that school who asked me out.
202.
Barbara
@Kay: We get it. Nothing says masculine ideal quite like slapping your wife in public. And he was Kavsnaugh’s best bud in high school.
203.
Brachiator
@eemom: I googled “are lie detectors accurate” and the first response was this, from the American Psychological Association web site.
Most psychologists agree that there is little evidence that polygraph tests can accurately detect lies.
ETA. Problem creating a link with my mobile browser.
204.
germy
Mark Judge has deleted his twitter, youtube and vimeo accounts.
There are screen shots, however, and lots of young ladies in his videos. He seems to be quite a horndog.
@Suzanne: I dated a man who had previously worked for the same company that I was then working for. He had left his job (before we started dating) because a woman was harassing him for dates and spreading false stories about him. When she found out that I was dating him, she started to harass me, sort of sexual harassment once removed. She made my life hell for almost two years. Women are less frequently harassers, but it clearly does occur.
I have already admitted to being stupidly naive. Painfully so it seems. Is there any woman who has not had unwanted sexual contact? I was just talking about this a couple days ago with my wife of 45 years and she told me an older cousin fondled her when she was 13-14. I was shocked. One that she had never mentioned it and two that she seemed to assume something like that happened to every girl at some time. I have no words for my anger and dismay. I had no idea so many guys could be this way
Which speaks wonderfully for your character, Schemazel, but how did you escape hearing the contemptuous trash talk of the other young guys? Or did you have one of those rare school experiences where raging sexism wasn’t part of the general atmosphere? (They do happen; a female friend of mine reported similar good things about her junior high days.)
When the #Metoo anecdotes started coming in thick and fast, I read several comments on Twitter etc. similar to what you say here. I find it touching. But consider the millennia-old history of the matter.
209.
Gravenstone
@Adam L Silverman: So the formal investigators beforehand were unaware of the accusation, but the Republican power structure (judging from the efforts assembled to neuter the effectiveness of the accusation) clearly were aware. Wonder how *that* sort of thing happens?
Okay, not really wondering. ..
210.
Bonnie
I do, too. But, I highly recommend that she not testify to Congress. Just ask Anita Hill.
I’m an old white guy, and I believe Christine Blasey Ford. From the get-go, Kavanaugh has impressed as a privileged frat-boy asshole, and what Ms. Blasey Ford describes is exactly what I’d expect from an aspiring privileged frat-boy asshole. Since at least high school, I have tried to disassociate myself with privileged frat-boy assholes, but then, unlike Kavanaugh and most Trumpenführer officials, I have a conscience.
Funny, isn’t it, how this privileged frat-boy asshole’s most fervent support comes from the morality scolds who are convinced of their inherent goodness and imminent salvation.
Is there any woman who has not had unwanted sexual contact?
I was repeatedly abused by a teenage boy when I was 5. I kept quiet about it for 40 plus years. I found out a few weeks ago that my brother was also abused by the same boy (male, female did not seem to matter to him). I only told my brother when he started talking about it in the context of the me too movement (saying that men should also talk about the abuse they suffered as children). Every woman I know has a story of abuse (ranging from unwanted groping to sexual assault). The men were mostly known (uncles, teenage cousins and in one case a doctor). I could never talk about it because I felt ashamed of myself and my abuser was the son of my father’s best friend and I was always told he was like my brother. My father doted on him. My father never knew and my brother and I will never tell my elderly mother. I hope things become better for the coming generations.
Now it looks like a pre-arranged cover up, otherwise known as lying the committee.
When the Democrats retake the Senate, I want them to investigate the 65 women who agreed to this cover-up, and then, wherever possible, press contempt of Congress charges against them.
if they refuse to wait to investigate it then they’re sending the unmistakable signal that the Republican Party as a whole doesn’t take rape seriously
That’s been true for longer than any of us have been alive.
216.
Procopius
@anya: I don’t know why anybody ever doubts what Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski will do. They always vote with the party. Always. It is impossible to believe that Susan Collins was played on the Obamacare Repeal bill — she is not naive or stupid. Anyone who is saying, “Oh, I wonder how they are going to vote. If only we can persuade them!” is (purposely?) deceiving themselves.
217.
dnfree
@opiejeanne: I am so sorry you went through this. Like you, I never even thought anyone might rape me in college in the early 1960s. Both women and men were raised to believe that girls were the gatekeepers, and any time I said no to a guy, he stopped. It was a very different time. I’m sure there were rapes, but I bet there weren’t nearly as many. By the end of the 1960s much had changed.
218.
Adam L Silverman
@Gravenstone: It happens because the background investigation by the FBI is the type done for a high level clearance. It relies on both the person being investigated and the references he or she provides being truthful. In this case, because Ford states that Kavanaugh was very drunk, it is possible he may not have a memory of the event at all. That doesn’t let him off the hook, but it would give him plausible deniability. Unfortunately, because of his denial, he’s now locked in.
If McConnell had his senior political folks do full oppo research they may have found one or more troubling things that wouldn’t show up in the FBI’s background investigation.
219.
John Fremont
@schrodingers_cat: I went to a co-ed Catholic high school in Jersey in the 80’s and I didn’t know enough women that could vouch for my character like that.
220.
Llelldorin
@Mary Ellen Sandahl: It’s quite possible to simply miss the trash talk growing up. I never heard any such talk until much later in life. Not because it wasn’t there, mind you—it very well may have been—but because I had a very small circle of close friends who never discussed girls, dating, or sex at all. I simply have no idea what trash talk was going on in general.
To be clear, I’m not claiming any great virtue here—just total cluelessness.
I’m sure I could have forced myself on plenty of girls . . .
There was a Donald E. Westlake novel, not one of his better ones, where he was describing the members of the gang that was involved. In describing the not-too-bright big basher guy, he tells about the time he decided to rape a woman. The guy is described as huge, and the woman is described as pretty good-sized. Of course the strong-arm guy figures a woman is going to be weak, and maybe submissive, but “she fought like a tiger,” and he considered himself lucky to get away with his dangly bits intact. I know that too often that doesn’t happen, but we rarely hear about the women who were successful in fighting their attackers off.
When the Democrats retake the Senate, I want them to investigate the 65 women who agreed to this cover-up, and then, wherever possible, press contempt of Congress charges against them.
I’m don’t think you can charge them. I’m sure they didn’t lie—there are probably many women of his acquaintance that he failed to attack. That was why that attestation was mad to begin with: “Didn’t attempt to rape a simple majority of the women he knew in high school” is a bar below the one Mary G mentioned.
1) there is decent evidence this happened.
2) anyone offering a “boys-will-be-boys” excuse better be prepared to arrest every boy from the ages of 13-80 if this sh-t is THAT common for boys. I am sick of that excuse and there ought to be more men pissed off by that as well. The EXPECTATION that every man is a pussygrabber and we should just wave it off as “harmless growing up.” It is NOT harmless growing up, and kids I knew like that back in high school ended up in jail for it like they deserved. I am sick of it.
3) that the Republicans had ON SHORT NOTICE a letter of a large number of women willing to be character witnesses about “bad behavior” around women means THEY KNEW THIS WAS OUT THERE. And they still nominated and accepted this sonofabitch.
4) the dark truth about sexual assaulters and deviants is that there is NEVER just one. These guys – Cosby, Roy Moore, Weiner, Clarence Thomas, Ben Rothlesburger, Jameis Winston, yes even Bill Clinton – never stop until they get caught. If there’s one accusation like this out there about Kavanaugh – from high school – there is damn good cause to believe there have been more since then. THIS IS A SERIOUS MATTER deserving more investigation by law enforcement.
225.
Joy in FL
I believe Christine Blasey Ford.
I do NOT believe Brett Kavanaugh.
226.
dnfree
@pk: Too too common a story. I was molested by an older cousin, more than once, probably at least between the ages of 4 and 9. (After that I learned how to avoid him.) When all the “Me Too” stuff started to come out, a different cousin told me that he couldn’t believe sexual abuse was that common, because he didn’t know a single woman who had ever been abused. I thought to myself, “No, you just don’t know a single woman who goes around talking about it.”
Someplace a woman wrote that the problem is, men come in two sorts: wolves and sheep. A woman goes out with a man whom she thinks is a sheep, but it turns out, on the date, that he’s a wolf. And there are few if any outward signs that a woman can use, to discern if the man is a wolf or a lamb. Schlemazel’s exclamation says something more: men who are lambs can’t tell between wolves and lambs, either. So when they close ranks with other men who are accused, they don’t know if they’re closing ranks with a wolf or a lamb.
