"Huge scoop." And the statuette for best all-time use of a false narrative and unnamed sources by a national reporter to advance an administration's agenda passes from Judith Miller to Adam Goldman. The NYT keeps the crown. https://t.co/NytJKIiTKS
— David Simon (@AoDespair) September 21, 2018
Fortunately, the attempt to defenestrate Rod Rosenstein seems to be going nowhere — for the moment. But what in the name of Murphy the Trickster God could the NYTimesmen responsible for starting this rumor have been thinking?…
It seems like at least once a month, the Times likes to remind us of how great Margaret Sullivan was for them, and how bad for them it’s been since they let her go.
— golikehellmachine (@golikehellmachi) September 22, 2018
and adds to the narrative that NYT did WH’s bidding today
— Eric Boehlert (@EricBoehlert) September 22, 2018
I now count three different news orgs reporting Rosenstein’s comment abt wiretapping was clearly a joke. how on earth did NYT run the story it did???
— Eric Boehlert (@EricBoehlert) September 22, 2018
Just because the New York Times has a history of playing up some big stories that seem to benefit Trump doesn’t mean…
wait, I forgot where I was going with this…
— Schooley (@Rschooley) September 22, 2018
Because the people who a year ago were able to quash stuff like this are gone or headed out the door?
Also, since then, most of the top level FBI people involved in the Russia investigation have been pushed out. This could be same people who pushed BS to NYT in Oct 2016 https://t.co/EK1Fs7Em53
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) September 21, 2018
Schmidt is the one who first "broke" the Hillary emails story…
— Laurence Lewis (@TurkanaDK) September 21, 2018
The worst type of anonymously-sourced stories are those that lean really heavily into the viewpoint of a certain clique or cadre—or maybe even just a single source or two—but which use the cloak of anonymity to imply that they represent a comprehensive view of the landscape.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) September 21, 2018
Are you guys in a room with editors with guns to your head, or are you all incapable of accepting that every reporter blows it sometimes, including people at the NYT? These defenses of an obvious blunder don’t help the reporters who wrote it, they hurt the Times https://t.co/DLvZlZC35I
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) September 22, 2018
Great look for the Times today. pic.twitter.com/12lwhRrHc3
— Schooley (@Rschooley) September 22, 2018
lamh36
Repost:
Ronan Farrow and Jane Meyer working on a story?
ooohhh…Avenatti tweeted something that bascially alluding to there being more coming up…
Baud
The NYT is garbage.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@lamh36: This should be fun.
Chetan Murthy
@lamh36: I believe “popping my popcorn” is … uh …. somewhat glib and not reflective of the gravity of what Dr. Blasey is going thru at this moment. But “sharpening my knitting needles” [Mme. Defarge] seems to capture the moment, and expresses what I feel ….
West of the Rockies
@lamh36:
Kind of vague, but fingers crossed!
George the Wonder Squid
Long-time lurker and (once or twice) commenter here. Totally off topic even for an open thread: I am in an interesting situation. I decided this year to travel far from San Francisco in order to work on a campaign deep in Trump country. And I’ve spent quite a lot of money to do so, and would really like to recoup some of it, but it appears that the person I actually traveled to help doesn’t actually need me.
Does anyone know of a campaign (presumably small) that could use and could pay me (not a huge amount, just enough to partially offset my crazy expenses) from around a week from now until the election? I originally came out here to do data science stuff, but I know VAN and I can do IT stuff and photography and copy editing, and would be delighted to try to learn anything that I don’t already know how to do. It’d be great if it were in the Midwest, because I know what the Midwest is like, having lived there for a chunk of my life. Arizona would be fine too, now that it’s cooling off, for ditto ditto reason. But really anywhere that is a major battleground where I could maybe help take back a state senate/house, or work on a long-shot US Rep race, or something.
