Since folks want to discuss it, discuss it here please.
My personal view is that he’s lied a lot under oath. As for the attempted rape accusation, of course, they are not proven beyond a reasonable benefit of a doubt, but this is not a criminal trial.
This isn’t a case of “any Republican candidate would be accused”, because they aren’t.
Frankly, if I were Democratic leadership I’d have held it up as much as possible. If Obama couldn’t have his nominee voted on, I see no reason why Trump should before the mid-terms.
But Democrats only play hardball against left-wingers, not against Republicans.
And yes, this is the end of US abortion rights. It will be even if Kavanaugh isn’t confirmed.
Effem
Nothing but politics. In this zero-sum world the fights are getting more vicious. I don’t see that slowing.
The voter base (on both sides) consistently elects people with some very questionable past behavior. Truth is, short of murder, we really don’t care unless it’s the other tribe (we may not even care about murder…Ted Kennedy).
This is all well and good…but let’s call it what it is instead of pretending we are all on some mission to defend some fuzzy notion of values. It’s politics in an age of extreme polarization.
someofparts
Sorry about pulling the other thread that way Ian.
bruce wilder
a friend of mine who is not very political watched the hearings yesterday and was very emotionally involved
i was not interested at all
never mind “reasonable doubt” and “proven” or “unproven” and all that, it seems like the struggle over elite political culture and its governance of male dominance within that elite is being processed
not much else.
the other thing I see at a glance is that Senators are really, really old — far too old. Dems even more than Reps.
NR
I agree that the scope of the case against Kavanaugh was kept far too narrow. Sexual assault is bad, of course, but so are many, many other things about the man. For instance, the fact that he supports torture should have been instantly disqualifying, and it speaks volumes about how screwed up our current politics are that it wasn’t.
Herman
Kavanaugh will be terrible but I can’t get worked up over him because we all knew it was coming when the Democrats lost in 2016. The Republicans will learn their lesson from this fight and their next nominee for the Supreme Court will be an ultra-conservative woman. What will the Democrats do when they can’t #MeToo her? They have already shown that they are unable or unwilling to attack judicial nominees based on their ideology and judicial record and if the Republicans still control the White House and Senate it wouldn’t matter if they did.
This is why winning elections is important. You can protest and sneer at electoral politics all you want but if you cannot win elections you probably won’t get much done in this country. That is what makes the Democratic Party so frustrating. They have not done a good job on the electoral front lately because of smug complacency derived from the belief that demographic change would do the job for them.
In 2016 the Dems wrote off the white working class thinking that they would make up their losses with moderate suburban Republicans. Now the Democrats are trying the same thing. We are supposed to see a big feminist backlash of well-educated, suburban woman. They tried this with Trump and lost and I wouldn’t be surprised if they lose again because many of these women are Republicans like their husbands and fathers. They vote based on their bank accounts. If abortion rights are eliminated it doesn’t matter to them because they can always go abroad and get abortions or pay doctors under the table just like before Roe. Liberal women are already in the bag for the Dems so what is the point of this strategy? At best the Dems might win the House due to the usual midterm swing against the party occupying the White House but I doubt there will be a big blue wave.
The Democrats shouldn’t have written off white working-class heartland voters. They have a disproportionate influence on politics because of the American system’s bias in favor of small, rural states. Even if the Democrats had to win with a bunch of Blue Dogs we would be better off than we are now. At least we wouldn’t be looking at an ultra-conservative Supreme Court for the next 40 years that will likely kill any future progressive legislation if somehow the left comes to power. I know that the Republicans use all kinds of dirty tricks to win elections like extreme gerrymandering and voter suppression but that doesn’t excuse the incompetence of the Democratic Party.
Stirling Newberry
It is amusing, but not important.
S Brennan
I admit being ambivalent/negative towards unlimited abortion rights after…say…4.[x] months. Yeah, women have rights, but, at some point, a fetus inside a womb is a sentient being. And in thinking about this issue, how can one ask others to consider the rights of dolphins or pre-hominids and yet not consider any of their arguments when it comes to abortion?
At what point down the IQ scale do beings lose their right to life…is the lack of morality exposed by Thucydides really the underlying operative of today’s “liberals”? Is being right only in question when it’s between equals, is the moral measure only that of…”the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must”?
In any case, the abortion issue is gift that keeps giving to both sides, both sides use it to get votes they otherwise would not get. The show must go on! Neither party has any interest in settling the abortion issue long term, it, like Freddy Kruger, must always rise from the dead…should it be settled, both parties would have to start fielding some uncomfortable questions.
V
The whole Kavanaugh charade is of, by, and for the galoots.
Kavanaugh has lied many times already just regarding his past drinking.
Surely he’s lied about women he’s abused.
But, the show must go on; grab a big bowl of popcorn and roll a big splief…
Webstir
panem et circenses
I’ve really paid it no mind outside of the schaudenfreud of watching an establishmentarian circular firing squad.
When you no longer supports the basic structure of this country, why care?
Better to simply prepare for it’s fall.
Heliopause
“this is not a criminal trial.”
It is a quasi-legal proceeding. People testify under oath, submit sworn statements, etc. The FBI investigates.
“This isn’t a case of ‘any Republican candidate would be accused’”
Actually it might be. This is Kennedy’s seat, the Official Swing Vote. Dems were always going to contest this one much harder than the previous one.
“If Obama couldn’t have his nominee voted on, I see no reason why Trump should before the mid-terms.”
