If you’d asked me before Thursday, I would have said that part of me hoped that Kavanaugh’s nomination went through because his likely replacement, Amy Coney Barrett, is a right-wing lunatic who is a member of a weird Catholic cult. But If found his performance sickening. He got up and raged like a drunk or a dry drunk and told no end of bald-faced lies, about “Renate alums”, the Devil’s Triangle, and a host of other things.
What disturbs me most these days about establishment commentary is that our pundits think that to be “objective”, whatever the hell that means, you have to put away your common sense. Common sense tells you that false accusations in this setting are rare, that Ford came across as credible, and that Kavanaugh did not, both because of his childish rage and the fact that he lied constantly about other things. Thus common sense tells you that it’s extremely likely that Kavanaugh committed sexual assault. That’s not a right-wing position or a left-wing position. It’s an my-head-is-not-up-my-ass position
Fuck all these assholes. Give to the Balloon Juice Forty House Seats To Freedom fund. Frankly, some of the polls haven’t been that great the past few days, specifically the live NYT ones, and we’re going to have to go all out to take back the House.
West of the Rockies
I do wonder what’s going on in BK’s dreary little mind. Is he afraid that the FBI will unravel his web of deceit? Does he really believe he’s just a brilliant, athletic, good-hearted chap doing his best in a libtard world?
Steeplejack (tablet)
I have been amazed this week at how strong the both-siderism in the media has been in the face of the unhinged nuttery by both Kavanaugh and the Republican senators. Nothing seems to penetrate the bubble.
Jager
“m the son and grandson of alcoholics. Kavanaugh’s outburst at Senator Klobuchar is the response of an alcoholic. I remember my drunken mother saying to me, “You drink too!”
Barbara
@Jager: The genetic predisposition to alcoholism is strong enough that people with a lot of alcoholics in their family are well advised to be very careful about their own drinking.
Hildebrand
A wing-nut relative of mine re-posted some generic right-wing meme about how all of this is some Democratic plot to tear down any nominee that their Dear Leader puts up. I asked, ‘well, what about Neil Gorsuch? His was the stolen Merrick Garland seat, if there was anyone that we would have cranked up nefarious plots against, it would have been him. Your team had every opportunity to not cough up a weak nominee, and you blew it.’ Said relative admitted they had nothing to say in response to that. I am hopeful, but not optimistic, that this will at least keep them from larding their Facebook page with additional nonsense about Kavanaugh.
dmsilev
@West of the Rockies: If I had to guess, he (a) remembers being a “rowdy” boy but didn’t/doesn’t think anything he remembers doing back then is/was wrong and (b) thinks there truly is a Liberal Conspiracy(tm) out to get him.
Jager
@Barbara:
I know that better than most people, I’ve probably given myself every opportunity to become a drunk, it hasn’t happened and won’t. Been to lots of classes and rehab family weeks and discussed it at length with counselors (my neighbor runs a rehab center) If it was going to happen it would have happened by now.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Yup, very really extremely defensive about his drinking.
I’m amazed at how skittish pundits are about the devil’s triangle thing. I don’t think I’ve seen/heard/read one person point out that ITS EXACTLY WHAT CHRISTINE BLASEY SAYS HAPPENED TO HER
god dammit
My 83 year old mother, a kind of willful low-info voter (her attitude tends to be throwing up her hands in frustration) just told me Kavanaugh is gross. And she was offended by his reference to his daughter praying for “that lady”.
Adam L Silverman
I’ll just leave this here:
B.B.A.
This week has put me in the mindset of a 17th-century Chinese warlord.
Yes, I donated.
joel hanes
his likely replacement, Amy Coney Barrett, is a right-wing lunatic who is a member of a weird Catholic cult.
At least she’s not a Yalie.
New rule: no more Catholics or Yalies on the Supreme Court until they constitute less than half the Justices.
Mnemosyne
@West of the Rockies:
He doesn’t think he did anything wrong, but has a dim sense that other people disagree, so he lies about it to get them off his back.
Also, he’s a drunk. Seeing just a few minutes of the video of him gave me nasty flashbacks to when my dad would come home drunk. (He was not a true alcoholic, but if he was put into a situation that triggered his social anxiety like the annual Bar Association dinner or similar events, his coping mechanism was to drink.)
Dorothy A. Winsor
Was Kavanaugh’s prep school a boarding school? If so, that strikes me as a bad situation. College freshmen are bad enough when they first experience freedom. I can’t imagine HS students. There’s not enough supervision in the world to make up for sending each of them home at night to his parents.
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne: How is the knee?
WereBear
@Mnemosyne: Yes, it seemed half of Twitter blew up with “My god, he sounds just like my relative/friend/boss/coworker” with similar realizations.
Amir Khalid
@Mnemosyne:
Maybe someone should make that observation to Trump. Trump despises drunks.
Mnemosyne
Also, Josh Marshall and others on Twitter have been pointing out that Kavanaugh’s vaunted high school calendar actually corroborates Blasey Ford’s story. Speculation is that the reason the Arizona prosecutor was dismissed from further questioning of Kavanaugh is because she was pushing him on that calendar entry and the Republicans realized K was in a shitload of trouble. She asked him a few questions about it, a break was called, and suddenly she was gone.
mobile.twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1045673508305547264
(((CassandraLeo)))
Well, another earworm from a Doug post. Thanks a lot.
Anyway, I got my paycheck yesterday. Which candidates would people recommend? I’m not donating to forty mailing lists, but I feel the need to help a few.
germy
@West of the Rockies:
“The FBI investigation will be severely limited in scope. They won’t find anything. Then I’ll be on the Supreme Court, my birthright.”
rikyrah
FrontPagers,
Concern was made about two regulars. Anyway you can research it for us?
Sandia Blanca
Just chipped in a little bit more from rainy Austin, where the Texas Tribune Fest is creating headlines around the country: statesman.com/news/20180928/michael-avenatti-promises-corroborating-witnesses-for-3rd-kavanaugh-accu…
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
Pretty good. I’m practicing a bit without the crutches and hoping to not need them by next week. But full recovery takes 4-6 months, so I still have lots of physical therapy to go.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@(((CassandraLeo))): I should note I wasn’t being entirely sarcastic here. I like the song; I just have less time to listen to music than I used to.
Suzanne
I firmly believe that all of these old rich white men believe Dr. Ford. They just don’t really care. On the deepest level, they don’t think rape is really a bad thing.
I bet you all of these assholes make “when my daughter dates, I’ll be showing the boy my shotgun” jokes, too. Like that’s funny.
They know how women are treated because that’s how they treat women.
Calouste
Yeah, all those little lies. First he says that he never drank to excess, than he explained the “Devil’s Triangle” by saying it was a drinking game. The sole purpose of drinking games is to drink to excess.
And if anyone in a job interview started bragging about the university they went to, I’d finish it immediately and tell them not to bother to call us.
Adam L Silverman
@rikyrah: I’ve emailed Yarrow. He and I are in semi-regular contact. I had last heard from him about two weeks ago or so. Often it takes a couple of days to hear back from him.
I know of one commenter here who is in/has the ability to contact efgoldman in real life. I reached out to that commenter, that commenter has reached out to efgoldman/efgoldman’s wife to see if everything is okay.
Once I have something to report back, I’ll report it back.
germy
@(((CassandraLeo))):
Tedra Cobb. She’s running against a Karl Rove protegé who sent a republican operative to secretly record her views on gun control, which they used in an attack ad.