BTW, if someone wants to front-page this, I wouldn’t mind. Prefer not to use my real name, because I really don’t need a lot of publicity.
catclub
The huge scoop was the spying ( or was it torture?) scoop right before the 2004 election that the NYT sat on at White house request.
George the Wonder Squid
And of course my comment gets eated by FYWP. Hoping against hope for moderation.
Starfish
Our own Tom Levenson had a thread for the NYT.
But, pace @brianstelter and @mattbpurdy, the key fact to be established in the story is not whether a source with their own reasons for making an explosive claim made such a claim, but whether or not that claim is true. This they didn’t establlish–and that…
is in some ways a type specimen of the long-running media failure of @nytimes (and much of MSM, including @cnn): conflating publishing true factoids–x said y–with the actual business of journalism, diving behind competing stories (and lies) to what actually happened…
All of wh. is to say that the Rosenstein story is a prime example of the corrupting power of what we euphemize as “access journalism”–a source feeds a line that the reporter then publishes because it is both striking, and, through publishing, a way to stroke a valuable source
Think of how much of this rinse-repeat behavior has framed the Trump candidacy and administration…all the way back to @nytimes still un-atoned for original sin, the Clinton Cash deal. So, yeah, Purdy can scold all he wants. It reinforces, rather than responds to the critique
The @nytimes doesn’t realize that the old joke about cosmologists isn’t a joke. They are, and have been since Judy Miller days in my immediate memory, “often in error; never in doubt.”
Finally — I do note that reporter Michael Schmidt has described this story as the result of a year of reporting and the weighing of divergent views. I’m sure he’s telling the truth about that. It’s process of weighing I question, and…
frankly, because of @nytimes still un-reflected upon failings in covering Trump in 2016, I find it very hard to accept Schmidt’s “trust me” on his sourcing. That may be unfair; it’s the price for NYT’s terrible botch of important stories like the Clinton email/foundation one.
JPL
@lamh36: Farrow retweeted an old tweet that he never talks about possible stories. I really hope that he does though.
catclub
who gets to play Judith Miller and who gets to play Tim Russert?
?BillinGlendaleCA
OT: The kid has awaken for her second day in Sydney, she seemed to have a good first day(except for the incident at the cathedral). It’s funny seeing my little camera traveling so far…sigh.
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I missed the cathedral story. Hope all is ok.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: She didn’t realize that you shouldn’t take pictures during mass and was asked to leave.
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Good. Just embarrassed.
lamh36
zhena gogolia
Way OT (but the NYT is too depressing a subject), but damn was Peter Finch a good actor.
Wild Cat
@zhena gogolia: “Sunday Bloody Sunday” is forgotten. The authenticity of that entire era of cinema is almost all forgotten.
Gin & Tonic
@?BillinGlendaleCA: If she has the time, I strongly recommend taking the paid tour of the Opera House. You will get to see areas of the building that are otherwise not accessible, and will learn much about its construction and history. It is money well-spent.
JPL
@lamh36: Well now I’m going to have to stay up late until Ronan Farrow drops his story.
fingers crossed.
Eric S.
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I don’t know your daughter but as an atheist on vacation in Europe I’ve been called out for violating church norms. I was in St. Petersburg in an ancient but active church. An old woman came up to me scolding me hard. I knew no Russian and was at a loss. I was told by our guide that I needed to take my hands out of my pockets as it was disrespectful. I don’t understand it. I still don’t. But their house their rules. I’ll respect them within their churches.
MisterForkbeard
@JPL: You might be waiting for awhile. No guarantee it will come today, if it comes at all.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Gin & Tonic: Good idea, I’ll let her know.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Eric S.: When I visited the Greek Orthodox Cathedral here in LA, I was told I could take pictures as long as I didn’t sell them(non-commercial use).
dmsilev
@lamh36: Huh. You mean there are additional women who Kavanaugh (allegedly) assaulted?
I’m shocked. No wait, what’s the opposite of shocked?