That’s one thought. Here’s another: I am unconvinced that most “decent men” are actually innately decent. Remember _A Clockwork Orange_? For me, the lesson of that movie (and excellent book) was that we all have a lot less autonomy in our moral choices, than we think. Our parents teach us, drill us, punish us, from a tender age, to be moral beings. Before we’re conscious, they’re drilling it into us. Sometimes that training works, and sometimes it doesn’t. But when we “decent, moral men” say things like “oh, not all men are like that”, I think we’re making a mistake. All men are like that deep down inside. What man wouldn’t want to be an emperor, with a large harem? When I read _Lolita_, I couldn’t get thru it (b/c geezus, creeping on a child). But I routinely read SF&F movels wherein the men are on top, the (numerous) women are underneath, and the sex flows freely to the top dog men. Hell, look at Game of Thrones, ffs. We don’t act on these deep-down impulses b/c we’re trained to act morally. But, it turns out, for lots of men, the training didn’t “stick”. In case it isn’t obvious, everything I wrote above, applies to me, too. B/c I’m a man.
So hell yeah, I believe Professor Ford. But also, #YesAllMen. Dammit.
So I’m going to wait for more evidence.— Ben Shapiro
Of course he is. I believe her implicitly. He looked like that kind of perv from day one; I’m sure he’s enjoyed rubbing cramps out in the little girls’ legs he coaches for soccer or whatever.
I’m an old fat white guy, and I believe her completely! Why would anyone make such an allegation without thinking about the blizzard of abuse about to fall on her head.
229.
opiejeanne
@debbie: And W did not wear the pants in that family. His mother did.
Wow, You all are some severely morally bankrupt individuals!!!!
I’m not saying that what she is claiming is true or untrue, however all of the statements that are being left here in the comments section are from individuals that do not even now the facts of this specific situation as of today.
When she informed her husband & therapist about being sexually assaulted (Which was in 2012.) she stated there were 4 people who were present at the time of incident. In her letter to Senator Feinstein she stated there were only 2 not including herself.
The 2nd person she stated that was there at the time of incident is claiming he was never at any party where anything like this happened.
I’ve read people claiming Kavanaugh to be not credible because he was black out drunk. Actually she stated that all parties involved were drinking.
She cannot remember the year, place or time that this event actually took place.
Senator Fienstein today states that she sincerely had doubts that this is actually what happened. (She’s been walking that statement back all day.)
I’ve read because she’s taken a polygraph that this must be true. The polygraph was paid fir bubble the Democratic Party, also they are not allowing anyone to see the questions that were asked in this polygraph.
I’ve read comments that this incident needs to be investigate this by the FBI. She says that she won’t testify unless there is an FBI investigation. The FBI has released the statement that they do not investigate these issues. It is not a federal crime. Also Kavanaugh has been through 6 separate thorough FBI investigations each time he has been promoted. (There are zero reports of any form of sexual misconduct in any way shape or form.)
Ford a couple of hours ago released the statement that the confirmation process to confirm Kavanaugh to Supreme Court should not be stopped due to her “Anonymous Letter”. (This strikes me as odd.)
And lastly this country is based on laws, as well as the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. I believe that something happened to this woman, however this is the problem: Because she cannot recall any imperative details about this incident it just makes a case of he said, she said. (Which anyone who has just a smidgen of common sense knows that there are 3-sides to every story. Hers, His and the truth!) And because of how & when this information was released is extremely political, and makes absolutely no sense whatsoever! They could have berated Kavanaugh on television for those several days straight regarding this issue, and because of the choice to put out this information the day before the confirmation vote is outstandingly suspect!…
That’s just the facts as have been reported & fact checked as of 6:35pm EST.
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zhena gogolia
Me too. As I said the other day, we’re going to have two sexual harassers on the Supreme Court and one in the White House. And God knows how many in Congress.
WaterGirl
I believe her, too, and my blood is boiling over this. I don’t normally have high blood pressure, but I would hate to see a reading right now.
Mary G
Reposting from below just a minute ago:
I believe her and I believe DiFi did the right thing. If it was a Democratic judge up for confirmation and a Republican senator had received that letter, it would be on the Drudge Report 60 seconds later. DiFi believed the woman, and respected her desire for anonymity, so all the people screaming that she should have told the other Dems immediately can fuck right off. This nomination reeks, and I have set a goal to write a postcard today for every senator on the Judiciary panel, plus the Republican leaners, today so I can mail them and be sure they receive them before Thursday. The fact that Grassley delayed the vote a week shows that they are afraid.
I believe her too, and admire the fact that she came forward, because the deplorables are going to make her life hell on earth. She’s a brave and strong woman.
trollhattan
“Boys will be boys and anyway, it didn’t happen so neener-neener, Democrats.”
–Everybody on Fox, et cetera
WaterGirl
I want 65 MILLION women to sign that letter.
Someone should start one on the internet and put that up against their 65 women.
I also wonder how each of those 65 women feels after reading this woman’s account of the attempted rape.
dmsilev
Posted this in the previous thread. The official GOP response is basically a raised middle finger:
WaterGirl
Sexual misconduct?!?!?!?!!?!?!?
That wording doesn’t even begin to be strong enough.
Mary G
Gilian Flynn, author of “Gone Girl,” “Sharp Objects,” and more, in Time Magazine:
Yes, a form of livestock, or toys. Not human beings.
WaterGirl
Thank god she was wearing a one-piece bathing suit under her clothes. That surely slowed him down.
germy
People on twitter are posting screenshots of Mark Judge’s (Kavanaugh’s accomplice in the bedroom) memoir.
Some really ugly beliefs on display, about women meaning yes when they say no, and men’s power.
anya
I believe her too.
Let’s see if Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski put their party before their conscience and their humanity.
Arclite
On the one hand, I’m glad it’s only one woman, and not more. On the other hand, it would take a Weinstein level of victims to sink him. If there are any others out there, they need to come forward immediately.
opiejeanne
I believe her too, and knew instantly what this was about even though I hadn’t heard her name yet. I have believed her since she was an anonymous reporter.
dmsilev
@WaterGirl: “Sexual assault” at a bare minimum. “Attempted rape” is probably closer.
eemom
I’ll say it again: how the fuck can the “denial” by a blackout drunk be worth anything??
TaMara (HFG)
I believe Christine Blasey Ford.
Betty Cracker
Maybe I’m being too optimistic, but I think there’s a 5% or so chance that this sinks Kavanaugh.
germy
Here’s a page from Mark Judge’s memoir
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@Mary G: +1000
Darrin E Ziliak
I don’t follow polls enough to know for certain, but IMHO the Repub incumbent is running scared from William Tanoos in IN-08.
While Dr. Buschon was the doctor who implanted my artificial heart valve and is a competent doctor, he’s a shitty Congressman.
Disclosure: Tanoos was also a partner in the law firm that resulted in the win in my SSDI appeal.
Though from what I’ve read, that’s not much on an accomplishment here in Indiana.
JPL
What about Capito and Ernst? How can they read the story and not show some empathy? Cole needs to call his Senator.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I was thinking this morning that her location, Anna Eshoo’s district, had been pinpointed, and that elite, DC area private school world was small enough that someone was going to track her down. Turns out reporters were calling her colleagues, and one showed up at a class she teaches. And if reporters could do it, so could MAGAts. I hope there’s a police car parked outside her house
geg6
I definitely believe her. Her story is very similar to what happened when I was raped. I wish I’d had a one-piece bathing suit on under my clothes. It would certainly have given me a chance to avoid the rape.
I believe her.
JPL
@Betty Cracker: I agree with that.
germy
Baud
@Mary G: My guess is that certain people are more interested in defeating DiFi than opposing Kavanaugh. If the GOP Senators up the him on, expect DiFi to be held solely accountable.
TaMara (HFG)
She took a lie-detector test? Interesting. I believe her regardless.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/09/christine-blasey-ford-woman-who-accused-kavanaugh-of-sexual-assault-comes-forward-to-tell-her-story.html
Jim, Foolish Literalist
better than that, I think. This gives Collins a chance to back down without looking like it was the fundraising that spooked her. I’ll defer to MomSense and other Mainers, but it looks to me that she had really fucked up by not at least waiting to announce her support, and I suspect Ted Cruz, Dean Heller and several candidates are praying that she and Murkowski get them off the hook, the quicker the better.
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker:
Seems about right.
germy
@eemom:
He’s a wealthy white man. We need to know our place.
WaterGirl
Why isn’t there a TV commercial yet?
Martin
Christ, what’s not to believe?