As I keep pointing out, the US Constitution has bupkis to say about the qualifications of a nominee or the criteria the Senate use to “consent.” The President can nominate anyone he wants and the Senate can use any criteria they want to say yea, nay, or not vote on it at all. All the rest is theater designed for the idiots in elite media.
“this is the end of US abortion rights.”
Probably not. Abortion rights already don’t de facto exist in large swathes of the country, where state restrictions have combined with social disapprobation and outright terrorism to make abortion services virtually impossible to find. In “blue” states abortion availability will almost certainly continue to exist. In other words, a reversal of Roe would worsen the current situation but not by as much as people suspect. And it must be pointed out that retired Justice Kennedy is a conservative Catholic on a court that was and is majority conservative Catholic and Roe has still stood.
Tom
Dr. Christine Blasey Ford is not even remotely credible. She:
1. Can’t name a date or time
2. Can’t name the house
3. Can’t name who else was at this party
4. Nor can she tell us how she got home.
Kavanaugh can show where he was as he kept a calendar and has corroborating witnesses. Every witness Ford named refuted her testimony.
Ford, not Kavanaugh lied under oath.
False accusations of rape have destroyed thousands of men and women’s lives in America and make it even harder to prosecute real rape cases.
This is infinitely worse than what the Republicans did to Obama’s nominee. They simply refused to hold a vote as was their right as the Majority in the Senate. They did not levy false accusations of a crime against Obama’s nominee.
By going this route, the Democrats just shot themselves in the foot for the Midterms and 2020.
If the Democrats just stuck to Kavanaugh’s politics and written opinions while being a Federal Judge, I wouldn’t have said boo. Those are legitimate questions that should be asked and answered. But unverified accusations of serious crimes from decades ago with no evidence or corroboration? Uh no, totally inappropriate and destroys a bedrock principle of Democracy that you are Innocent till Proven Guilty in a Court of Law.
Now what does Innocent till Proven Guilty in a Court of Law means? It means we don’t believe the accuser, we believe what the evidence shows us.
No where was that principle so evident as in the OJ Simpson Murder Trial where the evidence of EDTA in the blood samples, the fact the blood was still wet and sticky on the glove and at the Bundy House, the missing amount of blood in the reference sample, etc, proved Nicole and Goldman was killed around midnight when OJ was on the Plane to Chicago and the glove planted. It is why a mixed race jury acquitted him.
It took a racist all white Jury using preponderance of evidence standard in a civil court without actually seeing if the evidence was good and not planted that found OJ liable and destroyed his life.
What we are seeing here is nothing but a lynching, and if we want a society steeped in Justice, we have to oppose that or none of us are safe.
Ten Bears
I’m getting a good chuckle out of it.
G’ma always said give ’em enough rope they’ll hang themselves.
V
When you no longer supports the basic structure of this country, why care?
Exactly the point…
Hugh
Our Constitution was written by rich propertied men to defend their rights and their property. You hear about the majesty of its opening “We the People” but only about 10% of adults of the time even had the right to vote on it. The system of checks and balances it set up was there to limit the power that any particular group of this 10% could exercise over each other. With regard to the rest of us, the other 90%, the mob in the eyes of the Framers, they wrote the Constitution to protect them from us, to enshrine their rights over ours.
In all this, the Supreme Court was almost an afterthought. And remained so until the 4th chief justice John Marshall was able to carve out a space for it in the Constitutional order. And that order was the one outlined above. The Supreme Court has never been some sacred, impartial institution outside the political fray. Throughout its history, except to some extent in the brief period of the Warren Court and its aftermath, from Brown in 1954 to Roe in 1973, the Court has always been for the few against the many, the propertied against the unpropertied, slaveholders against their slaves, and the rich against the poor. It defended the right of factory owners to employ children (Hammer vs. Dagenhart 1918) and to force workers to work long hours (Lochner v. New York 1905) for little pay (Adkins v. Children’s Hospital 1923) under dangerous conditions. It also defended segregation and Jim Crow in Plessy v. Ferguson 1896.
The Supreme Court is not hallowed. It is hollow. And it is against this backdrop that we need to see both the current Court and the Kavanaugh nomination. Trump chose Kavanaugh for two reasons: to protect Trump and to placate his base. He chose him too because he was vetted by the Federalist Society as a tried and true reactionary.
Culturally, Kavanaugh was not even wink, wink anti-Roe. He was plain and simply anti-Roe. Looking at his position on the right to choose and some of his comments on birth control, he looks at women pretty much as baby making machines. This is part and parcel of a larger rejection of any Constitutionally protected right to privacy, a view that is at odds to, say, the rights of gays. And it folds into his even larger rejection of any unenumerated rights (see the 9th Amendment) not explicitly discussed by the Framers elsewhere.
Kavanaugh comes from a background of privilege and entitlement. He can talk about working his ass off, but the fact is that a lot people a lot smarter than him would not have gotten their toe in the door of his prep school or Yale that he sailed through with plenty of time for his frat boy life and binges. One of the things that I have remarked in the whole Kavanaugh process is any indication that he is a deep thinker. Throughout his life he has always checked off the right boxes to advance himself, but it wasn’t his intellect but his connections and credentials that set him up to check those boxes off. This takes me back to the 9th Amendment and the Framers. (“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”) Despite all their faults and their classism, they tended to say what they meant. If they had wanted to say in the 9th Amendment “only unenumerated rights we have discussed elsewhere,” they would have said so. And with this, Kavanaugh’s whole line of argument reaching down to Roe (and many other issues) falls apart. What we are left with is just the privileged Catholic frat boy who believes what he believes because that’s what people from his background, with his privileges were taught to believe.