Chetan Murthy
@dmsilev:
“morally engorged”?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@dmsilev:
“This is my shocked face.”
zhena gogolia
@Wild Cat:
Yeah, it’s a tragedy if he’s remembered only for Network.
Haroldo
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Manly ferry, if she’s not already done so. Great way to see the Harbour.
Jay
What’s that saying of Adam’s?
Once might be an accident,
Twice might be a coincidence,
Three times is Enemy Action.
The FTFNYT has long hosted enemies of Democracy.
Chetan Murthy
@Jay: “Democracy dies at FTFNYT”
lamh36
The Dangerman
@dmsilev:
…what’s the opposite of shocked?
Dekcohs?
hueyplong
It seems more and more like it’s a scandal that this guy is any kind of judge at all. Putting him on the Supreme Court is an outrage in an era in which the “outrage” bar is set incredibly high.
Mai Naem mobile
I just think if Kavanaugh got away with this kind of behavior when he was young then he’s tried it again.. I find the girls basketball team showing up really pervy and creepy . Also, not to sound shallow but what the heck is wrong with his skin. Does he have adult acne or what? Yuck.
By the way if the Democrat manage to get this scalp I think they should go after him and try to get him off the DC appeals court if the Dems take the Senate back obviously.
Cheryl Rofer
Aaannnnnd…the Farrow-Mayer story is out!
JPL
Kavanaugh is going to have to make up another set of calendars.
lamh36
Mary G
New Yorker story is up. Woman who went to Yale with Kavanaugh says he stuck his penis in her face while drunk.
Cheryl Rofer
Avenatti says he has yet another client.
Mary G
Drip. drip, drip.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Haroldo: She’s got a pic on the book of faces on a boat in the harbor.
dmsilev
One might say there’s a pattern of behavior here.
Ken
@Jay:
Oh, you’re in the NYT sub-thread. I thought this was Kavanaugh news for a minute…
lamh36
Avenatti says his client is NOT the woman in Farrow & Mayer’s story!!
https://twitter.com/MichaelAvenatti/status/1044013350873489409
japa21
The second someone on the right says that the Dems are trying to railroad Kavanaugh, I’m simply going to say, “Like you did Franken?” I have no doubt many of the charges against Franken were spurious to begin with, probably pushed by the right and of far less seriousness than what is happening to Kavanaugh.
debbie
@Baud:
In this instance, for sure.
Baud
@Ken: That’s why all threads are open threads.
?BillinGlendaleCA
Re Kavanaugh’s calendar…I have my calendar from 1982, but it’s the academic calendar from my senior year of college. I was fun to look at when I found out that I still had it about 25 years later.
MisterForkbeard
@lamh36: That witness is going to be torn apart. She admits she was drunk and has memory issues of the night in question, but she remembers the incident itself. I can see why she didn’t want to come forward.
But just like Kavanaugh to take advantage of a woman who can’t credibly do anything about it.
dmsilev
Here’s the capsule summary of the New Yorker story:
debbie
@zhena gogolia:
Agreed. He was part of an extraordinary generation of actors.
lamh36
So according to the New Yorker…the Senate Repubs were asked about this so they knew it last week…and instead focused on attacking Dr. Ford.
Now this:
dmsilev
@lamh36: Since Avenatti mentions Mark Judge, it’s presumably another high school victim, rather than an incident from his college days (i.e. Deborah Ramirez).
Has anyone been in touch with Kavanaugh’s law school classmates?
Ken
@Baud: As it turns out, the confusion was irrelevant – looks like Kavanaugh will be up to three soon enough.
Gelfling 545
@Mary G: Apart from his sexual transgressions is anybody looking into hes drinking habits?
Mary G
Number three? I take Avenatti with several grains of salt, but I want to believe.
Viva BrisVegas
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Another option, climb to the top of the Harbour Bridge. Less expensive and more comfortable alternative, climb the south east pylon of the bridge.
Ferry to Taronga Park Zoo. Excellent harbour views from the restaurant there, plus animals.