Tedra’s TV commercials have disappeared from the airwaves (they ran earlier in the campaign, and were good, but money is tight) while her opponent’s ads run continuously.
tedracobb.com/meet-tedra/
WereBear
@Suzanne: For a lot of them, it’s at least as much as the implied disrespect of them and their property as much as how the woman was traumatized.
I grope around trying to rationalize their behavior, and then discover that no, they are just as creepy and horrible as they seem to be.
Mnemosyne
@WereBear:
When you’ve experienced it up close and personal, the signs are unmistakable. Especially the self-pity and desire to find someone else to blame.
@Amir Khalid:
Sadly, Kavanaugh and his supporters will just lie, and Trump will accept the lie because it serves his purposes. If he needs to throw K under the bus later, he will suddenly splutter that nobody told him that K was a drunk! Because narcissists are gonna narcissist.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Suzanne: “a young fella got fresh with a gal, we’re really going to deny him a seat on the Supreme Court? this political correctness is out of control”
brought to you by the same minds as “those people are all so sensitive about race these days, you can’t even tell a joke….”
Miss Bianca
@Suzanne:
Sad but true. But also in the spirit of “Nothing bad that could happen to someone matters a damn to a conservative till it happens to someone they care about”, I think what could be happening in this week’s respite from Rapey Boy’s immediate confirmation is that a lot of these dickheads will suddenly be hearing from the women in their lives that they at least pretend to care about – wives, daughters – that this kind of shit has happened to them, as well.
Just as Republicans never seem to grok that actions can have unintended consequences, they never seem to grok the possibility that “boys will be boys” with THEIR daughter or wife or girlfriend.
WereBear
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yes, it’s a handy shorthand these days. People complaining about political correctness don’t want to treat other human with respect, plain and simple.
germy
I should add the republican operative was a college student.
I don’t cling to the belief anymore that konservatism will die out with the olds. Plenty of young screwheads sprouting to take their place.
Raoul
“He got up and raged like a drunk or a dry drunk”
This. I am just amazed that his boozing hasn’t been connected to his anger issues now. Ferchrissake we had a dry drunk for 8 years as president. He only looks vaguely like not the worst president in a hundred years because the next Republicanpotus is Donny Dazzlehands. (Note, also, the Texas artiste idiot cum brush clearer was burning up the phones stumping for Senate votes for Kav this week).
As a person in long term recovery, can I just say that Kav shoots off warning signs like mad that he’s a flippin’ active, but for now still high functioning, alcoholic. I of course can’t know if he is, but my spidey sense says: look out.
germy
“Find out what he’s drinking and send a case to all my supreme court justices.”
– Trump
Roger Moore
@joel hanes:
I would extend that to the whole damn Ivy League. Yes, the Ivy League schools have excellent reputations, but they’re far from the only good law schools in the country. Even if they were, there are plenty of outstanding lawyers who went to second-tier schools. The extreme focus on people from only a handful of schools narrows the pool of candidates too far. So does focusing heavily on clerkships with important judges as a stepping stone. We need to broaden our horizons for what kinds of people ought to be on the court.
JoyceH
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That thing about praying for the lady sounds sanctimonious as all shit. But then it occurred to me – maybe Kavanaugh’s daughter believes Ford.
debbie
@Jager: @Jager:
His several instances of turning questioners’ questions back on them, I would think, shows a really lousy judicial temperament.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@germy: It won’t die out, but it’s certainly going to shrivel substantially if it doesn’t moderate itself. I suspect that the last week’s – I was going to write farce here, but that’s an insult to farces – will ensure that Rs get no more than approximately 10% of the women’s vote among the current generation of HS students. I can’t imagine them getting particularly high proportions of the men’s vote among this generation either. For that matter, my own generation (I’m mid-thirties) is also quite heavily Democratic, though I doubt as heavily Democratic as the younger one. Of course, a lot of this is due to the greater racial diversity in these two generations, but I also remember reading a 538 piece a few months back saying that some of the gender and race gaps in party affiliation are closing, that men and whites are starting to support more liberal policies on gender and racial issues, and (IIRC) that a lot of this was driven by younger voters. I really should be heading off, or else I’d try to find it again.
Barbara
@Mnemosyne: It is entirely possible that the episode could have been a game — let’s see if you can get her clothes off or see her naked — a bonding exercise, in other words, that was supposed to stop at a certain point. Doesn’t make it less terrifying for the poor girl, and if that is what happened, it’s still highly dubious to offer as an excuse that there was never any intent to force the girl into sex. But that would be why someone might think that nothing wrong actually occurred, because of subjective belief that it was never intended to be an attempt at rape.
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Not a boarding school, at least not for Kavanaugh. That’s why they had access to all these houses for parties.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@JoyceH: I wouldn’t be surprised. She’s probably seen him drunk. After Thursday’s performance, I don’t at all believe he’s a recovering alcoholic. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d been drunk during the hearing.
@germy: BTW, thanks, I probably will shoot a few bucks her way.
MagdaInBlack
@Mnemosyne:
Said that the minute I saw it. I’ve been up close and personal with that behavior.
MagdaInBlack
@JoyceH:
Now that’s a chilling thought.
raven
@Mnemosyne: They tell me the original post last night was “Hey Joe”, sorry.
JPL
Trump is going to appoint a conservative, but hopefully it won’t be a drunk and a misogynist. Morally it’s the right thing to do.
On social issues, Barrett would probably vote the same as Kavanaugh, but I don’t think she is a textualist. There are no limits to the right of property owners as far as Kavanaugh is concerned.
Roger Moore
@Calouste:
I would correct that slightly. It’s OK to lean heavily on your education when you’re just starting out and haven’t had a chance to establish a work history. It’s only when you’ve been out in the world and have had a chance to prove yourself that leaning on your education is a tell. Somebody who’s been a federal judge for a decade should have some actual rulings and stuff they can use to show what a great judge they are.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@debbie: that, and even more so his reference to some kind of Clinton revenge theory, are disqualifying in themselves. He sounded like teenager, angry at his parents for busting him. A friend of mine in recovery says that a lot of addicts cease to develop emotionally when they start using heavily in adolescence
also
Gelfling 545
@Suzanne: This has been my feeling too. They know he did it. They just don’t see any reason why he shouldn’t have.
JPL
@raven: Don’t you have a game to go to?
zhena gogolia
@germy:
WaPo says they reached out to Ramirez, so maybe it won’t be a con job.
Bill Arnold
From the OP:
How does this get broadly communicated? Dr Blasey (CBF) was precise, answered every question, and if she lied it was a transhuman-Oscar-worthy-performance.
I’m starting to see a narrative that needs spiking, that people are barely better than chance at detecting lies (see previous thread for some article/paper links), therefore he-said-she-said. This is not true; if one knows that some of the testimony is lies, notably the answers to S. Whitehouse’s questions, the rest of the testimony can be better evaluated.
zhena gogolia
@Calouste:
That’s the most beautiful moment in the Pulp Fiction mashup.
YetAnotherJay formerly (Jay S)
@Dorothy A. Winsor: It looks like boarding is an option, not a requirement if I understand the fee schedule.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
pretty sure he said he still likes beer
Mnemosyne
@raven:
Tata was the first one to remember that “Hey Joe” is about a guy murdering his wife/girlfriend. I didn’t make the connection, either, until she pointed it out. I think DougJ had corrected the post title before you got there.