If you believe that the Constitution should remain about the 10%, then Kavanaugh or some Kavanaugh 2.0 is a perfect choice. If you think that We the People should refer to the other 90% of us, then this Kavanaugh or any other is an abomination.
Hugh
Our Constitution was written by rich propertied men to defend their rights and their property. You hear about the majesty of its opening \”We the People\” but only about 10% of adults of the time even had the right to vote on it. The system of checks and balances it set up was there to limit the power that any particular group of this 10% could exercise over each other. With regard to the rest of us, the other 90%, the mob in the eyes of the Framers, they wrote the Constitution to protect them from us, to enshrine their rights over ours.
In all this, the Supreme Court was almost an afterthought. And remained so until the 4th chief justice John Marshall was able to carve out a space for it in the Constitutional order. And that order was the one outlined above. The Supreme Court has never been some sacred, impartial institution outside the political fray. Throughout its history, except to some extent in the brief period of the Warren Court and its aftermath, from Brown in 1954 to Roe in 1973, the Court has always been for the few against the many, the propertied against the unpropertied, slaveholders against their slaves, and the rich against the poor. It defended the right of factory owners to employ children (Hammer vs. Dagenhart 1918) and to force workers to work long hours (Lochner v. New York 1905) for little pay (Adkins v. Children\’s Hospital 1923) under dangerous conditions. It also defended segregation and Jim Crow in Plessy v. Ferguson 1896.
The Supreme Court is not hallowed. It is hollow. And it is against this backdrop that we need to see both the current Court and the Kavanaugh nomination. Trump chose Kavanaugh for two reasons: to protect Trump and to placate his base. He chose him too because he was vetted by the Federalist Society as a tried and true reactionary.
Culturally, Kavanaugh was not even wink, wink anti-Roe. He was plain and simply anti-Roe. Looking at his position on the right to choose and some of his comments on birth control, he looks at women pretty much as baby making machines. This is part and parcel of a larger rejection of any Constitutionally protected right to privacy, a view that is at odds to, say, the rights of gays. And it folds into his even larger rejection of any unenumerated rights (see the 9th Amendment) not explicitly discussed by the Framers elsewhere.
Kavanaugh comes from a background of privilege and entitlement. He can talk about working his ass off, but the fact is that a lot people a lot smarter than him would not have gotten their toe in the door of his prep school or Yale that he sailed through with plenty of time for his frat boy life and binges. One of the things that I have remarked in the whole Kavanaugh process is any indication that he is a deep thinker. Throughout his life he has always checked off the right boxes to advance himself, but it wasn\’t his intellect but his connections and credentials that set him up to check those boxes off. This takes me back to the 9th Amendment and the Framers. (\”The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.\”) Despite all their faults and their classism, they tended to say what they meant. If they had wanted to say in the 9th Amendment \”only unenumerated rights we have discussed elsewhere,\” they would have said so. And with this, Kavanaugh\’s whole line of argument reaching down to Roe (and many other issues) falls apart. What we are left with is just the privileged Catholic frat boy who believes what he believes because that\’s what people from his background, with his privileges were taught to believe.
If you believe that the Constitution should remain about the 10%, then Kavanaugh or some Kavanaugh 2.0 is a perfect choice. If you think that We the People should refer to the other 90% of us, then this Kavanaugh or any other is an abomination.
NR
Tom:
If you don’t want to believe allegations without contemporary corroborating evidence, that is a perfectly legitimate position to hold. But Kavanaugh clearly and repeatedly lied during his confirmation hearing. He lied about the extent of his drinking; there are multiple credible witnesses from various venues who have made it clear that Kavanaugh was an extreme drunk during those days. He lied about the meaning of his yearbook entries. And he lied about this:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/09/27/kavanaugh-is-pressed-key-july-entry-his-calendar-only-point
The man is a proven liar, pure and simple.
Ché Pasa
The Kavanaugh Thing has turned into a soap opera, but that, I think, is by design, even if it’s been improvised because of…issues. Clearly, Trump is enjoying the spectacle and the show.
After all, Kavanaugh is Bush’s boy. GW is said to be whipping votes even as we contemplate the minutiae of the charges and the lies and hail the heroism of the sweet, fragile Christine Blasey Ford. Among his many targets, Trump seems eager to stick it to the Bush clan (aka Bush Crime Family) and if Kavanaugh goes down in flames (he might) oh well! Tant pis!
Of course it’s theater. Of course. But I don’t think Kavanaugh — who isn’t very bright — expected to be in this role. I think he’s really bewildered. This is not the way it was supposed to go at all. He’s had a greased glide path since boy’s school, and facing a challenge like this wasn’t part of the deal.
As I’ve said, practically everybody thought he’d be a shoe-in. Easy-peasy, even up to the point of the spectacle he made of himself at the supplementary hearing. They tried to pretend it didn’t happen, but they couldn’t maintain the pretense. He wouldn’t let them.
DiFi was his first target and he let her have it hot and heavy — he who “always treats women with respect.” She was obviously shocked and hurt. And she looked terribly old and frail. It was like seeing your great-granny getting beat up by a street thug. When he went after Klobuchar with his mocking and taunting, it was too much. I’m sure he was told he had to apologize or take a walk.