She told her husband and therapist in 2012. Both corroborate that. The therapist has contemporaneous notes. That puts us in legally admissible territory.
She wrote the letter in July, before Kavanaugh was even the nominee. Early enough that his nomination could have been avoided or quietly withdrawn.
She passed a polygraph.
Parallel to this, the GOP built a character narrative – soccer dad, girls basketball coach, mentor. Everything was focused around what a great guy he was to women. And they had lined up 65 female character witnesses from a time when Kavanaugh attended an all boys school. Not from his high school, but from other ones in the area. Who the fuck is so well known that you could line up 100+ character witnesses (we have to assume at least some males knew him as well) from neighboring high schools decades later?
This was known by the GOP. McConnell said it would be difficult to confirm him. McConnell knows. They build a campaign specifically designed to win over women. There’s nothing here not to believe. The GOP alone is signaling that this is believable.
Cheryl Rofer
@WaterGirl: @geg6: Back in the day, wearing a one-piece swimsuit under one’s clothes was a well-known protection.
eemom
@Betty Cracker:
I think you might just be right.
No need to depress ourselves by reflecting what the chance would be in a sane world.
hells littlest angel
Putting a sexual assaulter in the White House got them tax cuts and deregulation. I don’t think Republicans can resist the temptation to find out what they can get from putting one on the Supreme Court.
Our only recourse is to vote the Republican party out of existence — and it will still take decades to fix the damage they’ve done.
zhena gogolia
@Cheryl Rofer:
I thought they had come from a pool party.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
I hope you aren’t but I’m not holding my breath.
These republican scum don’t care what you or I think. They only want one thing, the money they get from their benefactors, who care even less about it. They care about money, having the most of it. That Mercer old man who owes 7 fucking billion in back taxes? He gives a flying fuck about anything other than keeping money, his yours, mine it makes no difference. The wealthy are used to buying what they want, whenever they want and they get pissy when they don’t get their way. They’ve bought and actually paid for a congress, they aren’t taking no for an answer.
But I hope you are right, that they lose.
WaterGirl
@Cheryl Rofer: It wasn’t known in my circles.\
Also, I’m certain you didn’t mean it this way, but what you wrote could sound like you’re saying geg6 should have known better. I am guessing she got enough of that from her mom.
opiejeanne
@geg6: Me too, and alas for the lack of aa one-piece bathing suit.
WaterGirl
@WaterGirl: Re:that extra \ after the end of the sentence was a typo. In case ./ means something!
germy
Everyone who falls into PEETUS’s orbit gets burned.
Kavanaugh trotted out his daughters and his white girls’ basketball team. Before this shitshow, none of those kids had any idea of any of this.
Now it’s common knowledge. I’m sure the girls will be told “it’s all lies” but I wonder if any of them will look at him the same way again.
Maybe at some point he’ll feel something approaching shame.
Cheryl Rofer
@zhena gogolia: That’s possible, but I’m recalling a discussion in college about the various ways one might thwart a too-aggressive date. It was advice to a friend who was concerned. Tight girdles and several tampons were also recommended.
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I don’t follow Collins. Has she ever bucked the party line? For anything important?
Alaska’s weird and IICR Murkowski got her seat back via write-ins when the tea party dude proved too lunatic even for them. Going against the nomination may not harm her future but again, any history of doing the right thing against party wishes?
Schlemazel
This will have as much impact on Kavana’s nomination as Anita Hill’s had on Thomas’s. Yeah, times have changed so this time the Dems will side with Ford but it is Elefant Uber Alles and charges like these will only sink a Dem nominee because they have not changed enough yet.
Baud
@trollhattan: ACA repeal and the stimulus.
sdhays
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: They should be furious at Trump for putting them through this. This shouldn’t be this hard. They already scrapped the filibuster; Republicans have the majority. Gorsuch sailed through, regardless of his hostility to Roe v. Wade. Now they’re trying to ram this through before they lose the Senate (they clearly believe it really might happen) and Ol’ Spankee gives them Kavanaugh, a colossal piece of shit, because Spankee needs the absolute worst he can install on the Supreme Court.
A standard conservative hack just isn’t awful enough. Spankee needed a total partisan hack fascist. So now Republican Senators have to either vote to support a candidate who is clearly unqualified for the Supreme Court and deeply unpopular right as they’re going into a tough election, or they potentially sink their last (hopefully!) opportunity to install a hard-right Court for a generation.
zhena gogolia
@Cheryl Rofer:
I went back and looked, and she doesn’t remember exactly how she ended up at the party, but the house was near the pool they all used to go to. I assumed that’s why she was in the suit.
WaterGirl
From a LGM article:
trollhattan
@germy:
The day Trump rolled out his new pet justice and the dude immediately gave a politburo-style ass kissing about Trump’s bestest, biggest vetting process evah I knew the dude has no soul. The hearings only reinforce that.
Cheryl Rofer
@WaterGirl: No, I didn’t mean it against geg6. It’s just a data point in what women dealt (and deal) with. It would be easy to ask why we went out with guys with whom we had to worry about such things. That was the way it was. And it would have been silly, even then, to have taken such preventatives with every date. But as we know, a lot of women have been raped by guys they never thought would do such a thing.
Schlemazel
@Cheryl Rofer:
Such a thing never occured to me. It is shitty anyone would have to consider that.
My stupid mother raised me to treat everyone with respect so I guess a lot of shitty things never occured to me until late in life when I am forced to find out about them.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@Arclite: I doubt it’s only one woman; it’s one woman who’s come forward publicly. Thus far.
In my professional experience, it’s rarely a singular incident.
trollhattan
@Baud:
Okay, thanks. So there’s a sliver of possibility here.
Does make me wonder who the Federalist Society has on deck, just in case.
WaterGirl
@Cheryl Rofer: As I said, I was certain you didn’t intend it that way. It just made me uncomfortable to leave that hanging out there without saying something.
debit
So, any of the GOP assholes who couldn’t wait to crucify Franken weigh in on this yet? I have to assume that Kavanaugh has squeezed at least one woman by the waist in his adult life.
JPL
@WaterGirl: Yup.
ArchTeryx
@germy: The sound of circling wagons is always an ugly one.
Cheryl Rofer
@WaterGirl: Thanks for insisting on a clarification.
Baud
I wonder what this person is thinking right now.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/08/02/im-a-liberal-feminist-heres-why-i-support-judge-kavanaugh-219081
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@trollhattan: IIRC there were three or four names floating around from that list, including two women. Kavanagh is said to have been McConnell’s last choice, because of his history in the Bush administration, and a lot of people thought that would torpedo him with trump. I think The Beast was persuaded that BK would protect him in the event of a subpoena or some other Mueller-related case going to the SC
Alain the site fixer
As someone who attended a DC prep school (all boy) in the ‘80’s, this is not hard to believe at all. We were a few years younger and more enlightened, but the privilege and attitude was real. I had a couple of friends at Prep, but never liked their classmates. I found that I didn’t much care for the Catholic boy’s schools, but loved the girl’s schools. Go figure.
But seriously, I worked as a late teen with a woman who was about 7 years older than me and she had horrible stories to tell of DC boy’s school grads acting like this when adults. It was yet another encouragement to expand my circle of friends, lest I absorb the sexism and shitty attitude about women. It was also a reminder that I was an ally, not a threat, and that I needed to be sure I was seen like that, so I dropped a lot of sexist crap I didn’t really believe. Having a strong, amazing mom as an example was a great reminder, too.
Schlemazel
BTW – the ‘stupid mother’ line was bitter sarcasm. I mean, think of all the sex I could have had if she had not done that. I’m sure I could have forced myself on plenty of girls . . .
Betty Cracker
@germy: For this kind of crime, shame (if the perp is capable of feeling it) is the only justice available. I suspect it’ll be the same with the Trumps. They’ll never get what they deserve, but they’ll rue the fucking day. It’s not enough, but it’s probably gonna have to do.
sdhays
@Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho: I wonder if those 65 women who supposedly knew him in high school were rounded up for this specific accusation or if the handlers were more concerned about others that have yet to surface.
Another Scott
I believe her, too.
Others have made the point that there’s no statute of limitations on rape in Maryland. And Montgomery County is in Maryland. IANAL, but…
FindLaw:
She thinks she was 15.
He could be in a load of trouble, beyond possible impeachment. It’s hard to believe that there won’t be other collaborating evidence coming forward if he doesn’t withdraw. Will he? Dunno…
Cheers,
Scott.
B.B.A.