Read the whole thread before commenting next time, dude!
debbie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Yeah, that reference back to the Clintons, acknowledging those appalling questions he came up with for Starr, show he should not be allowed anywhere near the Supreme Court. This pissed me off more than all his belligerence and proved he was nothing more than a partisan hack.
rikyrah
@Adam L Silverman:
thanks
Jager
When we went to Family Week during my Mom’s residential rehab. we’d go to classes in the morning and group therapy in the afternoon. So damn much denial, one guy said “I’m not an alcoholic, I only have one drink a day!” His wife retorted, “Right 16 ounces of Jack Daniels on the rocks.”.
JoyceH
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Kavanaugh has never claimed to be an alcoholic, recovering or otherwise, that’s his buddy Mark Judge. And speaking of Judge, it occurs to me that maybe he’s not hiding out at the beach to avoid reporters – maybe he’s avoiding his sponsor who wants to talk to him about the ‘making amends’ part of the program.
Mnemosyne
@Barbara:
I’m not willing to give him that much credit, because I strongly suspect that there are many other sexual assault stories out there about him that are being hished up because he was victimizing conservative and Republican women who can’t come forward without losing their entire careers and social circles.
Assuming Dr. Blasey Ford’s account is accurate — and her story is extremely plausible — it sounds like Mark Judge may have balked at forcible gang rape with a struggling victim and moved Kavanaugh far enough off of her that she was able to get away. Judge may not only be hiding from Blasey Ford. He may also be hiding from having to admit that he stopped Kavanaugh from raping her.
(I assume that two perps counts as a “gang”? Not sure if there’s a different legal term.)
MagdaInBlack
I’d be checking his suit for a flask, because a couple pulls on that in the cloakroom before “to steady his nerves” seems about right to me. He’s not blasted.
Adam will help me here : doesn’t alcohol lower ones in inhibitions so that whatever emotion you tend to suppress, come out?
So BK becomes the red exploding head guy from “Inside/Out.”
joel hanes
@JPL:
On social issues, Barrett would probably vote the same as Kavanaugh
I’m pretty interested in her views on the degree to which the President is above the law, limits on self-pardon, limits on indictment, etc.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Boston Globe editorial
James E Powell
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Okay, so I wear a lot of Buckeye gear. So what? I liked Ohio State! I still like Ohio State!
Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot
That was my exact response to some obtuse dude (not white, but a Chinese-white young man — this is a dumbass man-thing, not a specifically-racial “white-man” thing) who was all “there’s just been this constant back and forth, you know, how can you say Blasey-Ford is credible but Kavanaugh is not?”. I told him you’d have to have your head up your ass to believe otherwise — this isn’t even close, and it’s not Dr. Ford’s testimony that doesn’t pass the smell test. Fucking willfully-ignorant male privilege — it enrages me, and I’m an old white guy.
Barbara
@Mnemosyne: I am not really trying to give him credit. The most likely scenario is that he loses control when drunk, like a lot of people do. But I totally believe that someone who has done something like this can spend a lot of time rationalizing its seriousness and impact.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
And it cascades to
* He likely still attacking people
* That if he got his his penis inside Ford or not is beside the point, it’s clear his intention was to hurt her because he was upset and he hurts other people when he’s upset, not simply to work off a boner and lacking the decency to find a willing partner.
* That he over reacts to any personal slight and he lacks any self control about it to this day.
mad citizen
I had the same thought as Joyce at #37 when I was watching a replay (didn’t see any of it live)–his daughter believes the accuser! Also watching the replays K’s wife seems really pissed. And today the nagging comparison came to me–Kavanaugh sounds like the Simpsons drunk character Barney Gumble–someone should do that mashup.
rikyrah
@Mnemosyne:
Ever since you suggested this earlier in the week, the truth of it hit like a thunderbolt.
I think you are absolutely on point.
Barry
A please for Michigan – could a front pager set up an Act Blue for Dana Nessel, running for Attorney General? https://www.dana2018.com
Thanks!
trollhattan
@Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot:
They could have “both been right” had Kavanaugh said, “I did stupid things at that age; I do not have a recollection of doing anything like Dr. Ford describes, to her or anybody else; nevertheless I sincerely apologize for any of my past actions and assure everybody today I am not the person being described.”
He didn’t.
Repeating from earlier, Kavanaugh’s prior career as a Cloud 9 manager has popped up on Youtube.
Calouste
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Yeah, who can forget Emmett Till’s time on the Supreme Court, right?
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
It was the news of that 5th report from 1998, where both the victim and the witnesses are too afraid to come forward because they’re all conservatives. He’s preying on women within the conservative movement because he knows they’ll never report him because he’s the Great White Hope to end abortion. Some of them may even have rationalized that it’s okay for them to stay silent because ending abortion is far, far more important than preventing other women from being assaulted. ?
Lapassionara
@joel hanes: me too. This is the crux of the matter, for me.
Mnemosyne
@MagdaInBlack:
Yeah, he’s not wasted or falling-down drunk, but he definitely had a few before he entered that room. I was half-joking that his water bottle was actually filled with vodka, favored drink of alcoholics who wrongly think you can’t smell it on them.
germy
“Who put grapefruit juice in my grapefruit juice?!”
WereBear
@Mnemosyne: Holy crap.
That makes so much sick sense.
rikyrah
@JPL:
I have written before…
There literally are file folders full of Federalist Society -approved judges, ready to wipe out the past 50 years….
But, few of them have in their legal cannon- THE PRESIDENT IS ABOVE THE LAW…which is the ONLY real qualification Kavanaugh has.
germy
@Mnemosyne:
I’ll be less charitable. I assume he was attempting a “devil’s triangle”
Calouste
@Roger Moore: It’s ok for a recent grad to talk about things they have learned and projects they have done during their education, because as you said, they don’t have much else to talk about early in their career. But that wasn’t what Bratt with the big brains was doing, he was just bragging that he was great just because he went to a university with a good name. “I don’t have to answer your question, I went to Yale” doesn’t come over well in a job interview.
Calouste
@JPL: It’s going to a be conservative, so it is going to be a misogynist. Conservatives don’t come in any other flavors. You can’t be a lot more misogynist than wanting to turn back Roe v Wade.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
Did anyone else see this? Ben Wittes is apparently a friend of BK and was very quiet about the whole issue until after the rage portion of the hearing. He very obliquely and graciously acknowledges that his friend lied at the hearing. It was upsetting for him, as he explained that a passage from an opinion had been haunting him all day.
Bill Arnold
@rikyrah:
Yes, and (repeating myself, you and others) this is one reason (perhaps the main reason) why Trump, probably Lindsey Graham and perhaps others are getting so bent out of shape about his confirmation.
SiubhanDuinne, Badass Jackal
@Suzanne:
The current GOP candidate for GA Gov had a TV ad during the primaries saying and showing pretty much exactly that!
Chetan Murthy
@Barbara:
That possibility evaporated with three events: (1) locking door of bedroom, (2) turning up music to drown out struggling, (3) putting hand over mouth of victim to stifle screams.
No, it wasn’t a game.
Miss Bianca
@Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho: I must be dense, because the reference is so oblique that it’s getting past me. I see the Comey tweet and then something from a legal opinion about false exculpatory statements…is he admitting, without admitting it, that it looks like his ol’ buddy Kavanaugh may have lied about something?
Eric U.
It occurs to me that if a Dem appointed someone that was as baldly partisan in front of the Judiciary committee as Kavanaugh was, that alone would have been the story 24/7 on the media. You would never hear the end of how inappropriate it was.
A fellow officer once told us how she had been sexually assaulted at her previous assignment. Command structure was all in favor of the guy. I still have unresolved anger about it, I’m sure she’s been having a bad week.