The optics of continuing this shit-show became untenable, and by the morning they called an intermission. We don’t know what happens in the next act, because anything could. Apparently the gumshoes are fanning out starting their interviews even now. But don’t expect much to come of it partly because of the inherent limitations of the background check format. There may or may not be some revelation or resolution. I’m betting not. But does that means he gets confirmed?
Probably not. He’s spoiled goods with anger and alcohol and other issues. I’m sure he can get picked up by some wingnut welfare institution so he’ll be fine, but not on the court. It would be too risky for a tottering institution.
But whoever winds up in the Kennedy seat will no doubt be just as rightist, corporatist, and authoritarian, and likely he or she will be a Catholic, too. Just with smoother edges and a more pleasant demeanor. Plus ça change.
Jeff W
Reading this piece in Slate regarding Kavanaugh’s explanations of various references in his prep school yearbook or seeing David Doel’s take on YouTube on the same, I’m astonished at just how utterly uncredible Kavanaugh seems, how defensive, how completely, for lack of a better word, unjudicial he is. If he can’t come clean about what some references mean in his yearbook, if it somehow wouldn’t occur to him that people could easily ask his fellow classmates what those references meant (and it probably does occur to him, he just doesn’t care), what does that say about his judgment, his temperament (his reactionary positions aside)? I would not trust this guy as far as I could throw him. I wouldn’t want him giving me recommendations on what to order at the local Olive Garden, much less making decisions on the highest court in the land. What a completely odious character.
AllAboutRichOldLadies
«the fact that he supports torture should have been instantly disqualifying, and it speaks volumes about how screwed up our current politics are that it wasn’t.»
Like many this comment is based on missing a critical element of the big picture: the swing voters most prized both by Republicans and clintonite Democrats are property owning rentier old white ladies, basically clones of H Clinton herself.
The members of that demographic are ferociously right-wing on law-and-order, taxation, spending on the poor, regulation; this means that they love torture, shoot-to-kill, illegal immigration, big rents and house prices, and they hate “superpredators”, “moochers”, “useless eaters”, good wages, working class people, etc.
The main “progressive” element of their politics is that many of them are “socially” progressive, both because of a feeling of being victims of discrimination (even if they own most of the USA’s wealth and spend most of its GDP), and loving their gay-best-friends, and being mawkishly sentimental. Therefore the constant Democrat attempts to appeal to that segment of the demographic with the symbolism and rhetoric of “identity politics”.
Tom
@NR
Lying under Oath requires a deliberate attempt to deceive. Kavanaugh did not, and admitted he did drink, and was trying to remember events that happened 36 years ago for him when he was in High School. Can you recall everything you did in High School off the bat? While people are yelling at you as you try to recall specific events and forced to relive youthful imprudence which back then was fine, but not today?
The most important and only matter that needed to be ascertained was did Kavanaugh rape Dr. Ford, and that has been answered with a big NO as they never met 36 years ago, went to different schools, had different social circles, and Kavanaugh can show via a calendar where he was for the Summer of 82, though no date has been actually given for this alleged rape by Dr. Ford.
Whether Kavanaugh drank or had sexist views in his youth is immaterial to whether or not he committed a rape.
To do otherwise is typical gotcha nonsense with he said, she said spiel. It doesn’t stand up and no one can prove he was drunk which requires a breathalyzer test or blood test. And unlike Dr Ford, Kavanaugh has corroborating evidence to show he never met Dr. Ford in the circumstances she described. Ford has nothing and an entire family has been ruined and faces death threats.
Kavanaugh has been investigated 6 times before by the FBI and nothing has come up to condemn him. A 7th FBI Investigation will result in the same.
If I were Kavanaugh, I would sue Dr. Ford, that he won’t is his call, but I would to restore my good name and send a message that you don’t make false allegations of rape.
That Democrats went down this road is a fatal mistake and they will pay for it at the polls. Every family that has had a member falsely accused of rape will vote Republican this year now after seeing this media lynching of a man who the Dems couldn’t destroy on his political views.
To them, the concept of Innocent till Proven Guilty is a bedrock issue that trumps Healthcare and other Social Issues, because they seen first hand how vital Innocent till Proven Guilty is, with many male defendants spending decades behind bars for rapes they did not commit till DNA exonerated them or witnesses recanted.
If you guys don’t understand this, we can’t begin to fix the other problems, as we will be too busy hurling false accusations in the media without evidence and mutually killing each other.
And do we really want to go back to the days when men were lynched on the mere allegation they raped someone?
Webstir
bruce:
“the other thing I see at a glance is that Senators are really, really old — far too old. Dems even more than Reps.”
Yup.
What this country needs is a national help a baby-boomer walk in front of moving bus, day. Then things would get better. This isn’t a Dem./Repub., left/right, or up/down problem.
It’s a “too many fucking old people” problem.
The “me” generation has been nothing but a curse on this country since they were teens. And they’ll probably try to tear it all down and take it with them.
Most selfish demographic in the history of mankind. Fuck ‘em all.
GlassHammer
Herman
“unable or unwilling to attack judicial nominees based on their ideology and judicial record”
-They don’t use that tactic because the public isn’t moved/motivated by it.
