fuagf: I am afraid we are going to have Cry Baby on the SC. IMO Trump will be Fucking Us for years to come. And we can think people like rooster, conix and JimLur.
The rage of Brett Kavanaugh and the implosion of the GOP
David Faris September 28, 2018 It was clear moments into yesterday's hearing about allegations made by Christine Blasey Ford against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh that the day was going to be a Hindenburg-level public relations disaster for Republicans. Doddering Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) took the stage and droned angrily on, haltingly and seemingly endlessly, about Senate process instead of conveying even an iota of human feeling for the woman about to testify about her experience. By using his time on the stage to air grievances against his colleagues and Ford's lawyers, he made it clear on behalf of his Republican colleagues that they were not interested in a fair-minded evaluation of Ford's testimony.
The contrast between Ford's gut-wrenching testimony and the cavalier, interrupting, mansplaining Grassley could not have been more stark. Ford, her voice quavering, obviously in a state of barely contained terror and emotional violence, slowly walked through her detailed statement. It is difficult to imagine how anyone with a soul could listen to her speaking and not have a visceral understanding of the lifelong emotional trauma inflicted on survivors of rape and sexual assault. Her testimony was inarguably credible, and she was able to convey the damage that Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge's attempted rape inflicted on her, both in the immediate aftermath of the alleged assault, and then long afterwards, the attack casting a shadow over her life, as it does for all survivors of sexual assault.
Ford's incredibly moving testimony was almost impossible to watch and sent many observers in the room and across the world into tears. For millions of women, this was not a partisan moment but rather a clarifying reminder of the dynamics of rape and the ways that survivors like Ford are peppered with doubt and insinuation — chastised for not coming forward sooner and then treated like liars and life-wreckers when they do. For the legions of women who have survived these traumas and responded exactly as Ford did, her riveting monologue was a blunt reminder of their own suffering and the myriad ways our society conspires to silence and shame them. For men, most of whom are never forced to reckon with their own actions or those of their friends, Ford's testimony should have felt like a long, overdue rebuke.
The decision of Senate Republicans to sub-contract their questioning to a barely prepared prosecutor, Rachel Mitchell, ... https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/arizona-prosecutor-rachel-mitchell-emerges-as-gop-choice-to-question-kavanaugh-and-accuser-at-hearing/2018/09/25/47964afa-c0ff-11e8-9005-5104e9616c21_story.html?utm_term=.c7366e1aafca ... also backfired spectacularly. Viewers were left with the indelible image of Mitchell flanked in the background by the all-male delegation of Republicans on the Judiciary Committee, ... https://www.politico.com/story/2018/09/27/gop-senators-outside-ford-questioner-mistake-849246 ... whose silence was interrupted only by Grassley's relentless, tone-deaf interruptions. It was also jarring for Ford, who had to toggle between what felt like a courtroom prosecution and the more humane questioning from Senate Democrats. Republicans, by exercising maximum cowardice, forfeited a chance to display even a minimum level of compassion in front of an enormous audience. Not one of them even motioned halfheartedly toward Ford's suffering. It was telling that Republicans then effectively silenced Mitchell during Kavanaugh's portion of the hearing, mostly using their time to angrily denounce Democrats and the supposed disgrace and outrage of having to be there at all.
Mitchell also did herself no favors by using her time to press Ford on various inconsequential "corrections," like the exact number of people at the party where she was assaulted, whether or not she really has a fear of flying, or who paid for the polygraph test she took over the summer. Mitchell seemed utterly uninterested in what happened at the party that night, and more determined to poke holes in Ford's testimony. She had Kavanaugh cornered, seemingly, about a July 1, 1982, calendar entry that would seem to corroborate Ford's account, but then Mitchell just let it go. Weirdly, her heart really didn't seem to be in it at all.
Then Brett Kavanaugh came out to testify, carrying with him what was almost a second witness at the table, a malignant presence that he struggled throughout the day to control — his barely controlled rage. "This confirmation process has become a national disgrace," he thundered.
He complained about having to wait 10 days for this hearing and said again and again that he wanted it to be the day after the allegations came out, as if Ford was supposed to get on the red-eye to D.C. and head directly to the committee to suit Kavanaugh's busy schedule.
Most tellingly, he tossed rhetorical grenades at "the left" and argued that the multiple allegations against him were "revenge on behalf of the Clintons." It was a shockingly partisan speech, in so many ways unbefitting a future justice of the Supreme Court. His face scrunched with indignation, pausing occasionally to cry, he again categorically denied having committed the assault. "What goes around comes around," said the author of The Starr Report, implicitly threatening Democrats with future retribution for daring to hold hearings about multiple accusations of sexual assault against him. The most chilling remark he made all day was when he told Democrats, "You sowed the wind for decades to come. I fear that the whole country will reap the whirlwind." This man belongs nowhere near the nation's highest court.