JPL
@joel hanes: I only found some hints.. I’m not sure she voted for him, but that was speculative on her feelings about morality. I did read where she joked about those who viewed the constitution as written and mentioned that then WV would no longer be a state.
I’d like to know how she feels about the ACA and whether birth control is a form of abortion.
Chetan Murthy
@Roger Moore:
Rapey-K’s a couple years younger than me (college grad ’86). I’d -laugh- at somebody my age relying on their college education, (hell, even) their graduate education, their GPAs, SAT scores, GRE scores, whatever. [deleted descriptions of two people I know who never finished college, one never *went*, who are top-flight, top-quality] 30 years out from one’s education, it counts for almost *nothing*. Grades count for *nothing*.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Miss Bianca: glad it wasn’t just me that found that oblique, but that was my take as well, Wittes is tip-toeing up to admitting the obvious, that Kavanaugh is, at the very least, a perjurer. A few never-trumpers are acknowledging that his talk-radio rant about Clinton conspiracies are disqualifying, but I haven’t seen any cons come out and say he lied, a lot, to the Senate, while under oath.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Mnemosyne: this is terrifyingly plausible and now I won’t be able to sleep again tonight
I’ll go ahead and repost this from elsewhere, though, because I have been able to find a small amount of hope, and it’s mostly in the women who are testifying, and maybe it’ll help someone else as well:
§
I really should be working on school stuff, but I don’t know if I’m going to be capable until I get this rant out, so here goes.
Dr Blasey Ford is telling the truth, of course. I haven’t, naturally, viewed every Senate testimony throughout history, but I’m scratching my head to recall an instance of a more credible witness ever testifying in front of the Senate. The fact that she kept her cool throughout the entire five- or six-hour questioning process and even managed to educate a bunch of scientific illiterates on how the brain works (which is literally her job) when testifying about the most traumatic experience of her life is nothing short of awe-inspiring and should have shut down the entire nomination right there.
And if there were any reasonable doubts left after her testimony, Kavanaugh’s disgraceful performance should’ve unravelled them. He lied about small details; he lied about large details. He was transparently partisan and vindictive. He snivelled and simpered and gave every indication as though he believed the Supreme Court was his birthright. He contradicted his earlier sworn testimony from both the previous session and his own. He gave every indication of being a barely-functional alcoholic who still drinks to excess. It wasn’t entirely clear whether he was even sober during the hearings, and it wasn’t remotely difficult to imagine him becoming violent when he was drunk.
I correctly predicted that the Republicans had hired Mitchell due to their own cowardice, but they still managed to surprise me with how cowardly they were. Mitchell, apparently believing that she had been hired to do an honest examination of both witnesses, asked Kavanaugh about an incriminating entry in the calendar he’d brought up as his ‘defence’, and they yanked her from the hearing shortly thereafter. I have little doubt that this exact calendar entry will be a central focus of the FBI’s investigation over the next six days. It credibly establishes that Kavanaugh attended parties of exactly the sort he denied attending with exactly the people he denied were there.
One particular reason Kavanaugh’s credibility is so awful, beyond the obvious lies he told, is that we’ve [i]all[/i] known a Brett Kavanaugh in HS/college – a snot-nosed punk born to a privileged family who’s never faced consequences for anything in his life. Of course he routinely got blackout drunk; there was never anyone there to stop him. Of course he was and is a misogynist prick who looks at women as props rather than as people; no one ever taught him better. As a consequence of these two things, that he didn’t respect the boundaries of consent when he was shitfaced is little surprise. The popular culture of the ’80s was atrocious. There are numerous scenes in films of that era that unambiguously qualify as sexual assault or rape, but the films just gloss over them like they were no big deal. I’m not saying any of this to excuse his actions. They’re inexcusable. I’m simply putting them in context. This sort of thing happened all the time because Brett Kavanaughs were everywhere. We all knew them. They weren’t, as some of Kavanaugh’s defenders have been trying to say, all boys of age 17. They were misogynistic, entitled, alcoholic boys of age 17 who had never been told ‘no’ in their lives by anyone who could actually enforce it.
So as I said, the fact that we’ve all known Brett Kavanaughs is why his testimony is so unbelievable. No one who’s ever attended high school or college believes that the “Ralph Club” is a reference to a weak stomach. No one believes that 10+ boys calling themselves “alumni” of a girl is a sign of respect for her. No one believes that “skis” is a reference to anything but brewskis. Nothing Brett Kavanaugh has offered in defence of himself has been remotely credible.
One particularly unfortunate thing is that if he’d owned up to being a drunk who did a lot of regrettable things during his youth, expressed sincere regret to Dr Blasey Ford for what she went through, but denied being the perpetrator, he might’ve still sailed through without an FBI investigation. He shouldn’t have, but it might’ve been enough for Collins, Murkowski, and Flake. But he’s incapable of doing that, because he hasn’t changed in the slightest since high school. He still hasn’t been told ‘no’ before by anyone who was actually capable of enforcing consequences against him. And I suspect that is, in fact, a large part of why he came so unhinged on Thursday. This is the first time there’s ever been a significant danger that he’ll suffer consequences for his actions, and he doesn’t know how to deal with it. I suspect at least part of his supposed outrage was a carefully rehearsed act put on for an audience of one (the president*, in case that wasn’t clear). But he isn’t capable of reacting with sincere regret because he doesn’t know the meaning of the term. He doesn’t think he has anything to apologise to anyone for. And because of that, there’s now an FBI investigation into credible allegations of sex crimes against him from, to my understanding, at least two and probably at least three different women. Even if he does get confirmed, his nomination will forever be tainted with an asterisk. He will degrade the reputation of the Court (which, if I’m honest, should have already been degraded to that level eighteen years ago with Bush v. Gore, if not Clarence Thomas’ confirmation) and he will be followed with vehement protests for the rest of his life.
As I said, if this were a truly just world, the final nail would’ve been shut in the coffin of his nomination with his disgraceful testimony. In fact, not only would his nomination already be yanked, but he would be disbarred, impeached, and under prosecution for sex crimes in Maryland, where there is no statute of limitations for such crimes. Such a person has no business as a judge. Such a person has no business as a free man.
I’ve seen several clips from his confirmation, but I often watched them with the sound off because, much like the president*, his voice grates on my ears. One particular detail I noticed was the death glares he was getting from women behind him. Those were his alleged supporters – his family and so on; the people who know him best. They looked like the audience of Springtime for Hitler.
There’s one other reason I know Blasey Ford is telling the truth. I was romantically involved with a sexual assault survivor for nearly three years, and I saw the trauma she was coping with firsthand. I helped her with the trauma firsthand. I wasn’t perfect about this; in fact, I was often boorishly insensitive, though, in my defence, this was mostly due to ignorance rather than callousness. If I’d possessed a full understanding of what she’d been coping with, I’d have read numerous books on PTSD, particularly books aimed at people who were dating survivors of sexual assault. Regardless, I have no question I helped her substantially during that time, because she’s told me as much, even years after we split up. She essentially lost at least seven years of her life to PTSD. She’s better now, but she’s not fully recovered, and I doubt she’ll ever be fully recovered. That’s not the sort of thing you ever fully recover from.
All the unpleasant memories of how all-encompassing her trauma was have come bubbling back to the surface with this confirmation hearing. I am not, as I’ve said, a sexual assault survivor; I’ve only coped with the trauma it inflicts secondhand. And that was enough for me to find this entire week traumatic. I can’t imagine how many orders of magnitude worse this all must have been for people who have actually survived sexual assault. And for that, alone, I will never forgive the president* or his disgraceful nominee to the Supreme Court.