“smug complacency derived from the belief that demographic change would do the job for them”
-Or… they want wealthy donors to keep funding parity with Republicans and the message/policies that appeals to the public doesn’t appeal to wealthy donors. Operatives like Al From saw the problem and we are living in their solution.
metamars
In terms of mainstream narratives (what little I’ve listened to), I don’t believe Ford’s fuzzy memories, and the timing of everything stinks to high heaven. Lindsey Graham summed things up very well. He may have saved the day for both Kavanaugh and the Republicans’ during the next election.
A quick note about an MSM oddity. Shannon Bream of Fox News interviewed somebody saying a polygraph of 2 questions is quite normal. Listened to Bongino, this morning, former Secret Service. His first polygraph was 4-5 hour, second was about 2 hours. Hundreds of questions. No pushback from Fox’s Bream… Hmmm. MSM at it’s finest!
Also, DiFi is lowlife scumbag, clearly interested in politics more than collateral damage.
As for non-mainstream ‘sources’, there is (as always) more than meets the eye. Most interesting claims involve Ford teaching CIA interns; her website pages have supposedly been scrubbed. Haven’t seen screenshots of the “before”; this may be a garbage claim. I think George Webb may have some dirt on Kavanaugh.
Ché Pasa
Again, Kavanaugh is spoiled goods. His bellicose threat displays, gross partisanship and attacks on women senators at the hearing were a disaster, regardless of what you think about the various charges of sexual assault and impropriety. His routine lies compounded his tactical error of coming out with guns blazing.
By comparison, Clarence Thomas was almost a choirboy.
It was clear Team R had no conception of how badly this was playing to the audience, and they kept to the script as written even as Kavanaugh dug his hole deeper and deeper. I think Trump recognized how badly it was going for Kavanaugh — and didn’t care.
It’s almost as if the show was more important than the nominee.
Willy
All an embattled supreme court nominee has to do is allow Rule of Law to prevail.
Oh wait…
Bill H
@GlassHammer
Yes. The issue is not about judicial records, or maintaining the integrity of the court, or even about ideology. The issue is about moving the public, swaying votes, and gaining/retaining power.
No longer limited to politics, this nation no longer has any sense of or cares about right or wrong, decency of indecency, or civilized behavior. This nation is about the pursuit of power by any means.
nihil obstet
When Kavanaugh was first nominated for the court, I felt deeply ashamed. It surprised me. I think “American exceptionalism” is a very bad emotional belief, but still — that the U.S. President would nominate a torture accomplice to the highest court in the land, that the majority of Congress would support the nomination, and that we would end up with a torture accomplice on the high court really struck at something that I guess I really imbibed from all the WWII good guys for human rights against ultimate cruelty Nazis stories of growing up. Even knowing the country’s history of slavery and violent dispossession of the original residents, I guess I still felt we were moving towards the better. But this here, now? As I say, deeply ashamed.
I’ve gotten used to it, and now I think I’d just as soon see Kavanaugh confirmed. Our choice is not between Kavanaugh and some decent jurist. It’s between Kavanaugh and a slicker Federal society wingnut, who will just as surely impose the tyranny of elite interests over us all. I think it’s better if everyone knows what’s going on. As many have noted, Kavanaugh is damaged goods and will take his stench onto the Supreme Court bench. That’s the best we can hope for now.
NR
Tom:
“The most important and only matter that needed to be ascertained was did Kavanaugh rape Dr. Ford, and that has been answered with a big NO”
That question has most certainly not been answered with a big “NO.” The question has not been definitively answered either way. It has been neither proven nor disproven. However, the question of whether Kavanaugh lied under oath has been answered with a big “YES:”
https://theintercept.com/2018/09/29/the-unbearable-dishonesty-of-brett-kavanaugh/
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/09/kavanaugh-lied-senate-judiciary-committee.html
Again, if you don’t think an accuser should be believed without contemporary corroborating evidence, say that. That’s perfectly legitimate. I myself don’t think that someone is automatically entitled to be believed if they don’t present evidence for the charges they make. But don’t pretend Kavanaugh didn’t lie. He did.
different clue
Anti-boomeritic age-racist antiboomerite bigotry is always unfortunate, as well as off target. If “someone” decides to try walking my boomer self in front of a bus, I hope I can fling the little m*therf*cker under the bus instead.
metamars
@NR Yeah, it looks like he did lie under oath.
See also https://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/kavanaugh-s-college-friends-say-he-lied-under-oath-about-drinking-1332528195898?v=raila&
Since most people accept that college students (and high schoolers at parties) drink way too much, one has to wonder what would provide sufficient motivation for him to do so.
different clue
@Tom,
Of COURSE Kavanaugh never raped Ford. Ford herself noted that no rape happened because Kavanaugh fell off Ford and the bed before rape could be achieved. So pretending that a question has been answered when the question was never even asked or posed is a diversion . . . clever if it works. Did it work? Have we been diverted from the ACtual question of whether he aTTACKED her or not . . . ?
Ten Bears
Ain’t no fat little god-damned racist asshole ever gonna’ throw me in front of a bus.
I haven’t killed anyone since Viet Nam. I kinda miss it.
Hugh
One of the useful things about the Kavanaugh nomination is that it is a wonderful opportunity for us to see what is what and who is who.