Ferry to Luna Park. Which is pretty lame as far as theme parks go, but has great views and is somewhat historic.
Aleta
The Farrow-Jane Mayer story about Kav’s college years, a woman who wants FBI investigation. https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/senate-democrats-investigate-a-new-allegation-of-sexual-misconduct-from-the-supreme-court-nominee-brett-kavanaughs-college-years-deborah-ramirez
Sorry if repeating …
Baud
@Mary G: He doesn’t say his client was a victim.
M31
man, Kavanaugh’s evil twin really got around
schrodingers_cat
Why is their fuckery fractal? What does that mean anyway? Is Treason Times beholden to Russian mafiosi?
lamh36
Gelfling 545
Apparently Kavanaugh is turning his calendars from 82 over to the committee. Apparently the fact that there’s no notation for “get blind drunk and attempt rape”he’s conpletely exonerated.
schrodingers_cat
@Mai Naem mobile: He has a drunkard’s face. The blotchy pink skin tells a tale.
Mary G
@Gelfling 545: That’s what I wonder, too.
From the New Yorker story:
Sounds very reasonable that they didn’t do this to all the women, just the ones they considered vulnerable.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
OT,
But why didn’t the R congressmen involved in the baseball practice shooting last year have an epiphany afterwards? Why weren’t they cowed and intimidated?
lamh36
Baud
@Gelfling 545:
I’ve added “Did nothing untoward today” as a repeating event on my Google calendar. I’m covered.
Jay
@Ken:
If you read any of the recidivism studies on rapists and sexual assault, it’s pretty clear that Special K is a serial gang rapist.
Aleta
I guess the election wasn’t the only reason they were rushing this through.
Mary G
This will be the biggest Infrastructure Week evah.
PaulWartenberg
It’s breaking on Twitter right now, and it’s a real big scoop:
There is an accusation from Kavanaugh’s freshman year at Yale. https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/senate-democrats-investigate-a-new-allegation-of-sexual-misconduct-from-the-supreme-court-nominee-brett-kavanaughs-college-years-deborah-ramirez
Not only does the allegation seem credible, but the story is reporting that Senate Republicans heard about it last week, just as they were digging into defending Kavanaugh and attacking Ford. THEY DOUBLED DOWN ON PROTECTING KAVANAUGH. They pushed even harder to get a committee vote done before more of this got out.
This is troubling because it does confirm consistent bad behavior from Kavanaugh towards women. It fits the pattern of sexual assaulters who keep doing what they do until they get caught. It begs the question “how many more?” Because we’ve seen it can be so many more…
Gin & Tonic
@Ken: This is a number that is never 1. It is either zero or two or more, but it can never be 1.
PaulWartenberg
@Mary G: It’s not so much a drip now as it’s a f-cking waterfall.
schrodingers_cat
And to think that Tiger Madam sent her own daughter to clerk for this man. She is no position to give anyone parenting advice.
PaulWartenberg
@Aleta:
No apology needed. THIS IS HUGE.
sukabi
@lamh36: not enough popcorn. Break out the booze.
Mary G
Grassley needs to go:
Millard Filmore
@Baud: And how, exactly, is that in keeping with your campaign promises?
dmsilev
@PaulWartenberg:
This is important to note. It’s pretty clear that they knew that there were other allegations from other women (and at this point we should reasonably ask how many _more_ are there from victims who have not gone public?) and were trying desperately to push the committee vote and floor vote through before said additional allegations surfaced.
SiubhanDuinne, Badass Jackal
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
“Point. Shoot. This is My Body. Click. Snap. This is My Blood.”
(Too soon?)
Mai Naem mobile
@schrodingers_cat: Tiger Mom has her own problems. Tiger Dad is being investigated for inappropriate stuff with his Yale students.
Shalimar
The original story cited people who had been briefed on the memo. Per Schmidt, how in the fuck do you spend a year researching a story and then publish without ever personally even reading the memo most of your story is based on?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Viva BrisVegas: She wanted to do that but they had a change of folk who ran that, so she wasn’t able to schedule that.