I believe Christine Blasey Ford.
and I’m a filthy cishet white dude so even the Repubs ought to listen to me. Of course I’m also an elitist Jewish New Yorker so they won’t.
Gelfling 545
I’m sure he could have come up with some acceptable (to Republicans) folderol about how there may have been exchanges between them in hs and some unfortunate teenage drinking but ay, youth and who among us, etc. and it was much less serious than she describes, if only they hadn’t gone out and hunted up those 65 women. Now it looks like a pre-arranged cover up, otherwise known as lying the committee.
Schlemazel
@Baud:
What the hell was she thinking then? I doubt very much then or now
Suzanne
I also believe Christine Blasey Ford.
And I also would not be surprised in the slightest to hear that she is not the only Kavanaugh accuser.
Walker
@trollhattan:
She got back because of natives, who are very climate change aware. Apparently that may affect her.
But we need someone else other than Collins and Murkowski, right?
smintheus
It’s interesting to observe this afternoon how Republicans are trying to forestall the collapse of Kavanaugh’s nomination. You have hoards of flying monkeys, some obviously bots, making dismissive comments on line. You have a *very* small number of Republican staffers throwing up flak and pretending that it’s too late to delay even the committee vote. I also noted a single GOP senator saying that he thought the vote would not be delayed (that’s the opposite of a show of strength, that’s more along the lines of “guys, hey, somebody else come out and help me here”). And nearly all the other Republican senators are going as silent as the grave. Even the White House is playing it cautiously.
I realize that Democrats love to play Eeyore, but this is not the time for gloom and doom about Kavanaugh’s supposed inevitability. All the signs today are that Republicans are terrified that the nominee will be defeated or have to withdraw. For that matter, he might have some serious problems explaining this to his family. The accusation looks to have validity, to judge by the facts reported by the Post.
Fleeting Expletive
I want those 65 who signed the letter for Kavenaugh to be called as witnesses, reopen the hearings. Withdraw his nomination. I’ve called my Republican senator three times on this–the nominee just isn’t good enough. In addition to being part of a corrupt process from an illegitimately elected president.
B.B.A.
Also, I don’t want to hear another word against Senator Gillibrand again.
Imelda
I am sure she is not the only woman assaulted by him
germy
James E Powell
@anya:
Doubtful that they have conscience or humanity.
Schlemazel
@sdhays:
My first thought was “this is overkill. He has more bodies hidden” then it occured to me that they had to have this before the story came out so they KNOW there are
Gator90
Everyone believes her. Some people care, and some don’t.
Martin
@germy:
It’s not coincidental. I’d be willing to bet that once that letter made it to the Senate, it quickly became known to Trump. That increased the likelihood that Trump would pick Kavanaugh, because Trump knew he’d have leverage over him. That’s how Trump operates – he doesn’t attract dirty people – he relies on their dirtiness. It’s no secret that loyalty is the most important thing to him, and the best way to ensure loyalty is to have dirt on the person.
The problem is that in the world of NY real estate and reality TV doesn’t attract a lot of scrutiny. It’s not that the dirt isn’t important, it’s that it’s overwhelmingly common, so if it does get reported its generally by the tabloids. You get to the WH and everything gets reported, and by WaPo and ProPublica, not the National Enquirer. Trump doesn’t know how to operate in that environment and can’t accept that a strategy that worked for 50 years suddenly doesn’t.
Fuck them all. Burn them to the ground.
germy
@Schlemazel: She also showed up at the hearings to personally testify for him.
Cheryl Rofer
smintheus
@WaterGirl:
They already knew they were bullshitting when they pooled together to impugn the credibility of the accuser. They had no way of knowing whether the accusation they were dismissing was true, but they hoped we wouldn’t notice that.
sdhays
@Walker: No, I thought the same thing. We just need two Republican votes to sink the nomination.
WaterGirl
@Cheryl Rofer: Thanks for being so gracious about it.
germy
@Martin:
True.
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Think you have a compelling argument that his doctrine of “Leave the sitting president alooooone!” leapfrogged Kavanaugh to the head of the pack.
Stupid Ken Starr is still damaging the country.
Schlemazel
@B.B.A.:
Yours is the first time her name has come up in any discussion of this. I have heard nothing out of her or about her on this topic
Schlemazel
@germy:
That wouldn’t take much thought either.
smintheus
@Betty Cracker: I think the chance is now much higher than 5%.
trollhattan
@Walker:
Admit I don’t have a head count, only that Jon Kyl will be seated by the time the entire senate would take a vote.
Ruckus
@Another Scott:
Well someone would have to make a complaint and a prosecutor would have to file for him to be tried and if she was going to make a complaint, wouldn’t she have done so already? And if she made a complaint how much of the story is admissible evidence? Of course just making the complaint might be enough to make him ineligible for the office, but in this atmosphere?
sdhays
@James E Powell: I think at this point a vote for Kavanaugh could finally cost Senator Collins her seat in 2020; he is just that toxic. I think she’ll eventually vote no. I have no idea on Murkowski since she doesn’t have to face voters until 2022, but if Collins is voting no, I think she’s a more likely “no”.
debbie
@trollhattan:
I believe I heard reporting that Kavanaugh wrote a long list of questions for Starr to ask President Clinton, many of which were sexually very graphic. That seems in keeping with his high school “highjinks.
WaterGirl
@B.B.A.: You’re not the boss of me. Fuck Senator Gillibrand.
* Though I would vote for her if she was the nominee.
Mart
Clearly if amoral liberal Catholics had not infiltrated the true Church, these boys would not have had decadent rapey thoughts. I completely understand their deep held belief it was the young woman’s fault for her being there, so they had nothing to do with it. With Kavanaugh, six of the nine justices will be raised Catholic, five of them not liking icky women parts. The dead people in Chicago never should have started all this by electing Kennedy.
smintheus
@Martin: Exactly. This for Republicans is the start of the feared meltdown. Democratic timidity might hand Republicans a victory, but the drumbeat to get to the bottom of the attempted rape accusation otherwise is only going to keep getting stronger.
Schlemazel
@trollhattan:
The split is 51/49. We need all Dems & at least 2 Rs to vote no.
opiejeanne
@Cheryl Rofer: I never heard that. My experience was in 1976 when I was 26 and married. Maybe my girlfriends knew about it, but I wasn’t even at a party.
Bruuuuce
@sdhays: I’ve heard suggestions that Collins intends to step down from the Senate and run for Governor next time around. If that’s the case, she needs to be stomped hard; she won’t be quite as bad as LePage, but then, that’s a ridiculously low bar to clear.
patrick II
I am not surprised at all. Kavanaugh, whenever he has the power, he uses it as serial abuser of women. He abused Monica Lewinsky when he and Starr not only made her, under penalty of a prison sentence, detail the sexual particulars of her relationship with Clinton, but then publicly used questions about those details to humiliate Clinton. To them the young women Lewinsky was just collateral damage. The fact that Clinton had an affair was enough to establish his testimony in the Jones trial was misleading (although no less misleading than testimony Kavanaugh has given in his hearings). But Lewinsky was publicly humiliated even more and took years of therapy and finally self-assertion to live a pridefull life again. Clinton had sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky, Starr and Kavanaugh sexually abused her.
The republicans on the judicial committee were so worried about what Kavanaugh’s daughters heard during his hearings, did Kavanaugh give a thought to what a young Chelsea Clinton heard during her father’s opprobrious questioning?
He also took advantage of his position to lead a two year faux investigation pretending that Vince Foster’s suicide might have actually been a murder masterminded by Hillary Clinton, once again abusing his position to put a woman in her place.
And most recently ruling from the bench in a totally non-legal manner in the case of a you hispanic immigrant who had every legal right to an abortion, to stop her from exercising that right and forcing her to have a baby against her will. He said she needed a sponsor, he could have said she need a blue hat or needed to whistle dixie with every bit as much legal relevance. He did it because she was locked up and he could, and it would help fill out his resume with the right birth control extremists for his acceptance as a Supreme Court judge. Once again, the affect on the victim of his abuse of the law to abuse a woman was not something he considered as important.
He sexually assaulted someone when he was younger? Nothing could be more true to form.
Ruckus
@Bruuuuce:
That’s not a low bar, that’s an underground tunnel.
Adam L Silverman
@eemom: You can’t. And that’s going to, if used properly, be a powerful tool for Professor Ford, for her attorney, for her family, friends, and other supporters, and for the Democrats on the committee and in the Senate.
John Revolta
I’ve read that this guy has been groomed for years for this appointment. The Repubs certainly seem to be all in on it. In past years I’ve suspected them of putting up a lousy first candidate (e.g. Bork, Miers) so the second one could sail through easily but they don’t seem to have a backup guy this time. ???