Some commentators have predicted this disgraceful proceeding may shore up Trumpists. Perhaps. It also lost Republicans a lot of votes that they will probably never recover. My father and mother had both been registered Republicans up until this year. Both of them voted for H. Clinton (although my mother was somewhat reluctant to do so and regarded her as the lesser of two evils), and have voted Democratic in House races going back for several decades as they both have correctly recognised Katherine Harris and Vern Buchanan as the crooks they are. However, they typically voted more often for Republicans than for Democrats until recently. My father switched his registration back to Democratic earlier this month, and I suspect he will never again vote for another Republican. My mother hadn’t yet, but I suspect these hearings were the last straw for her.
Women are ultimately the one cause for hope I’ve had throughout this entire proceeding. I can’t say for certain that Flake’s elevator confrontation was what ultimately incited him to call for an FBI investigation, but I can’t see what else could have done it. He’s incredibly image-conscious, still has presidential ambitions as far as I can tell, and doesn’t want the confrontation to be the last thing people remember about him. Moreover, he probably correctly recognised that if he didn’t do anything along those lines, he would face confrontations like that for the rest of his life. So I’m not giving him any moral credit here. He deserves none. The women who confronted him – and I suspect there were more than just the two in the elevator; those were likely simply the only two that were captured on camera – deserve the credit.
And I’m still not sure this investigation will change anything, at least not on its own. But the one-week delay is a lot of time for Jane Mayer and Ronan Farrow to uncover more credible allegations. It’s a lot of time for David Fahrenthold to start making inquiries about Kavanaugh’s mysteriously disappearing debt – what caused it to go away; what racked it up in the first place (no one except the credulous sincerely believe they were really for baseball tickets). It’s a lot of time for more accusers to step forward. And it’s a lot of time for family members of Senators to privately give them hell.
Odds are at least ten Republican Senators have family members who’ve survived sexual assault. I’d place the over/under at 40, honestly. Not all of them are going to confront the Senators, but I suspect several will, and the vast majority will at least be privately furious. Spouses may threaten divorce. Daughters (or sons) may threaten to endorse political opponents. All may threaten to go public with dirt. I can’t predict what will happen, but this is personal. This is personal to me, and as I’ve said, I’m not even a survivor of assault. It will be orders of magnitude worse for people who are.
There are nonetheless a few possibilities.
1. Kavanaugh confirmed, but under cloud of suspicion that follows him for rest of his life. Ideally Democrats retake Senate in November and presidency in 2020 as consequence (not guaranteed as ratfucking, electronic voting machine hacking, voter suppression, etc. may get in the way), and pack the court to at least 15 as direct retaliation for this, Merrick Garland, etc. However, Supreme Court is irrevocably publicly tainted as the politically biased institution it’s already been for decades.
2. Same as 1, but Kavanaugh is arrested and prosecuted for sex crimes in MD and possibly other jurisdictions. May be convicted, which would give us a sitting SC Justice who is unable to discharge his duties by reason of imprisonment.
3. Kavanaugh nomination goes up in flames. He’s voted down, or McConnell realises he doesn’t have the votes and yanks it beforehand, or he withdraws publicly, or he does the honourable thing and commits hara kiri. Whatever.
4. Same as 3, but Kavanaugh also uncovers dirt by association on other Republicans. He wasn’t drinking with Democrats for the past 20+ years in D.C. Odds are rather slim that none of them engaged in any illicit behaviour with him.
5. Same as 3 or 4, but Kavanaugh also disbarred and possibly ultimately impeached from bench for perjury and/or other offences not mentioned.
6. Some other scenario not mentioned here.
My ideal scenario from the above is a combination of 4 and 5. If he’s confirmed, Republicans will lose the women’s vote, even the white women’s vote, for generations. They may already have done so. What Clarence Thomas did was awful and I don’t mean to minimise it. But firstly, it wasn’t violent assault, and secondly, it wasn’t against an educated, articulate, professional white woman with a freaking doctorate in psychology. Upper-middle-class white women will implicitly identify with Dr Blasey Ford, and many or even most of them have likely survived assaults similar or almost identical to hers. Not all Republican women will shift away from the party as a result of this. But some will. If we have fair elections going forward (as I’ve said, not a guarantee), this will hurt them for decades.
So there have been few bright sides I’ve been able to find in this entire clusterfuck. It’s revealed the depravity of humanity to a degree I didn’t actually believe possible (seriously, burn in hell, Lindsey Graham), and it’s dredged up unpleasant memories I never wanted to have to have at the forefront of my consciousness again. The main hope I see is in the women. At this rate, I’d be perfectly fine with men simply being barred from public office for the next 20+ years. Things have been ruined badly enough already; women can’t possibly do worse.
I’m going to be cutting things closer than I’d have liked with my my school assignments as a result of having written this essay, but I’m still glad I wrote it, because I don’t think I’d have been able to focus on a goddamn thing if I hadn’t.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Charlie Sykes, from the Guardian, no link because the link button is borking me. I don’t know if that’s my computer or the blog
MobileForkbeard
@Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho: If the media was interested, you’d think “Kavanaugh’s friends and peers say he perjured himself in hearing” would be really big damn news.
JPL
@JPL: Speculative by those who know her.
Bob Hopeless
It is, as it so often, projection. He’s obsessed with the idea that it’s a political hit job because he’s been a participant in so many political hit jobs. They would smear a Democratic nominee in an instant if he or she could even get a hearing, so the assumption is always that everyone would act exactly as sleazy and dishonest as they do.
smintheus
@Hildebrand: Did the Democratic plot involve their forcing Kavanaugh to lie repeatedly; threaten, interrupt, and shout at people; and refuse to answer simple questions?
If so, I’m impressed at Democrats ability to get things done!
trollhattan
@(((CassandraLeo))):
I’ll allow it’s possible he gets taken down without gaining the seat and even lower odds it could happen afterwards. I’m not clear on any precedent or what the mechanisms all are for removing someone from their SCOTUS seat and assume it’s a giant mountain to scale.
I had similar thoughts when Thomas was approved–he’s so damaged he won’t be effective/won’t hold his seat for long. The first bit was right.
Bill Arnold
@(((CassandraLeo))):
Read all of that; very good writing and convincingly argued. Thanks!
(((CassandraLeo)))
…having done a bit of research, I’ve found that secondary trauma is an official diagnosis among psychological professionals. I actually find it reassuring to have a name for what I’m experiencing. I have no question that I’m experiencing it. Having a name for it means that I can start finding ways to develop coping strategies for it.
Miss Bianca
@(((CassandraLeo))): Wow. And a good essay it is, too. You should try to get it published somewhere *besides* an Upper 10,000 blog!
Timurid
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Both boarding and day students. Kavanaugh was a day student.
Boarders and day students were in different worlds, socially.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Bill Arnold: Thanks to you as well.
@trollhattan: Thomas is one reason I’ve been so cynical about this process for so long. But as I’ve said, Thomas was never accused of violence, and his victim wasn’t an upper-middle-class white woman. And for that matter, it was pre-#MeToo. Thomas’ actions actually did start a national conversation about sexual harassment, and as O’Donnell has pointed out, they cost him some forty votes. But the national environment was very different.
I’m not predicting for sure that Kavanaugh gets taken down over this; just pointing out that several variables in the equation are quite different. But of course, one pointing in the opposite direction is that today’s Republicans are much more partisan and much more reactionary than they were in the early ’90s. So there’s no way to know at this point. All I can do at this point is hope the FBI and/or other sources uncover something that Murkowski, Collins, and the others find it impossible write off, and that enough senators are given hell by enough people for enough time that they realise that voting to confirm would make it impossible for them to ever appear in public again without being confronted by protestors.