The rank hypocrisy and cowardice of the Republicans were on full display. (The Democrats, of course, have had similar moments, but this one belongs to the GOP.) A bunch of creepy old misogynists didn’t have the stones to question Ford. So they hired a woman for the occasion. She was supposed to do their questioning of both Ford AND Kavanaugh. But her questioning of Ford left Ford’s credibility (and her own integrity) enhanced. Things were going south for Kavanaugh in a big way. So after she began to question Kavanaugh, Lindsey Graham yanked back his time, the questioner was never heard from again, and Graham proceeded to rant about how unfair and unprincipled everything was. One astute observer noted that this was Graham’s audition to be the next Attorney General. Graham went out into the hall and continued his attacks. He threatened Democrats with reprisals against any of their future candidates.
In other circumstances, Graham’s over the top performance would be hysterically funny. Perhaps I am forgetting someone, but it’s probably been 50 years since the Democrats confirmed a justice who was even remotely progressive. For decades, the Democrats have nominated justices who they thought would be least objectionable to the Republicans while the Republicans have nominated justices who were extremely objectionable to everyone but themselves. Then of course, there is the brazen hypocrisy of the Republicans calling foul after what they did to Merrick Garland. McConnell wouldn’t even allow a vote even though Garland was at best a moderate conservative, no liberal, and certainly not progressive. On top of that, McConnell stonewalled all of Obama’s nominations on federal judgeships. So then we had the spectacle of the idiot Trump saying, Obama didn’t like pickin’ judges so now I have 142 judges to be pickin’.
It’s what we used to call IOKIYAR: it’s OK if you’re Republican. The Republicans can obstruct or railroad any POS candidate they want any way they want, and that’s OK. But if anything derails or looks to derail their stuffing some reactionary garbage down our throats, then heavens! cries of conspiracy, and hissy fits all around.
And that’s what we saw from Graham. Graham is a guy who pretends to gravitas. But he is a guy who has never met a war he didn’t like. And despite his friendship with McCain, had no problems voting for the pro-torture Gina Haspel at CIA. Hence his faux outrage at the Kavanaugh hearings wasn’t really a stretch. One of the things I have noted about those that suck up to Trump is the devastatingly corrosive effect it has on not just their reputation but their character. It is not about how Trump uses them and then casually tosses them under the bus. It is how obsequiously they run and suck up to him, knowing he’s going to throw them under the bus. So we have Kavanaugh pursuing his Supreme Court spot but in the process showing for all to see that he lacks the judicial temperament for it, indeed for the judgeship he currently has. Graham’s petty ranting pretty much did in any claim he might have had for gravitas. And if that didn’t, then there was this. On the way to the elevator, a woman called out to him, I was raped 13 years ago. What do you have to say to me? Graham never stopped, never looked at the woman. You know what he said said? “Call a cop” and he was gone. In that, there is all you need to know about Lindsey Graham, what a pathetic little worm of a man he is. People can be assholes in Washington for decades. Everyone knows it. But one instant can crystallize that in a way they can neither avoid nor deny. Kavanaugh’s we all know about. But I think that snippet should follow Graham everywhere he goes for the rest of his sick, benighted life.
Webstir
Repent now, boomers. . Thy power wanes. Your progeny scornfully urging you toward your twilight, spitting the disdain of your legacy at your back. History will treat you unkindly. The world went to shit on your watch.
Try and deny it.
Webstir
Oh, and dc & Ten Bears … the word you’re looking for is ageist. These things we call words have meaning. It’s usually best when one uses words that actually mean what one wants to say.
But hey, it’s cool. Falling off a bit mentally at your age is to be expected.
different clue
@Webstir,
Thank you for the free advice. It’s worth every cent.
Ten Bears
Any time you’d care to step outside, web? I’m a little tired of snot-noses.
Webstir
As I am of geriatrics who still think they have something positive to contribute to this country. You had your turn.
As my Father (Ret. two tour Viet Nam Army Airborne Major, with two silver stars, a bronze, and soldiers medal pinned on his chest among others) used to say “Lead, follow, or get the fuck out of the way.” You had your chance to lead. You failed miserably. So shut up and get the fuck out of the way so the real adults in the room can get on with the business of fixing the mess you all made.
And about my Dad, Ten Bears. I spent a decade commercial crabbing in AK. Another half-decade fighting wildland fires and the other half of that decade running a USFS trail crew. I’m smack in the prime of my life Ten Bears. I’d beat my Dad’s old Viet Nam Vet ass in a heartbeat.
So, you can also shut up with the empty threats
GlassHammer
Hugh
“A bunch of creepy old misogynists didn’t have the stones to question Ford.”
-I am pretty sure they would come off as “creepy old misogynists” if they did question Ford directly.
“For decades, the Democrats have nominated justices who they thought would be least objectionable to the Republicans”
-Its plausible (if not likely) the Democrats nominated justices who they thought would be least objectionable to other Democrats (centrist/conservative Democrats). When voting is tight you need to please the most demanding members of your own party.
“there is the brazen hypocrisy of the Republicans calling foul after what they did to Merrick Garland”
-Republicans don’t care what the Garland strategy looked like, the strategy worked and they got what they wanted. Only the Democrats have to win and look clean/good doing so, the Republicans just have to win. And it is that difference that explains the massive disparity in political power among the two parties.
Webstir
Finally Ten Bears, pick up a copy of a book called “Rice Paddy Grunt.” That “hard-case” airborne Captain that comes in and whips the company into shape?
That’s my Dad. In his prime, he was a man to feared. You were probably a REMF that likes to talk big. The men that saw the shit don’t talk like you.
Ché Pasa
This particular confirmation has re-opened a whole lot of wounds for a whole lot of people — and not just survivors of sexual assault.