TS (the original)
What is there not to believe. I was at college in the 1960s and remember the parties and the drinking. If the girls complained they ended up leaving and going home because they were always blamed for whatever happened.
sdhays
@Bruuuuce: If she wanted to do that, she should have done it this year (and I remember rumors that she was flirting with switching to governor this year in 2017, but ultimately decided to stay put). Now she has to wait until 2022, so her reelection campaign will come first. Hopefully she’ll get stomped regardless, but I think she’ll be in real danger if she ends up voting for Kavanaugh.
Llelldorin
Collins and Murkowski have taken “brave” votes in the past precisely once they were sure that their supposed bravery wouldn’t actually affect anything. I’m reminded of their “brave” votes against Betsy DeVos, taken after voting _for_ the nomination in committee where their votes would have been determinative.
This one’ll be interesting. Now that Jones represents Alabama they can’t safely pull that stunt together unless they really mean to stop Kavanaugh.
Ruckus
@patrick II:
Very reasonable take on the history of this totally unqualified ass.
eemom
@Baud:
Ah! Thank you for reminding me that that despicable twat exists, so I can gleefully imagine what a shitty Sunday SHE must be having.
Adam L Silverman
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: And remember the crowd we’re dealing with. These are the folks that legitimate believe that the Clintons, the Obamas, James Comey, Robert Mueller, DNI Clapper, DCI Brennan, and a number of other elites and notables are running a global pedophile ring out of the non-existent basement of a DC area pizzeria. These people are the type to SWAT her and her family. They’re the type to take a shot at her or to shoot up her house. We are facing a toxic and deadly combination of tribalism and conspiracism.
TS (the original)
@dmsilev:
As usual it’s the coverup and lying that is part of the issue. They ALL lie, all the time. They always blame the victim. What she thought would happen – is happening. Even today – 50 years after I was at college, they still blame the woman. Upstanding man sowed a few wild oats.
smintheus
From Politico:
That’s a good sign the WH is politically paralyzed over the WaPo article.
El Caganer
@smintheus: Timidity? There’s blood in the water – no time to be a goldfish.
Betty Cracker
@Martin:
Tattoo-worthy.
smintheus
@TS (the original): That is a statement by a staffer on the Judiciary Committee. It doesn’t mean that “Senate Republicans” as a whole have any plan, it means that at least some of the leadership would like to use an obscure staffer to try to convince us that they won’t cede anything. Republican senators are not lining up publicly today behind Kavanaugh – that’s the most important evidence we have for assessing the GOP’s plans, the absence of coordinated pushback.
Ruckus
@Bruuuuce:
@sdhays:
The mood in Maine seems to be not on her side. So if she votes not to confirm that might end her career on the conservative side and if she votes yes then it will probably end her political future as well. I’d call that rock and hard place. But then I may be underestimating the Maine voters and their desires. So she may be done anyway and she’ll follow her conscience. OK I see the flaw in that line of thought.
Bruuuuce
@Ruckus: :-)
@sdhays: Logistically, it makes sense. But if she’s facing a tough fight for her Senate seat (which she is, considering the GoFundMe set to fund her opponent as well as opposition from the state’s most influential resident, Stephen King, if she votes to confirm), she might take the opportunity to exit and then hope the public’s memory fades in the couple of years before she runs again.
Bruuuuce
@Ruckus: I hope you’re right, but would put money on the side of her marching in lockstep with the rest of the crooks.
smintheus
@El Caganer: Which is why I can’t understand all the defeatism today from Democratic commenters on line. Kavanaugh’s nomination is in mortal danger now.
zhena gogolia
@patrick II:
Absolutely right. His suggested questions for Bill Clinton now sound even creepier.
Cheryl Rofer
@opiejeanne: Seeing your comment and others, I guess it wasn’t all that common knowledge. The women in my dorm must have been ahead of their time.
zhena gogolia
If (if!) his nomination goes down, I’m going back to watch that clip where he sneers at the Parkland father again and again.
Brachiator
@TaMara (HFG): I find Ford’s story to be credible, but I thought that lie detectors are unreliable, and inadmissible in court. I don’t know that either Slate or the Washington Post can use the lie detector results as corroborating anything. The other aspects of their reporting appear to be solid.
Ms Ford is brave. Maybe she hoped that her confidential letter would spur further investigation.
I understand her caution. I wonder how the Intercept got info on her letter. And it’s clear that some “journalists” don’t care about Ford or the Supreme Court nominee, and want to take down Senator Feinstein.
eemom
Somehow that last clause strikes me as…..not something an innocent person would say.
It’s lawyerly, though. I will give him that.
Adam L Silverman
@germy: Says the man who we know laundered the Israeli government’s attempts, via then Israeli Foreign Minister and long rumored to be Putin’s Russian mob point of contact in Jerusalem Avigdor Lieberman and on behalf of Manafort’s attempts to achieve Putin’s goals in Ukraine, to smear Secretary Clinton and President Obama as anti-Semites in order to get Governor Romney elected in 2012. The only outstanding question is was Shapiro specifically paid and instructed to do this or was he just a dupe. Given he sells survival food packages and supplements, you decide.
Adam L Silverman
@TaMara (HFG): So just a quick word on this. Polygraphs are not lie detector tests, which is why they’re not admissible in court.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/09/07/polygraph-tests-trump-administration-219740
eemom
@Brachiator:
Lie detector tests are indeed inadmissible in court. Actually, the case that held that back in 1923, Frye v. United States, set the standard for admissibility of scientific evidence that is still the law in some jurisdictions.
That being said, the fact that they’re not admissible doesn’t mean they’re not credible.
The Dangerman
@Betty Cracker:
I’ll go as high as 1% on a good day. Else, this is done as done can get.
Only thing that might stop Kavanaughty is Mueller. And even THAT might not be enough.
Adam L Silverman
@Martin:
Gator90
@smintheus: Mortal danger from what, exactly? An attack of conscience on his part? Republicans doing the right thing?
Martin
@John Revolta:
They have a whole lists of backups. But you’re seeing a fight between the Senate GOP and the WH. McConnell was clear he wasn’t sure he could confirm Kavanaugh. He never wanted him nominated. That’s all on Trump, because Kavanaugh will protect him. But the Senate didn’t have a lot of time. They wanted this done before the midterms, which only gave them 4 ½ months. Trump got them a name in about a week, and had the Senate GOP spiked him, it would have delayed it further.
McConnell wanted someone without all the baggage and who never worked in the WH so that the reviewing documents could be pulled together quickly and a vote completed. But now it’s too late for even that. There were a number of people on that list that would have sailed through, but Trump wouldn’t nominate them.
Tim C.
@John Revolta: No, they don’t and they clearly think there’s a good chance of Democrats getting the Senate. The horrible horrible reality is that this…..man will likely get confirmed 51-49 because they GOP doesn’t have enough time left to get anyone else. Likewise, there will now be four absolutely batshit-insane right wing votes on the court and John Roberts, Who is evil but not stupid, and has the single not-terrible-as-the-others quality of understanding that if he gives the GOP it’s fondest desires, that it has a good chance to destroy the party.
Adam L Silverman
@sdhays: Makes you wonder why he wasn’t on Leonard Leo’s original list.
Adam L Silverman
@Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho: Yep.
Ruckus
@Bruuuuce:
The conscience was the flaw in the argument.
She’s shown before that she doesn’t, in the end, have one. And she was really pissed off that that gofund me was announced. She’s a republican, through and through.
The real question is, will she look into the future farther than tomorrow and see what it holds for her and make a decision that gives her a possible career path or just be herself and follow the company line?
Schlemazel
@eemom:
WAIT! You don’t seriously think she will be affected by this news, do you?
Her and the enablers like her are just like Homer Simpson: “[I] who will never get his comeuppance! You hear me? No comeuppance! ” And never a regret because the money is good
Ruckus
@smintheus:
I’ll agree that there is an element of danger to his conformation happening but how do you get to mortal danger?
opiejeanne
@Cheryl Rofer: It never occurred to me that I might be raped when I went to college. I was pretty naive, but when I was first at college I had no problem with boys. They liked me, no one tried to rape me. I got married during my sophomore year and dropped out when I became pregnant.