SiubhanDuinne, Badass Jackal
@Adam L Silverman:
I looked him up. To my amazement, he’s running as a Democrat. But that commercial and the accompanying tweet sure could have fooled me. He comes across as a misogynistic bully. And that line “Carol Miller … was born in the swamp” sounds hateful and classist. In short: Absent the “D” after his name, Ojeda comes across to me as a Republican of the most offensive kind, based on what is posted.
Bill Arnold
@Miss Bianca:
I was thinking medium at least, so that it is easy found. But CL says that RL is applying some time-screws. Maybe a front-pager link?
Me, back to faucet and drywall repair. :-(
Achrachno
@smintheus: Democrats are very clever, everyone knows that. Trump could never be a Democrat.
Any suggestions on what senate races could best use a bit of money? I have c. $1000 left in by election budget, which I could either send to one or several. I’ve already donated to Jackie Rosen in NV and Beto in TX.
I donated to this congressional appeal, but in general am cutting back on congressional donations this year. I think we’re going to do alright on that front. I really want to at least hold on in the senate: we MUST do that much. To gain one or two would be great, but a long-shot apparently.
I usually avoid the well-funded and the no-hopers. Maybe they all have hope this year.
Roger Moore
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
This is fundamentally wrong. The Republican Party has been the party of wacked out conspiracy theories for a long time. That’s why Brett Kavanaugh was investigating insane theories about Vince Foster’s suicide back in the 1990s. Trump has given those people the lime light more than they’ve had in the past, but they’ve been the core of the Republican Party for a good long time.
trollhattan
@(((CassandraLeo))):
I hope you’re right. Keeping him off the court is the goal here, as removing him later would be much harder.
Trump and Turtle are my weathervanes, but parsing their every utterance leads to insanity.
trollhattan
@Roger Moore:
Republicans could have pulled themselves away from the politics of Nixon, perhaps even tried to do so, but Reagan hauled them right back and they’ve dwelt there ever since.
Eric U.
@Roger Moore: when I heard that Kavanaugh apparently took the Vince Foster theories seriously, that really made me wonder about his ability to process reality correctly. Everyone knew that was just an attack on the Clintons and it wasn’t true. I thought all the Republicans knew that, now I’m not so sure. My view on the evil or stupid debate has definitely been evolving towards “both”
pat
@(((CassandraLeo))):
Thank you for that extensive and illuminating post.
When you mentioned the debts and the possible gambling, it reminded me that my dad loved to play cards and lost a lot when he was drinking.. My mom had to go to work to pay off some of the debts.
All that changed when he joined AA. Died at his favorite (small) card playing place, of a sudden heart attack, with $300 on the table in front of him, 40 years later.
Mnemosyne
@Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho:
Ouch. I almost feel sorry for Wittes for having a late realization that the face of Kavanaugh that Wittes saw as a fellow conservative white man was not the same face Kavanaugh presented to people not in the same elite group.
I also wonder if Kavanaugh s long-term alcoholism is catching up with him. Having a couple of quick ones before testifying live on national TV doesn’t seem like a great idea to anyone but an active alcoholic.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Holy cats!
I don’t think you gotta be Kreskin to figure this one out
pat
@Achrachno:
Tammy Baldwin sends panicked emails every day asking for more money. (Wisconsin senator, first term)
Seems the Kochs are shoveling money to her (woman) opponent.
Barbara
@Chetan Murthy: A game for the boys. It was clearly NOT a game by any objective standard. And of course, being a “game” doesn’t mean it wasn’t criminal. The most striking detail in the testimony for me was her describing how they kept laughing.
smintheus
@dmsilev: The standard response from bullies is to deny that they’ve done anything wrong…whether they’re confronted at the time, or decades later. My own experience with them is that they know perfectly well that they’ve treated other people abysmally. In fact, that’s their entire game.
About 6 years ago I had the opportunity – which I gladly seized – to accuse on facebook an older guy who had led hundreds of gang attacks against me when I was 10/11 y/o. His response almost perfectly paralleled the response of Kavanaugh to Ford’s accusation. Over about 45 minutes of back ‘n’ forth, it evolved from flat out denial that he had ever bullied anyone and a claim that he barely knew me; to parading his Christian faith; to faux concern for any harm done to me by anyone; to declaring that he was never in a position to attack me (though he was a neighbor); to claiming that it would have been totally out of character for him to bully anybody; to announcing that I didn’t know him at all; to insisting that it was mistaken identity; to ‘concern’ that I was unhinged; to praying for my soul because I was making a false accusation; to denouncing me for conspiring to defame him; to declaring (without evidence) that everybody else believed him and nobody would ever believe me; to speculating that my memory of the attacks was too specific to be credible; to insisting that I must have done something to provoke the gang attacks; to speculating that the real problem must have been that I was too cowardly to face the gangs; to mocking me for having been a weakling and gloating that I probably was beat up; to sneering that I deserved to be attacked.
This is the behavior of a dyed in the wool bully, and I was reminded of this fairly compressed incident while watching Kavanaugh shift-shape over the last two weeks. Both men exposed themselves as sneering bullies who would always try to lie first but who could not help but reveal themselves for who they really are.
MagdaInBlack
@Mnemosyne:
My only question is whether its top shelf (Russian, of course) or Popov gallon.
Mnemosyne
@(((CassandraLeo))):
When I took my most recent first aid class, there was a brief discussion about PTSD and how anyone responding to an emergency — even someone who only has first aid training — can suffer some PTSD symptoms. So, yes, I absolutely believe that you are getting flashbacks to the traumatic experience of trying to help someone else cope with their trauma.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Barbara: I had been thinking that BK didn’t remember this because of the booze, then I heard the testimony about Judge turning white when he saw Christine Blasey at the Safeway. Even if BK was that drunk, Judge would’ve told him what they did. That’s why he’s so terrified of Judge’s open testimony.
And I doubt Judge will tell the FBI the truth.
smintheus
@Eric U.: He knew the Vince Foster theories were garbage. It was just an excuse to keep trying to humiliate the Clintons and convince journalists to pile on.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@(((CassandraLeo))): I’ve been thinking that maybe Ds hesitated to vote against an African American judge when Thomas was nominated. All I can say is I hope Kavanaugh goes down.
TriassicSands
Yes, but what disqualifies him from being on the SCOTUS and should result in his removal from the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals —
1. Perjurer
2. Lack of judicial temperament
3. Naked partisanship
It is unlikely that his guilt in the Ford case would ever result in a criminal conviction (though I believe her), but her accusations led him to demonstrate — without question — the three critical disqualifying attributes listed above.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Lawyers, how big a deal is this? how many lawyers are admitted (if that’s the term) to practice at that level?
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@Miss Bianca: That’s how I read it. The repeated and angry denials (“exculpatory statements”) are “strong evidence of guilt” part of the opinion he quoted. He seems genuinely sad that his buddy is a creep.
smintheus
@Mnemosyne: I was suffering from PTSD like symptoms for about a year after I stood beside a car wreck near my house and held the hand of the teenaged driver as she died a horrible death before the ambulance could arrive. The first person on the scene, a school bus driver, had turned and fled from the wreck – no doubt because she couldn’t stand being traumatized.
debbie
@Mnemosyne:
I wonder if those coupla slugs he took during the break are responsible for his going off like that. I can’t imagine he hadn’t been coached how to act, respond, etc. Ironic that the stuff he took to calm his nerves could have turned on him like that.