PaulWartenberg
@Mary G:
Every week is Infrastructure Week!
…
Except for the week where a bridge eventually collapses from all the lack of Republican spending on Infrastructure.
Ladyraxterinok
@Mary G: Some remember, say it happened. Kav’s friends, dorm-mates say ‘No way!!’
From fast read, it seems possible present pol views are affecting ‘memories.’ Dorm-mate group seem v sure. Email group seems to have communicated among themselves (without being prompted by media questions) about this a while ago; dorm group seems to be reaction to questions about ‘just now’ story.
The ‘un -prompted-by-media attn story` (because unprompted) would seem to be more credible.
PaulWartenberg
@sukabi:
By the sound of it, Brett beat you the booze.
sukabi
@Gin & Tonic: never 1…we’re up to 3 at this point
Jay
@schrodingers_cat:
As we have learned about this toxic social circle, they all hang together. It’s a nepotistic Career Club for rich white males of privledge. And there are “the right girls”, who get courted, married, to further entwine family fortunes. And “the wrong girls” who get drugged, abused, raped and discarded.
The Tiger Pimp knew her daughter was safe in that cesspool.
How many girls did she procure for that cesspool, that she knew wouldn’t be safe?
debbie
@schrodingers_cat:
I’m lost. Who are these Tiger people?
Chetan Murthy
@debbie: Tiger Mom Amy Chua and her hubby R-something-or-other [of the under-investigation-for-interactions-with-female-students] and their feeder system to send sexily-clad students to Kavanaugh.
Jay
@debbie:
Amy Chua and Jeb Rubinfeld, Harvard Law
sukabi
@debbie: a decade or so ago there was a self described “Tiger Mom” who wrote a book about how she pushed her kids in everything…went on all the morning shows promoting her excellent approach to pressuring her kids to “succeed”…she and her husband are the professors that are caught up in this Kavanaugh mess.
schrodingers_cat
@debbie: Amy Chua, Yale Law School professor who wrote Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom. She endorsed Special K and has been giving career advice to female law graduates how they needed to dress for an interview if they wanted to clerk for Special K. Its not an accident that his clerks look like models she is supposed to have said. One of her daughters also clerks for special K, according to news reports I have read
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/20/brett-kavanaugh-supreme-court-yale-amy-chua
?BillinGlendaleCA
@schrodingers_cat: Given my experience with the bottle and that Kav was a self admitted blackout drunk from high school thought law school, I’ve wondered questions about his current alcohol consumption hadn’t come up.
gwangung
@debbie: Amy Chua and her hubby.
She’s not getting any support from the Asian American community on this one.
WaterGirl
@Jay:
Exactly! I was trying to say this yesterday, but your wording is far better than mine. I would change just one word:
These fucking bastards make me sick. I am glad to see the lack of character in this class of men exposed.
I read last night that Gorsuch also went to Georgetown Prep. Color me surprised.
debbie
@Chetan Murthy: @Jay: @sukabi: @schrodingers_cat:
Thanks. I didn’t realize it was the same Tiger Mom. What a horrible woman!
Viva BrisVegas
@debbie:
Pimps for Kavanaugh.
They groomed female clerks for Kavanaugh and made sure that he got the prettiest ones.
West of the Cascades
As many redeeming qualities as Al Franken has, pressing him to resign was, in retrospect, not only the right thing to do (which I thought at the time) but political genius (which I did not). His absence from the Judiciary Committee at this particular moment is essential. When Franken resigned and Doug Jones was elected, the Democrats added Harris and Booker to that committee.
Viva BrisVegas
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Pity about that. She could still go up the pylon lookout if she wanted, $15. Which I think is about 25c in US currency.