It was when I went back to finish my degree that a friend who lived in the dorms got me up to his room on a pretext, (come up and see my etchings) and he nailed me. I was so embarrassed and shocked that I didn’t say anything at the time, just got the heck out of there. In fact, I didn’t even classify it as rape at first which seemed so obvious a few hours later. It was essentially that stupid thing called date rape. We had a four hour break between our last class of the day and a concert we were both in that evening, and I lived an hour away. He offered to have supper with me and I jokingly agreed to eat in the commons with him, then he wanted me to listen to something he’d recorded. Dot dot dot.
And my performance in the concert was good that night. But later, when I got home I just started shaking and coming apart.
The story gets worse but I won’t bore you with the details.
Ruckus
@Cheryl Rofer:
It sounds like experience talking more than anything.
Which goes to show just how much of real problem this is.
Llelldorin
@smintheus: It’s in danger, but for that danger to become “mortal” we’d need to see something that we’ve never seen before: Collins and Murkowski willing to buck the party in a case where doing so would actually change the outcome of a vote.
It’s conceivable, but I’ve simply never seen it happen.
Adam L Silverman
@Alain the site fixer: I went to an all male Jesuit high school for three years before we moved to Denver for my Dad’s sabbatical year, which was my senior year that was done at a public school in the Denver burbs. I did not know 65 girls, now women, from our sister school in Tampa. I can remember the name of one. I can remember the names of a couple of dozen girls, now women, I was in a Jewish youth group with while in high school. And I can remember the names of maybe a 1/2 dozen or so of the girls, now women, I went to high school with during my senior year. My then girlfriend and the girls in my AP classes and on the knowledge bowl team. That they were able to get 65 women to issue “we knew him real well” testimonials in less than 24 hours is troubling.
Adam L Silverman
@smintheus: Here’s the reporting on the most recent White House thinking on the matter:
Schlemazel
@opiejeanne:
I have already admitted to being stupidly naive. Painfully so it seems. Is there any woman who has not had unwanted sexual contact? I was just talking about this a couple days ago with my wife of 45 years and she told me an older cousin fondled her when she was 13-14. I was shocked. One that she had never mentioned it and two that she seemed to assume something like that happened to every girl at some time. I have no words for my anger and dismay. I had no idea so many guys could be this way
TS (the original)
So I went looking and found 4 other female senators that belong to the GOP. Out of 51 senators they have 6 women. Old white men voting away women’s rights – and I doubt those other 4 women will vote against Kavanaugh – and they should be out there saying “there but for …. go I”
B.B.A.
Damn right.
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
I agree with your point but have to take exception to one flaw in your sentence and that is the concept of thinking, in this WH.
Llelldorin
@Adam L Silverman: I went to a public high school in the late 1980s. The school was roughly half women, as you’d expect.
I _might_ be able to dig up a dozen women who could confirm that I was basically decent back then. There’s no way I could find 65.
That the Republicans had that list ready to go is an admission in its own right.
smintheus
@Adam L Silverman:
And some are not terribly skillful, even foolish. I took a single polygraph test when applying for a job with a federal agency that routinely lied about its own activities. My examiner asked intrusive questions about my love life I was not willing to discuss with a stranger, and he then leapt to conclusion that I must be gay. I finally laughed at his stupidity and obvious incompetence, and told him that I would never agree to work for an agency where I’d have to answer to fools and their ouija boards, much less an agency whose official policy was rampant homophobia.
He then announced that he had changed his mind and I was now considered to be not gay. He actually seemed to imagine that I would find his sudden reversal more reassuring.
Now if they were using a Magic 8 ball to evaluate testimony, I might be able to give it more credence.
Adam L Silverman
@Llelldorin: Yep.
schrodingers_cat
I believe her too. K gives off that predatory creepster vibe.
smintheus
@B.B.A.: Sounds like the text of a Trump tweet.
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
Well, the ones who could be charged with assault ought to be worried, FFS.
Adam L Silverman
@smintheus: Like everything else, you get good ones and you get bad ones. Questions about sexual orientation are now off limits in those polygraphic examinations.
John Revolta
@Martin: @Tim C.: Yes, the looming election makes things much more fraught. Who woulda thought the Senate would be in play? Sometimes I feel like I should step away from the news cycle for awhile but ain’t gonna happen..
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: One would think.
rikyrah
I believed her before I knew her name.
schrodingers_cat
I went to an all girls Catholic school and I did not know 65 boys when I was in school.
smintheus
@Adam L Silverman: Yeah, but what else are they going to say? “Ok, ok, we’re trying to decide whether to circle the wagons, or go to ground, or panic, or force Kavanaugh to step down, but we may have to wait for the polling to tell us how bad it’s playing.” Of course the first thing you do is to send some kind of full-speed-ahead-damn-the-torpedoes message and see how it plays. If the loyalists don’t rally to it, then it’s on to step 2.
Adam L Silverman
And before anyone asks, yes, I too believe her. She had nothing to gain and everything to loose, including her life given the political moment we’re living in, to come forward about this.
Mnemosyne
I find her story all too plausible, and Kavanaugh not at all credible.
And I would love to see a few of those 65 character witnesses brought before the committee to testify under oath that they knew someone who went to a different school so well that they feel 100 percent confident he didn’t do it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Adam L Silverman: Yup
Lindsey Graham wants Prof Ford to testify, but doesn’t want any delay in the votes. Also:
boatboy_srq
I believe her.
When I was young and gullible, I allowed the Good Upstanding Citizen schtick the GOP spun about Thomas to make me not entirely sure about Anita Hill, and I’ve regretted it ever since. It doesn’t take an outspoken victim to believe that the P*ssy-Grabber-in-Chief would put forward another sexist entitled misogynistic boor for SCOTUS, but having one willing to point a finger ought to make a difference.
Of course we are talking about the same political party that didn’t bat an eyelash at Gingrich’s double standard, that welcomed back David “Huggies” Vitter and Mark “Appalachian Tail” Sanford, and that has made every single possible excuse for Lord Dampnut. So it’s entirely possible that none of this will matter when the vote is called.
smintheus
@Ruckus: Because Republicans have painted themselves into a corner by insisting they’re going to push Kavanaugh through this month without waiting for normal vetting. Now they have a highly credible attempted rape + forcible restraint – a conspiracy to boot – allegation, and if they refuse to wait to investigate it then they’re sending the unmistakable signal that the Republican Party as a whole doesn’t take rape seriously and doesn’t need or want to know the facts about a SCOTUS nominee’s life. If they do allow an investigation, however, it’s almost certainly opening the floodgates; Kavanaugh is finished and they irk their base which has been encouraged to gloat about how quickly and recklessly they’re ramming Kavanaugh through.
schrodingers_cat
The question I have is, how many rapes has K gotten away with? It looks like T and K bonded over their rapey, grabby pasts.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
catclub
@trollhattan:
I read somewhere that kavanaugh was not even on the original Federalist society list that trump brandished in Jan(?) 2017.
smintheus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: QED.
Suzanne
@Schlemazel:
I have exactly one female friend who said that she has never been on the receiving end of sexual harassment or abuse or assault. One.
And yet I have a coworker who thinks MeToo is just women angling for advantages because he was assaulted and no one cares. When I pointed out that it was exceedingly likely that his assailant is a man, and therefore sexual misbehavior is an axis of control of men toward women (and yes, all the caveats about how women have raped men, etc.), he didn’t seem to have an answer.
schrodingers_cat
@Schlemazel: No.
divF
@Adam L Silverman: I went to the other Jesuit high school in DC in the 1960s. Our sister school was across the parking lot from us, and I didn’t know any of the students there. Also, there were about 800-900 students total at my school – Prep was (and is) about half that size. In any case both schools had a student population drawn from all over the DC metropolitan area. The idea that he knew 65 young women at all, let alone well enough to vouch for his character, is ludicrous.
schrodingers_cat
@Schlemazel: There are many incidents I have told no one about. I am pretty sure that I am not the only woman who has done that.
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: It would be a miracle if Jeff Flake did more than just run his mouth about Trump. But I’ll take it if he actually is willing to use the power he has.
zhena gogolia
@Schlemazel:
I certainly don’t know any.
SiubhanDuinne, Badass JAckal
@rikyrah:
This x 1000.
PAM Dirac
@divF: By the time I got there (1969) the girls from across the parking lot could take AP courses with us. Still that was only about 5-6. Getting 65 who had ANY personal interaction with him to sign in a day sounds absurd. Might be interesting to follow up on exactly what the signees thought they were agreeing to.
vhh
@Another Scott: If he had said it was 35 years ago, i was 16, I am not sure, there was a lot of drinking,in any case I am not proud of it, he’d get a pass. But he flat out denied it, and the GOP did know about it (they had a list of women ready).. . he may still get by, but there will be a lot of damage. Could give the Dems the Senate. And if it comes out that he had other victims, he’s toast.
daize
@Llelldorin: Just want to say that I love your nym. :-)
daize
@opiejeanne: I am so, so sorry this happened to you. Thank you for sharing your experience.