Mnemosyne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
After his testimony, I am now convinced that Kavanaugh remembers all of it, knows exactly who Christine Blasey Ford is, and did everything he could to inoculate himself against her coming forward. That’s what the whole “carpool dad” / signed letters of reference from high school thing was.
He remembers everything he did to her and he’s pissed that this whiny bitch is going to ruin his chance to be on the Supreme Court just because he wanted to have some fun.
Achrachno
@pat: Good idea! Thanks. I’m on it.
Miss Bianca
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Said it before, but it bears repeating: I don’t trust Rick Wilson (or any Never Trumper) as an ally as far as I can throw him, but I do take a vicious pleasure in watching him savage the Trumpublicans.
Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot
@(((CassandraLeo))): Essay for sure, but wonderfully expressed and a pleasure (you know what I mean) to read! I’ll go back and read it again, and happily shared it with my wife and some online (FB) friends. I’m an old white dude (as I’ve noted before, for context) and I’d say 20+ years banning men from having public office is not long enough (certainly, there are Theresa Mays out there, but still…).
ed_finnerty
He should have just yelled out
“You can’t handle the truth”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Miss Bianca: he made the ad that morphed Max Cleland into Saddam Hussein. And still says “what’s the big deal? I play hardball” That is a mortal sin in my eyes.
But that was a shot straight to Lindsey’s nuts.
I never realized what a healthy relationship with my father till I started following politics intently, so many pundits and pols still questing after Daddy’s love and approval.
rikyrah
@(((CassandraLeo))):
thanks for this. really enjoyed it
Roger Moore
@trollhattan:
Crazy conspiracy theories go back a lot further than Nixon. Remember, the Republicans were the party of the John Birch Society and Joe McCarthy.
JPL
@Roger Moore: They still are.
Raoul
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I assume he sends his obedient wife out to buy the whiskey (or they have it delivered).
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Not very many. Proportionally to the number of lawyers in the US.
It is in fact “admitted to practice.” I have no idea what the application fee is now but I recall when in was $250. Applicants for admission must be sponsored by 2 lawyers admitted, and in good standing, to the US Supreme Court Bar and one (or another such lawyer) must sign the application as a formal motion for the Court to admit the applicant. So it’s not something you (you = regular practitioners) do for the hell of it; you’d want to have an actual need. Even somebody in BigLaw is only going to apply if the firm wants to expand its admitted roster either for a case of for marketing.
tobie
@Eric U.: I agree that if a Dem nominee had this much baggage and behaved like such a jerk, the Dem President and party would have been eviscerated by the media for days on end. But I am happy to see that questions about Kavanaugh’s temperament have emerged. This story will become more widespread.
Mnemosyne
@Miss Bianca:
There’s something so satisfying about sitting back and watching them tear each other apart without needing to lift a finger. ?
JPL
@(((CassandraLeo))): You do the best rants, and thank you writing that.
What I remember about the olden days is that Clinton was impeached for lying. The republicans don’t even care about minor details like that.
Achrachno
@debbie: I wonder how long a drunk will last on the job, if they manage to seat the creep. One of my hopeful thoughts is “maybe not long” — but then I think long enough to do a lot of damage unfortunately. How long is a lifetime for a heavy drinker who’s already been at it 30+ years and has clearly not stopped.
TriassicSands
@joel hanes:
She’s a Catholic, but not your average Catholic — she’s even worse than Kavanaugh on religion and another wingnut hypocrite. There are no good names on Trump’s list.
pat
@Achrachno:
Great. I’m just about maxed out for her, but I plan to throw in some more.
WereBear
@(((CassandraLeo))): Thanks for all the great outlining in that essay.
Bill Arnold
@TriassicSands:
Ah, but what are her views on removing the fetters on POTUS DJT’s power, and on his immunity from accountability?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho: Thanks for that.
I’m trying to remember the name of the appellate lawyer who made a big splashy “even though I’m a liberal” endorsement of BK, and she wasn’t alone. She’s been taunted on twitter the last few days, and I’m sure she’s been contacted by lots of reporters. People were saying straight up that she was sucking up in the event of having a case, and now that we’ve seen just what a mini-trump Kavanaugh is, I’m sure that flattery would’ve paid off.
TriassicSands
@SiubhanDuinne, Badass Jackal:
I watched Ojeda’s ad and came close to throwing up.
“The New Face of the Democratic Party”
if Ojeda is the new face of the Democratic Party, then I’m going to need a new party. I’d accept Kamala Harris as the new face of the Democrats, but I don’t know if I’d ever vote for Ojeda. I feel sorry for WVa Democrats, if that is the best they can come up with.
B.B.A.
@Bill Arnold: If she’ll allow the prosecution of Il Douche to go forward, but will also write the opinion that will ban condoms as an affront to God, I don’t see how that’s a win. Presidencies last (at most) eight years. Precedents can last for generations.
J R in WV
@(((CassandraLeo))):
Thanks for taking the time to write this brief essay on morality. Hope you do OK with your real work as well.
I’ve been losing sleep since November 2016, and am existing on the hope that next November’s elections will help us all out a lot.
We have invested a lot donating to a wide variety of candidates, all good Democrats as best I can tell, most women, lots of vets, MJ Hagar, Amy McGrath, Abigale Spanberger, Beto, Cole’s house candidate, started doing phone banking, which doesn’t seem as helpful as it once probably was.
Hang in there fellow Jackals !!!
Going out to the symphony tonight, will hear Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto, a wonderful thing indeed. We heard the pianist play a Rachmaninoff piano concerto a couple of years ago, so I feel sure it will be a magical evening. So will not be thinking about geo-political BS for at least a couple of hours! Hurray!
Bill Arnold
@B.B.A.:
Sorry, wasn’t clear. Wondering out loud about how hard DJTrump will dig his heals in during the next week, mainly. Agreed that she sucks too in critical ways.
Miss Bianca
@TriassicSands:
*sighs, looks sadly at Manchin*
However, the Blogfather seemed quite taken with the candidate from his district, whose name I don’t remember, so maybe there’s *some* hope that the New Democrats of WV aren’t all conservative white men.
B.B.A.
@Bill Arnold: It’s much simpler than that. Il Douche admitting he was wrong about something? Nah gah happen.
cain
@MobileForkbeard:
The media is wired for Republicans. I suspect most of the media were all a bunch young schmucks when Reagan was president and got all sparkly glowy about him. We’re going to have to get rid of all the editors and other schmucks that can’t seem to let go. Hopefully with this naked misogyny that their spouses and daughters will force them to deal with what seems very clear to them.
Ruviana
@Barbara: It was also July and people were probably home for the summer.
TriassicSands
@Miss Bianca:
I’m sure there are some good candidates. Ojeda looks even worse than Manchin.
I looked up Ojeda in Wikipedia — he voted for Trump for president. Now, he regrets voting for Trump because Trump hasn’t done anything for West Virginia. Ojeda is obviously stupid.
J R in WV
Ojeda is not a typical Democrat. He enlisted in the Army as a path out of poverty-stricken southern WV, which is not unusual. What is more unusual is that he worked his way up from a recruit in boot camp to an Airborne Major leading men in combat in the ‘Stans – his whole demeanor is what he was taught as he became an officer in a very tough combat arm.