Ken
So basically, in this horror movie we suddenly found we inhabit, Chua and Rubinfeld are the recruiters telling the young backpacking college kids they’ve just got to visit this great hostel out in the middle of nowhere…
Anne Laurie
@MisterForkbeard:
As women have been saying since forever… It’s not about sex, it’s about power.
Young Brett — “allegedly” — showed off to his fellow upper-tier men-friends by getting shitfaced drunk and pushing his penis at women who they knew would be terrified by their group displays. Or, as his defenders call it: rough-housing! horseplay!
Given what we know now (subject to change, as further details emerge), I wouldn’t assume Kavanaugh is a serial rapist, even by intent. I would assume that, at least in his youth, he had a bad habit of getting drunk and showing off in ways that crossed into, at best, borderline criminal behavior.
Suddenly all those ‘just in fun’ recent emails to his current friends (ha-ha forgive-me-for-what-I-don’t-fully-remember, boy-was-I-shitfaced don’t-tell-the-old-lady hints) about hard-partying all-male vacations look just a little more sinister, don’t they?
Jay
@WaterGirl:
Thank you for your edit.
“Wrong” is “their” mindset, not mine.
Jay
@Anne Laurie:
Nope. He’s a serial gang rapist.
Most Rapists stop being rapists when the go to jail and get chemically castrated,
The get a crippling beating and their attack is common knowledge,
They die.
Anne Laurie
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Same reason a lot of women excuse rapists by attacking their victims: What was she wearing? Why did she get into the car with him? If they can find a reason to explain why *they* would never be so stupid / reckless, then it will never happen to *them* — that’s LOGIC (bad logic).
The Repubs, almost immediately, dismissed the guy who shot Scalise as a ‘committed Democrat partisan’ and a ‘lone nut’. It wasn’t the fact that guns are easily available to people of questionable mental balance — it was just that the wicked Democrats had turned this poor soul’s feeble brain against good Godly GOPers!
Never underestimate the human ability to refuse to understand what it would be painful to admit.
Chetan Murthy
@West of the Cascades:
[I am reminded that it wasn’t -just- Gillibrand who pushed Franken to resign]
We gotta remember that it was the female Democratic Senate caucus who did this. If we want a better America, we need more women in high office.
[But yeah, I give full marks to Senator Gillibrand, and we should always remember that she’s a virtuoso with a shiv.]
WaterGirl
@Jay: I knew exactly what you meant by “wrong” and I don’t disagree. But if you look at the recent stories tonight — especially the one where the drinking game involves other people deciding who should drink — it’s clear that the “boys” decided ahead of time who the most vulnerable girl would be, and that’s who they all chose to “drink” in their drinking game.
I think they deliberately preyed on the vulnerable girls who weren’t quite from the right families.
Anne Laurie
@schrodingers_cat:
Being a ‘tiger mom’, according to Amy Chua, meant abusing your kid so that s/he would do whatever might be required in order to “succeed”. And she thought this was good advice, for parenting & in general.
I can totally see Chua grooming her own daughter to accept ‘borderline’ sexual abuse from someone who could sufficiently improve her career prospects. Not rape, mind you, just ‘innuendo’ and ‘clumsy attempts at intimacy’. The grown-up equivalent of burning the kid’s toys because she didn’t practice her music studies long enough, or perform well enough. One must be tough! It’s a hard world, full of toy-destroyers and body-abusers!
Jay
@WaterGirl:
Yup. And some of the “right girls” probably pimped for them.
Anne Laurie
@Jay:
Could be, but all we know right now is that he’s a failed rapist. He committed assault on Blasey-Ford, but she got away physically unharmed. Ditto for Ramirez, in this new story — it’s ugly, but not ‘rape’.
Actual successful serial rapists don’t pull this crap in front of witnesses. They separate vulnerable potential victims, take them where they won’t be interrupted, do their best to ensure that anyone who might interfere with their criminal assault is incapacitated.