WaterGirl
@PAM Dirac: I want all 65 women to be shown the letter and be asked what they think now.
I still believe — with absolutely no evidence yet– that they are 65 women who are willing to lie to save the millions of babies they think are being murdered.
divF
@PAM Dirac: I graduated class of 1969, so I just missed that.
divF
@divF: And I was in the AP Math / Science program, so I would have experienced this directly.
PAM Dirac
@WaterGirl: The accuser is certainly going to have every detail of her story questioned and dissected. I don’t see why the 65 shouldn’t be asked to provide details of the evidence they have to support their statement. I agree that it is likely that all they have is belief that he would be anti-abortion.
Ruckus
@smintheus:
That’s a nice story.
It has all the elements. Unfortunately you left out a couple of things. republicans are in the majority. The can vote him in because of that. Reasonable hearings, or bullshit publicity stunts, it doesn’t matter. It might make it far worse for them politically but they don’t seem to give two fucks about that. Even if they lose the house and the senate, there won’t be enough votes in the senate to overrule any of this. It’s why impeachment is ridiculous but not wrong, it can not be carried out. This can be. And unless a couple of republican senators grow a conscience soon, it will be. It may make the 2020 election a rout for the dems and he could be impeached off the bench but other than those two senators, this is a done deal. The vote was scheduled for the 20th, 4 days away. What do you think might happen in the next 4 days?
PAM Dirac
@divF: You were probably one of the people Fr. Woodward would hang over our head. “The highest score on this test was 38 and the median was 24, but when I gave this test in 1969 DivF scored a 58” :-)
Adam L Silverman
@catclub: Correct, he was added specifically for this opening. Part of the enticement to get Kennedy to retire. And there was reporting that McConnell asked McGahn not to push Kavanaugh forward. My guess is McConnell has had his team do a deep dive into the oppo for everyone on that list and any other possible additions like Kavanaugh and knew there would be problems even if he didn’t know specifically about this.
Barbara
@Llelldorin: I went to the largest public suburban high school in the entire state and I would be hard pressed to come up with more than 30 names I remember without going through the yearbook. I am a few years older tha Kavanaugh. They had a good idea this was coming.
Barbara
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I will be checking the sky this evening for pigs.
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
Highly likely but is it also possible that drumpf and the republican politicians in general have differing paymasters?
Pretty sure drumpf is under the Russian thumb, money laundering and other corruptions, but the congress members have the republican wealthy to answer to. They may be involved with the Russians, at least a few of them from CA seem to have that angle locked up tight, but most of them seem to get their grift from the republican cash registers.
Ruckus
@Barbara:
In this instance it does seem plausible that they have grown wings.
Dave
@anya: Unfortunately, that’s a no-brainer… neither of those women have a spine. The only possible reason Murkowski might vote against him is that she owes her job to the Alaskan Native Americans who voted for her in a massive write-in campaign, and he threatens their interests. But I doubt even that will be enough for her to follow her conscience and do the right thing. I’ve lost hope that any Republican in either house of Congress has the courage to put our country over their party on any issue facing the country. To quote the Orange Shitgibbon, “sad!”
divF
@PAM Dirac: *Laughs*. You have completely outed yourself as a Fr. Woodward alum. It has probably been decades since I’ve reflected on the fact that all of his exams were scored out of a maximum of 60.
Llelldorin
@Barbara: The most bizarre thing about that list is its sheer pointlessness even when you ignore the fact that it borders on an admission in its very existence. It’s a _literal_ version of the old “but what about all the women he _hasn’t_ raped???” defense. More fool I, I thought that existed only as a joke in particularly poor taste.
Adam L Silverman
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Can’t have his weekly tee time with the President messed up.
Adam L Silverman
@Ruckus: A lot of Russian, Israeli, Saudi, Emirati, Chinese, and other money has flowed (been laundered) through those Republican and movement conservative Super PACs and funders.
Kay
By all means. Let’s hear from the 65 character witnesses. If they’re like this one, they’ll make it worse for him.
Tazj
@germy: Wow, that’s gross. He’s quite the charmer.
germy
Mary G
Told this poster that “a bar so low we have hit magma” is brilliant, and I would steal it, and she gave permission.
germy
@Tazj: He’s the guy who wrote “A Black Guy Stole My Bicycle”.
It’s a small world among our conservative betters.
debbie
@Kay:
“Do the Right Thing” was NOT a violent black rage film, goddammit.
burnspbesq
@Baud:
The alternative to Feinstein isn’t a Republican, it’s an incompetent Wilmerite.
Tehanu
Two brief thoughts: first, Republikkkans think their party’s anti-woman, anti-human, racist, greedy, belligerent policies are good for the country; it’s just God’s blessing that those policies are (what a coincidence!) good for their pocketbooks, and they simply close their eyes to any evidence otherwise. Second, I went to public school, but I once dated a boy from the local all-boys Catholic school. He was so aggressively all-hands all over me the moment I got in the car… it was almost pathetic — and he was actually not a bad kid; I got to know him rather well much later, and once his hormones calmed down he was a good guy. He wasn’t trying to rape me, he was just desperate and unthinking. But after that I turned down every boy from that school who asked me out.
Barbara
@Kay: We get it. Nothing says masculine ideal quite like slapping your wife in public. And he was Kavsnaugh’s best bud in high school.
Brachiator
@eemom: I googled “are lie detectors accurate” and the first response was this, from the American Psychological Association web site.
ETA. Problem creating a link with my mobile browser.
germy
Mark Judge has deleted his twitter, youtube and vimeo accounts.
There are screen shots, however, and lots of young ladies in his videos. He seems to be quite a horndog.
spudgun
@Kay: Holy cr&p, that is just VILE…
germy
@burnspbesq:
“But I repeat myself.”
Juice Box
@Suzanne: I dated a man who had previously worked for the same company that I was then working for. He had left his job (before we started dating) because a woman was harassing him for dates and spreading false stories about him. When she found out that I was dating him, she started to harass me, sort of sexual harassment once removed. She made my life hell for almost two years. Women are less frequently harassers, but it clearly does occur.
Mary Ellen Sandahl
@Schlemazel:
Which speaks wonderfully for your character, Schemazel, but how did you escape hearing the contemptuous trash talk of the other young guys? Or did you have one of those rare school experiences where raging sexism wasn’t part of the general atmosphere? (They do happen; a female friend of mine reported similar good things about her junior high days.)
When the #Metoo anecdotes started coming in thick and fast, I read several comments on Twitter etc. similar to what you say here. I find it touching. But consider the millennia-old history of the matter.
Gravenstone
@Adam L Silverman: So the formal investigators beforehand were unaware of the accusation, but the Republican power structure (judging from the efforts assembled to neuter the effectiveness of the accusation) clearly were aware. Wonder how *that* sort of thing happens?
Okay, not really wondering. ..
Bonnie
I do, too. But, I highly recommend that she not testify to Congress. Just ask Anita Hill.
Adam L Silverman
@Brachiator:
tokyokie
I’m an old white guy, and I believe Christine Blasey Ford. From the get-go, Kavanaugh has impressed as a privileged frat-boy asshole, and what Ms. Blasey Ford describes is exactly what I’d expect from an aspiring privileged frat-boy asshole. Since at least high school, I have tried to disassociate myself with privileged frat-boy assholes, but then, unlike Kavanaugh and most Trumpenführer officials, I have a conscience.
Funny, isn’t it, how this privileged frat-boy asshole’s most fervent support comes from the morality scolds who are convinced of their inherent goodness and imminent salvation.
pk
@Schlemazel:
I was repeatedly abused by a teenage boy when I was 5. I kept quiet about it for 40 plus years. I found out a few weeks ago that my brother was also abused by the same boy (male, female did not seem to matter to him). I only told my brother when he started talking about it in the context of the me too movement (saying that men should also talk about the abuse they suffered as children). Every woman I know has a story of abuse (ranging from unwanted groping to sexual assault). The men were mostly known (uncles, teenage cousins and in one case a doctor). I could never talk about it because I felt ashamed of myself and my abuser was the son of my father’s best friend and I was always told he was like my brother. My father doted on him. My father never knew and my brother and I will never tell my elderly mother. I hope things become better for the coming generations.
tokyokie
@Gelfling 545:
When the Democrats retake the Senate, I want them to investigate the 65 women who agreed to this cover-up, and then, wherever possible, press contempt of Congress charges against them.
burnspbesq
@smintheus:
That’s been true for longer than any of us have been alive.