I can imagine him barking “You will VOTE for me, do you UNDERSTAND?!!!” in his command voice, which is what he uses in his commercials. He was taught that demeanor in a very hard school, and learned it well. His whole education was in and by the US Army Airborne. All that said, he does believe in health care for all, medical marijuana, honesty and transparency in his personal life.
He ran for a seat in the WV Senate not long ago. At a political picnic on Labor Day a guy asked Ojeda to put a bumper sticker on his truck. While Ojeda was on his knee with the bumper sticker, this guy attacked him from behind with a weapon, and put him in the hospital with head injuries. Lots of people would have ended their political career right there. Ojeda saw his attacker put away in prison, and took his seat at the statehouse.
I was in the military, I was an E-2 my whole hitch, as I felt I was forced to enlist at gunpoint in 1970. I didn’t like officers much at all, and Ojeda’s mien is more militaristic than most Navy officers I worked under.
But I am phone banking for him, donated to his campaign, and will vote for him, because he IS a Democrat, and his opponent is a wealthy lady invested in one of the major pain drug manufacturers, and not interested in going out to meet voters, just in taking their votes to go to Washington to hang out with the other Russo-Republican fascists.
I won’t have to work for him, I just want him to work for us. I think he will. I know his Republican opponent won’t work for anyone but the rich among us.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@(((CassandraLeo))): Thanks for taking the time with that. I will share it widely, as I know many who will find it useful.
Miss Bianca
@TriassicSands: @J R in WV: Well, someone’s gotta say it:
“We go to war with the Democrats we have, not the Democrats we wish we had.” //
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
Isn’t blocking abortion itself, an assault against women?
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@Ruckus: It certainly is, but they don’t see it that way, of course. Hope you’re well.
@Miss Bianca: Thanks for saying it for me.
Geeno
@James E Powell: You like Ohio State – you probably rag on other schools in a good natured competitive sense. Kavanaugh thinks he’s BETTER than other people, because he went to Yale, dammit, and they don’t just admit anyone.
Very different vibe.
Mnemosyne
@Ruckus:
Didn’t you know? Being anti-abortion is pro-woman, because you’re preventing all of those precious baybee girls from being aborted, so banning abortion is actually good for women since more of them will be born! //
Also, ?
Ruckus
@Achrachno:
Or learned.
johnny gentle (famous crooner)
@JPL:
Yes, the ideology of any nominee is a given at this point. But if we’re resigned to getting an unabashed wingnut in the seat, at least let it be someone without a history of sexual assault. I don’t think that’s too much to ask. (Unless you’re a republican, in which case how dare you draw a line at something that all high-schoolers do and liberal women are too sensitive and she shouldn’t have worn that short dress and…)
Ruckus
@TriassicSands:
He’s running as a dem. How long has he had that D behind his name? I can’t imagine that even in WV that an actual D would be that far to the right. Hasn’t WV been a pretty strong dem state in times past? Why yes, yes it was.
Ruckus
@J R in WV:
Better the politician that you can work with than the one that screws you.
And your comment sort of rightly jumps all over mine at #164. Good luck.
Ruckus
@Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho:
Thank you.
On the blogging front, I’m trying very hard to just shut the hell up. Obviously not always succeeding.
On the health front nothings changed, nothings gotten better, some days are blah and others are shit. No on has much of an idea what is the issue(s), they are now trotting out the extremely unlikely, and so far have proven that non of those are even close. At some point they are going to have to admit that they don’t know. Great, I just made a funny, who am I kidding that they might admit anything?
CarolDuhart2
@tobie: Not your Grandfather’s Democratic Party. A Dem Kavanaugh would never have been put up for the slot in the first place. Obama had his appointees rigorously vetted. Clinton had to withdraw 2 candidates for AG because of nanny issues. The diversification of the party has brought with it a whole group of people sensitive to certain issues.
Geeno
@SiubhanDuinne, Badass Jackal: I think he’s using “the Swamp” in Trumpist sense – she’s a creature of privilege and power from DC; she doesn’t understand US (not you). I think he’s speaking the language of his constituents (mostly Trump voters) to rally them to his side. I don’t know if it’ll work or what the end results of it working or not working will be.
Uncle Cosmo
@J R in WV: If a Congressman Ojeda were to vote with his caucus as consistently as does Senator Manchin, I would jump for joy, Joe is about as good as we can hope for from your hot mess of a state under current circumstances.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Miss Bianca: @pat: @Mnemosyne: @Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot: @rikyrah: @JPL: @WereBear: @J R in WV: @Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho: Thanks to all of you (and anyone I inadvertently missed). Feel free to share far and wide. I do, during times like this, wish I had a more influential platform to share things like this on. Unfortunately, I know from experience that I’m only sporadically able to blog about politics, which I think is precisely because I take so much of it so personally. I just sporadically give up and find myself incapable of finding motivation to write about anything. This happens even in blog comment sections; I suspect people have noticed my presence has been sparse here and at LGM compared to how it was several months ago. I was mostly OK for most of that, but I just couldn’t find it in me to comment on politics for awhile because so much of it was so awful. This yanked me out of that because it was more visceral to me than the usual Trumpian horrors. It’s a nationwide trauma that few people are acknowledging for what it is. We are literally going to see billions in dollars of lost GDP as a direct result of these hearings, even if few people will actually be willing to quantify it as such. I would estimate that at least 51% of the population is currently experiencing flashbacks, either firsthand or secondhand, to sexual assaults that occurred to them or to their loved ones.
I’m overwhelmed at times like this, but at the same time, communities like this help yank me out of it somewhat, by reassuring me that I’m not alone. The fact that people much braver than me keep fighting for justice is one of the primary reasons I haven’t just given up. Amongst others, Ramirez, Dr Blasey Ford, and the two women who confronted Flake in the elevator have been added to my personal Mt. Rushmore (which, admittedly, is gaining quite a few faces – that’s also another reason I haven’t given up).
Anyway, thanks to all of you, as well as to anyone else I missed. If someone with the ability to FP my essay wants to do so, they also have my permission to do that (with credit, of course), though I might ask for a couple small corrections/additions.
(((CassandraLeo)))
…sent to moderation hell because I linked to… it looks like nine different commenters to thank them. Plz to be halping? kthx.
I guess I can just reprint what I said without the links here, but I’d rather link directly to their comments.
James E Powell
@CarolDuhart2:
Yes, and the Republican takeover of the press/media means that any flaw in any Democrat, no matter how trivial, is considered prima facie evidence of unsuitability for office.
Bill Arnold
@(((CassandraLeo))):
Kavanaugh has been particularly draining; he’s nasty so forming even a light-weight empathic model of him sucks.
Anyhow, thanks again for that; you have some talent. (Also, don’t underestimate the lurkers.)
Procopius
@Barbara: As an alcoholic who drank alcoholically from the beginning, my opinion is that there is no way to be careful. I was lucky that my bottom was pretty high and circumstances steered me to the people who could help me get free. I, too, thought Kavanaugh was acting like a dry drunk. Or maybe a drunk who had just a couple so far and thought he could control it. Somebody should drag him to a meeting.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@Ruckus:
Good to see you back.
Procopius
@Miss Bianca:
Immanentize
@Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho: If Wottis is folding on Kav, that is a sign that he is now being left completely alone and on his own. But, we know the problem -+ he probably realizes as well as we do that Trump is a chickenshit who won’t pull the plug. And he has promised never to QUIT!
Texas Death Match. Loser leaves town…
Immanentize
@Procopius: Both a rational argument loser and a technogical loser, I see
Procopius
@SiubhanDuinne, Badass Jackal: Agreed. I presume the DNC is backing him.