Kagan and Sotomayor didn’t face anything like this level of hostility — which was part of Lindsey’s screed– and neither did Gorsuch despite his appropriation of a stolen seat.
It’s happening with Kavanaugh in part because he is so transparent. He’s such a transparent liar for one thing. A transparent suck up. A transparent fuck up. He’s not too bright. He has a sometimes wildly unique interpretation of the law, and he has no qualms about making law from the bench whenever it suits him. He’s a rabid reactionary partisan operative (something known but ignored for decades).
And of course his threat displays at Thursday’s hearing demonstrated his utter lack of proper judicial temperament.
But he’ll probably be confirmed — or contrarily fall one vote short — in the final act of this absurd drama. Many of those arguing on his behalf see him as the ideal transformative catalyst for a court only marginally legitimate as it is. Bush v Gore pushed the Court into a Twilight Zone or Walking Dead neither one nor the other state of being. A transition state between pure partisan hackery and interpreting/upholding law in the interests of the Nation and People as a whole.
The Court has never recovered from its fatal error in 2000, but it isn’t dead yet. His advocates see putting Kavanaugh on the Court as a way to revivify it — as pure partisan hackery, but oh well, at least it’s something. And in some people’s eyes, more legitimate than the current corporatist/authoritarian muddle.
More legitimate because it would once again be the central power of the government by a 5-4 majority. Maybe not revered, but certainly determinate. And of course the march ever rightward into some version of neo-fascism would be accelerated.
The only problem is that Kavanaugh is too toxic a personality at this point. Even if he’s “cleared” by the FBI, his toxicity won’t go away.
The Senate may confirm him anyway. Why not? He’s not as toxic as Trump, and Trump’s still standing. So why the hell not confirm him? Pwn the Libtards once more!
bob mcmanus
Three links gonna get me in trouble, but:
1) https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/571699/
Kavanaugh and Bethesda
2) https://twitter.com/matthewstoller/status/1046044213991870472?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1046044213991870472&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nakedcapitalism.com%2F2018%2F09%2Flinks-9-30-18.html
Matt Stoller on old fashioned aristocracy. Remember the Sally Quinn quote:”They trashed the place, and it isn’t their place.”
3) Me. Christina Ford is elite, not necessarily wealth, but background and academically she is of Brett’s world not ours, and we shouldn’t project our own values on her too closely. Ford is an aristocrat, and partially a class traitor? Or what?
Kavanaugh has uncovered a lot of old friends who are willing to break omerta and call him out on drinking etc. What’s with that?
Kavanaugh-Ford is (not just, it’s more) another battlefront in the class/fashion reaction to Trump, part of an intra-class division. And it’s gendered. And it’s about Trump. And the fringe right. Remember Bannon, how he chose to dress, wonder why.
Interjected link: https://democracyjournal.org/arguments/middle-america-reboots-democracy/
Theda Skocpol is too mainstream, too identity, too Democratic for my tastes, search for a panel with her and Mark Blyth, but she is smart and does fieldwork. The link is about a surge of women organizing activating participating in droves, specifically white suburban college-educated women (I warned you about Skocpol). Women like Ford.
All politics is local. As in Bethesda, internal to the country club.
Trump is the boorish new rich asshole farting cursing groping the husbands bring to the luncheon party because a) they can make money off him, and b) they think it’s funny to piss off the wives the women and break the rules of decorum and comportment, the part the women thought they controlled. There is a deal. Don’t embarrass.
The womenfolk, the ladies that lunch, are pissed.
nihil obstet
I didn’t want potentially to lower the tone on this discussion, but I don’t think I can, now, so —
What was all Kavanaugh’s sniffing about? Within 90 seconds after he started talking, I couldn’t help thinking, “Does that guy have a coke habit?” I haven’t seen any reference to it anywhere, so maybe it’s just me. Did it strike anybody else?
Hugh
nihil, it called a tell. Trump does it too when he’s lying.
different clue
@Webstir,
I am one of four brothers. We are ages 61+, 59, 58, 55. Dad lived till 89.5 years. Grandfather lived till 96 years. Grandmother lived till 87 years. Dads brother is still alive at 95.
We four boomer brothers will live for several decades to come, in your way and in your face.
metamars
@hugh
I thought Graham was magnificent. And it was surprising partly because he is part of the establishment – at least the part of the establishment which “never met a war he didn’t like”. Thus, I don’t, in general, respect Graham, any more than I respect any member of our government that callously ignores the endless “collateral damage” involved with our war making – typically wars of choice.
However, I don’t think he was pretending at anything during the hearing, and your take on him having a “petty rant” is about 100% opposite of mine. (Plus, 100% opposite of the guy that sits next to me at work. 🙂 ).
metamars
FWIW – A body language expert (supposedly) evaluates Ford https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGxr1VQ2dPI
Ché Pasa
Ah yes Little Lindsey. Wasn’t his banty threat-dominance display thrilling though? Wow. Trembling I was.
Anybody else noticed that he’s taken to dyeing his hair blonde like his new best bro?
Bully!
Willy
It doesn’t take much research to figure out that Graham loves a good emotional grandstanding far more than he does consistent moral views. We have a guy like that in my hood running for state rep, where there’s much evidence that he’s really in it for the corporate donor cash.
I think of Dwight Schrute’s Mussolini-copy speech. The more monkey-brained amongst us sure do seem to measure credibility by how emotionally speeches are delivered.