Procopius
@anya: I don’t know why anybody ever doubts what Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski will do. They always vote with the party. Always. It is impossible to believe that Susan Collins was played on the Obamacare Repeal bill — she is not naive or stupid. Anyone who is saying, “Oh, I wonder how they are going to vote. If only we can persuade them!” is (purposely?) deceiving themselves.
dnfree
@opiejeanne: I am so sorry you went through this. Like you, I never even thought anyone might rape me in college in the early 1960s. Both women and men were raised to believe that girls were the gatekeepers, and any time I said no to a guy, he stopped. It was a very different time. I’m sure there were rapes, but I bet there weren’t nearly as many. By the end of the 1960s much had changed.
Adam L Silverman
@Gravenstone: It happens because the background investigation by the FBI is the type done for a high level clearance. It relies on both the person being investigated and the references he or she provides being truthful. In this case, because Ford states that Kavanaugh was very drunk, it is possible he may not have a memory of the event at all. That doesn’t let him off the hook, but it would give him plausible deniability. Unfortunately, because of his denial, he’s now locked in.
If McConnell had his senior political folks do full oppo research they may have found one or more troubling things that wouldn’t show up in the FBI’s background investigation.
John Fremont
@schrodingers_cat: I went to a co-ed Catholic high school in Jersey in the 80’s and I didn’t know enough women that could vouch for my character like that.
Llelldorin
@Mary Ellen Sandahl: It’s quite possible to simply miss the trash talk growing up. I never heard any such talk until much later in life. Not because it wasn’t there, mind you—it very well may have been—but because I had a very small circle of close friends who never discussed girls, dating, or sex at all. I simply have no idea what trash talk was going on in general.
To be clear, I’m not claiming any great virtue here—just total cluelessness.
Procopius
@Schlemazel:
There was a Donald E. Westlake novel, not one of his better ones, where he was describing the members of the gang that was involved. In describing the not-too-bright big basher guy, he tells about the time he decided to rape a woman. The guy is described as huge, and the woman is described as pretty good-sized. Of course the strong-arm guy figures a woman is going to be weak, and maybe submissive, but “she fought like a tiger,” and he considered himself lucky to get away with his dangly bits intact. I know that too often that doesn’t happen, but we rarely hear about the women who were successful in fighting their attackers off.
Llelldorin
@tokyokie:
I’m don’t think you can charge them. I’m sure they didn’t lie—there are probably many women of his acquaintance that he failed to attack. That was why that attestation was mad to begin with: “Didn’t attempt to rape a simple majority of the women he knew in high school” is a bar below the one Mary G mentioned.
Llelldorin
Oy, but do I miss the edit button.
PaulWartenberg
My two cents:
1) there is decent evidence this happened.
2) anyone offering a “boys-will-be-boys” excuse better be prepared to arrest every boy from the ages of 13-80 if this sh-t is THAT common for boys. I am sick of that excuse and there ought to be more men pissed off by that as well. The EXPECTATION that every man is a pussygrabber and we should just wave it off as “harmless growing up.” It is NOT harmless growing up, and kids I knew like that back in high school ended up in jail for it like they deserved. I am sick of it.
3) that the Republicans had ON SHORT NOTICE a letter of a large number of women willing to be character witnesses about “bad behavior” around women means THEY KNEW THIS WAS OUT THERE. And they still nominated and accepted this sonofabitch.
4) the dark truth about sexual assaulters and deviants is that there is NEVER just one. These guys – Cosby, Roy Moore, Weiner, Clarence Thomas, Ben Rothlesburger, Jameis Winston, yes even Bill Clinton – never stop until they get caught. If there’s one accusation like this out there about Kavanaugh – from high school – there is damn good cause to believe there have been more since then. THIS IS A SERIOUS MATTER deserving more investigation by law enforcement.
Joy in FL
I believe Christine Blasey Ford.
I do NOT believe Brett Kavanaugh.
dnfree
@pk: Too too common a story. I was molested by an older cousin, more than once, probably at least between the ages of 4 and 9. (After that I learned how to avoid him.) When all the “Me Too” stuff started to come out, a different cousin told me that he couldn’t believe sexual abuse was that common, because he didn’t know a single woman who had ever been abused. I thought to myself, “No, you just don’t know a single woman who goes around talking about it.”
Chetan Murthy
@Schlemazel:
Someplace a woman wrote that the problem is, men come in two sorts: wolves and sheep. A woman goes out with a man whom she thinks is a sheep, but it turns out, on the date, that he’s a wolf. And there are few if any outward signs that a woman can use, to discern if the man is a wolf or a lamb. Schlemazel’s exclamation says something more: men who are lambs can’t tell between wolves and lambs, either. So when they close ranks with other men who are accused, they don’t know if they’re closing ranks with a wolf or a lamb.
That’s one thought. Here’s another: I am unconvinced that most “decent men” are actually innately decent. Remember _A Clockwork Orange_? For me, the lesson of that movie (and excellent book) was that we all have a lot less autonomy in our moral choices, than we think. Our parents teach us, drill us, punish us, from a tender age, to be moral beings. Before we’re conscious, they’re drilling it into us. Sometimes that training works, and sometimes it doesn’t. But when we “decent, moral men” say things like “oh, not all men are like that”, I think we’re making a mistake. All men are like that deep down inside. What man wouldn’t want to be an emperor, with a large harem? When I read _Lolita_, I couldn’t get thru it (b/c geezus, creeping on a child). But I routinely read SF&F movels wherein the men are on top, the (numerous) women are underneath, and the sex flows freely to the top dog men. Hell, look at Game of Thrones, ffs. We don’t act on these deep-down impulses b/c we’re trained to act morally. But, it turns out, for lots of men, the training didn’t “stick”. In case it isn’t obvious, everything I wrote above, applies to me, too. B/c I’m a man.
So hell yeah, I believe Professor Ford. But also, #YesAllMen. Dammit.
J R in WV
@germy:
Of course he is. I believe her implicitly. He looked like that kind of perv from day one; I’m sure he’s enjoyed rubbing cramps out in the little girls’ legs he coaches for soccer or whatever.
I’m an old fat white guy, and I believe her completely! Why would anyone make such an allegation without thinking about the blizzard of abuse about to fall on her head.
opiejeanne
@debbie: And W did not wear the pants in that family. His mother did.
Sarah
@eemom:
She was drinking to! So your point is?
Sarah
Wow, You all are some severely morally bankrupt individuals!!!!
I’m not saying that what she is claiming is true or untrue, however all of the statements that are being left here in the comments section are from individuals that do not even now the facts of this specific situation as of today.
When she informed her husband & therapist about being sexually assaulted (Which was in 2012.) she stated there were 4 people who were present at the time of incident. In her letter to Senator Feinstein she stated there were only 2 not including herself.
The 2nd person she stated that was there at the time of incident is claiming he was never at any party where anything like this happened.
I’ve read people claiming Kavanaugh to be not credible because he was black out drunk. Actually she stated that all parties involved were drinking.
She cannot remember the year, place or time that this event actually took place.
Senator Fienstein today states that she sincerely had doubts that this is actually what happened. (She’s been walking that statement back all day.)
I’ve read because she’s taken a polygraph that this must be true. The polygraph was paid fir bubble the Democratic Party, also they are not allowing anyone to see the questions that were asked in this polygraph.
I’ve read comments that this incident needs to be investigate this by the FBI. She says that she won’t testify unless there is an FBI investigation. The FBI has released the statement that they do not investigate these issues. It is not a federal crime. Also Kavanaugh has been through 6 separate thorough FBI investigations each time he has been promoted. (There are zero reports of any form of sexual misconduct in any way shape or form.)
Ford a couple of hours ago released the statement that the confirmation process to confirm Kavanaugh to Supreme Court should not be stopped due to her “Anonymous Letter”. (This strikes me as odd.)
And lastly this country is based on laws, as well as the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. I believe that something happened to this woman, however this is the problem: Because she cannot recall any imperative details about this incident it just makes a case of he said, she said. (Which anyone who has just a smidgen of common sense knows that there are 3-sides to every story. Hers, His and the truth!) And because of how & when this information was released is extremely political, and makes absolutely no sense whatsoever! They could have berated Kavanaugh on television for those several days straight regarding this issue, and because of the choice to put out this information the day before the confirmation vote is outstandingly suspect!…
That’s just the facts as have been reported & fact checked as of 6:35pm EST.