The shit Kavanaugh is accused of pulling is about the (pathological) need to show off his ‘prowess’ for other men, not a need for sexual gratification. The effects on his female victims are still toxic, but on the “positive” side… whatever else Kavanaugh may have done since 1983, there will be witnesses. Male witnesses.
Miss Bianca
You know, I hate having to think that the entire FTFNYT political reporting team are, root and branch, knowingly traitors to their vocation, and thus traitors democracy. But it’s really almost an unavoidable conclusion now.
Miss Bianca
@M31:
No shit!
guachi
Many things we do in our past that we aren’t proud of can be easily forgiven if you admit to them.
It’s like going through a security interview for a clearance. If you admit to it, it’s (mostly) forgivable.
The problem for Kavanaugh is he was selling something that doesn’t appear to match reality.
Jay
@Anne Laurie:
When there is more than one person attempting the rape, and there is premeditaion, ( trap, mouth, door, music),
It’s a gang rape.
And as the stats on rapists show, Special K’s never been beaten half to death, has not gone to jail and been chemically castrated, and he’s still alive.
So it’s 93% that he’s a serial gang rapist.
Mike G
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Sydney stuff:
There’s a museum/observation deck in the south pylon of the Harbor Bridge. Worth doing if you’re not up for the bridge climb.
Ferry to Watson’s Bay and look around on the harbor and ocean sides. Then bus to Bondi Beach. Any of the ferries are great, really — Manly, Kirribilli, Balmain, etc. Take an extended harbor cruise.
WaterGirl
@Jay: And joined in the intentional humiliation of the girls afterwards.
Anne Laurie
@Jay:
Could be, but calling Kavanaugh ‘a serial gang rapist’ on what we know now undercuts our case. It gives his defenders ammunition to argue that ‘liberal Democrat hysterics’ don’t understand the difference between ‘adolescent horseplay’ and actual penis-in-vagina rape. We’re not Republicans, let’s stick with the facts and not let our prejudices ruin other peoples’ lives!
Jay
@Anne Laurie:
Not according to Avenatti’s recent letter ,
Special K, Judge and others, multiple gang rapes, evidence and multiple witnesses.
https://balloon-juice.com/2018/09/23/and-then-there-were-more/#comment-7027009
Bonnie
I have no further regard for Haberman or Schmidt as relevant news reporters.
jimmiraybob
@catclub:
Yes, first thought was Judith Miller.
Msb
I’m with Annie Laurie. Saying more than we can prove undercuts us.
Yes, thank God for the D Senate women.
And let’s not forget that Kav was the guy who thought all of Bill Clinton’s sexual behavior should be hung out to dry for the American public. Sauce for the gander, Brett.
sherparick
As to what the NYT attitude toward Trump is, I would say it is “mixed.” Dean Baquet was reportedly super excited about Trump’s election because he believe this “would be a great story” the next 4 years. In other words, Trump may be terrible for the country, but he is great for the NY Times business model. Advancing the Rosenstein story, obviously sourced in pro-Trump, anti-Mueller and anti-Rosenstein FBI, Justice, and Congressional officials (Giulani cronies, likely), means more great stories as Trump fires Sessions, Rosenstein, and Mueller on day after the November mid-terms. At least it will be great until Trump sends ICE into the Times building to arrest everyone and bundle them off to Guantanamo.
Procopius
Isn’t Pinch (or is it Punch) Sulzberg an ardent Trump supporter? I seem to remember the NYT running a “but her emails” story in the front page Every. Damned. Day!! for the last three months of the campaign. Maybe it was the WaPo, or maybe it was both of them, but to me that monotonous pounding, day after day, was a much bigger thing than any Russian scheduling of rallies both for and against.
Procopius
@sukabi: I saw a story somewhere that some lawyer had contacted Grassley saying he had a bunch of court employees who had statements they wanted to make. The story I saw said this lawyer had annoyed some court for a long time with a case they refused to believe, but then his allegations turned out to be true. Haven’t seen anything about that since. Think it was maybe a day after Prof. Ford’s story came out.