Hugh
So much for Rachel Mitchell, the prosecutor the Republicans brought in to question Ford, having any integrity. She apparently produced a report trying to cast doubt on Ford’s testimony. Yet she said nothing about Kavanaugh and his clear lies on his drinking.
Ché Pasa
Wouldn’t be surprised if Mitchell’s fee depended on her NOT evaluating Kavanaugh’s testimony.
Marcy Wheeler takes her report apart:
https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/10/01/rachel-mitchell-is-not-very-good-at-propaganda/
The Swetnik interview last night on MSNBC was… erm… less than stellar. But it appeared that was partially due to editing and other choices made by NBC — for example to have what amounted to running commentary and cut aways. On the other hand, Swetnik came across to me as a somewhat unreliable witness, still trying to process her chaotic memories of a chaotic time. If she was gang-raped under the influence as she said, I kind of doubt she’ll ever be able to fully recall and state what happened and who was involved. But she said she did report it to her mother and the police at the time, so there’s that.
Corroborating witnesses apparently are unavailable, either because they are dead or unresponsive. This is on Avenatti who assured us that they could and would produce corroboration.
Also his absence from the interview was interesting and possibly telling.
But whatever.
There is plenty enough information to disqualify Kavanaugh from the Supreme Court or any other court without Swetnik.
It’s pretty clear he was appointed to the bench in the first place as a reward for political service and loyalty. He’s no legal scholar. He’s not much of a legal mind. My impression is that he doesn’t care about the law so much as he’s determined to advance a rightist/corporatist/authoritarian political agenda — which was what he was put on the bench to do.
Hate to say it, but there are probably hundreds if not thousands of judges throughout the land who are there for the same general purpose and who received their robes as rewards for service and loyalty.
Hugh
Ché Pasa, I agree. The idea that the Supreme Court and the judiciary are a meritocracy is a myth. It is mostly about ideology: what law school you got into, who wrote your recommendations, which judge they connected you to for a clerkship and/or which law firm they directed you to, and/or which government post in which Administration they connected you to, and from there it’s on to your judgeship. It’s a selection process to grant access to like-minded individuals.
Tom W Harris
We’re gonna need another Andrew Jackson to cope with this RNC hack court: “Kavvy Baby has spewed his BS, now let him enforce it.”
Tom W Harris
@Ian,
Just as a suggestion, you might want to set up a permanent Internet Tuffy thread for all the fistfight action comments.
metamars
Senator Susan Collins made a good case, during debate over cloture of the confirmation process, about why voting for confirmation/disconfirmation is also a vote for/against the presumption of innocence. https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/10/susan_collinss_finest_hour_caps_a_great_week_for_america.html
“The presumption of innocence is relevant to the advice and consent function when an accusation departs from a nominee’s otherwise exemplary record. I worry that departing from this presumption could lead to a lack of public faith in the judiciary and would be hugely damaging to the confirmation process moving forward.
Some of the allegations levied against Judge Kavanaugh illustrate why the presumption of innocence is so important. I am thinking in particular not of the allegations raised by Professor Ford, but of the allegation that, when he was a teenager, Judge Kavanaugh drugged multiple girls and used their weakened state to facilitate gang rape. This outlandish allegation was put forth without any credible supporting evidence and simply parroted public statements of others. That such an allegation can find its way into the Supreme Court confirmation process is a stark reminder about why the presumption of innocence is so ingrained in our American consciousness.”
Collins is quite aware of the fact that the Supreme Court nomination process is not a trial.
Even given the overall context of corruption and dysfunction of our plutocracy-pretending-to-be-a-democracy (see Gilens and Page), empowering Stalinist-wannabes is extremely dangerous, in the long run. I think of Jordan Peterson’s extensive exposition of Solzhenitsyn’s account of the Russian public’s tolerance of dishonesty being integral to the development of the Stalinist witch hunt, show trial ethos….
In my vanity reddit page, I have spanked Trump for doing such a poor job constructively propagandizing, in a non-simplistic way, and to the public at large, just how potentially dangerous the Star Chamber Democrats and their bullying, nasty allies are. https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald_GoodAndBad/comments/9lke3m/bad_trump_trump_misses_the_mark_in_propaganda_war/
The Stalinist wannabes and their kooky friends are making vile threats against the FAMILIES of Congress critters. https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/10/05/rand-pauls-wife-open-letter-cory-booker-family-facing-horrifying-threats/ They should be recognized as a danger to what remains of “American values”, in their idealistic, largely unrealized form, and not just objects of disgust who will motivate partisan voting behavior. If you’re an American, YOU are at risk from these same political forces.
nihil obstet
Putting a man who developed apologies for actual torture on the nation’s highest court is a strike against Stalinism? Irony just died.
metamars
Yes, for the reasons I gave. You may not like Mussolini because he was a facist, but you can still make an intelligent comparison to Hitler, another fascist.
Did Schumer or any other Judiciary Committee Democrat make a big deal about Kavanaugh’s history wrt torture apologies? I haven’t heard of any such thing, but I did not follow the Kavanaugh confirmation process closely.
Dogstar
“And yes, this is the end of US abortion rights. It will be even if Kavanaugh isn’t confirmed.”
As planned. The fix was in after Scalia died unexpectedly. Demographics. Immigration. In a perpetual, growth-based, machine, if you cut immigration(muslims) then you have to make up the difference. This is all controlled, it is all theatre. View the scene from that perspective, and all the silliness makes perfect sense.