Kavanaugh also leaned in, again, to the absurd contention that someone other than Kavanaugh might have attempted to rape Ford by suggesting that he believes something happened to her but that he didn't do it. "I'm not questioning that Ford may have been sexually assaulted by some person in some place at some time. But I have never done this," he said. In so doing, he tacitly confirmed that Team Kavanaugh was almost certainly on board with last week's bizarre stunt by D.C. gadfly Ed Whelan to pin Ford's assault on a classmate who looked at the time vaguely like Kavanaugh. Democrats, egregiously, failed to even ask about this incident — Ford herself was the only one to bring it up.
Kavanaugh was also combative. He interrupted Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). When she asked him if he'd like to say anything more about the gang rape allegations by Julie Swetnick, he said, curtly, "No." At one point, when Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) asked if he had ever blacked out from drinking, he flippantly responded, "I don't know, have you?" Klobuchar had just shared that her father is an alcoholic. Kavanaugh behaved, throughout the afternoon, very much like a man who could do horrible things while drunk.
Democrats, for their part, wasted an enormous amount of time grilling Kavanaugh about whether he would stop the whole process on the spot and demand an FBI investigation, something that they must have known was not going to happen. They could have assigned this ineffective gambit to one senator and instead pressed Kavanaugh about things he appeared to obviously be lying about — for instance, the idea that he and his friends were just paying tribute to a high school friend when they all referred to themselves as a "Renate Alumnius."
In his opening statement, Kavanaugh said that the phrase was "clumsily used to show affection, to show she was one of us." This explanation has never passed the laugh test. The point Democrats could have made is not whether this yearbook entry would disqualify him, but to demonstrate that his willingness to lie to the committee should cast doubt on the veracity and trustworthiness of all of his testimony. Kavanaugh later appeared to lie to the committee about whether he watched Ford's testimony — he said under oath that he had not. When combined with his earlier evasions about his relationship to Manuel Miranda and the theft of Senate Democratic emails during the Bush administration, it should have called into question his baseline credibility.
As the day ended, Kavanaugh's nomination was in the hands of Republican Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), and Jeff Flake (Ariz). Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) announced he was a yes for Kavanaugh early in the evening. Rumors abounded that the moderate Republicans had struck a deal to vote yes with Joe Manchin (W.V.) and Joe Donnelly (Ind.) — both vulnerable red state Democrats up for re-election this year. A committee vote was scheduled for this morning, and Kavanaugh could be confirmed by the full Senate as early as Tuesday.
The country, meanwhile, may come apart at the seams. This Senate majority may confirm a man now thrice-accused of sexual misconduct, who was nominated by another man elected with a 46 percent minority and who himself has at least 18 different accusations of sexual misconduct against him. They seem willing to dispense with the whole investigatory process one day after barely hearing out his accuser and are refusing either to ask the FBI to investigate or at least subpoena the alleged co-perpetrator, even though the guy is just hanging out at the beach. Remember, we are a little over two years from the Republican Party conspiring together to block Merrick Garland from the Supreme Court, thereby stealing the swing seat now held by arch-conservative Neil Gorsuch. Republicans still seem to have no understanding of how that hardball gambit to this day makes Democrats sleepless with fury.
They don't care. They see the Court as the only remaining avenue to indefinite dominion over the majority of Americans who now despise them and would crawl over fire-spitting coals to vote against them.
For the past two years, Republicans have acted as if there will never be any consequences for governing the country with total contempt for what the majority actually wants, instead gambling that our anti-majoritarian political institutions will keep them in power indefinitely. There is only one way to disabuse this gang of that confidence, which is to demolish them comprehensively in the next two national elections, and then to use fully legal and constitutional procedures to pack the courts and force Kavanaugh to scribble "MINORITY OPINION DUE FRIDAY" over and over again in his little calendars.
Shields and Brooks on Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation in question
"Brett Kavanaugh’s habit of dissembling makes it hard to take his word over Ford’s"
PBS NewsHour Published on Sep 28, 2018
Fallout from sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh threw American politics into upheaval this week. Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the testimonies of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Judge Kavanaugh, how partisanship is recasting our politics and a moral reckoning around sexual abuse.
Jeff Flake did the right thing by everyone. Including Kavanaugh. Mark Shields is solid as always. David Brooks as often somewhat wishy-washy, umm, foot in both camps positions.
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George Stephanopoulos Rips Kavanaugh for 'Bizarre' Behavior, Suggests FBI Probe Could Become 'Farce'
Q Tv Published on Sep 30, 2018
George Stephanopoulos Rips Kavanaugh for 'Bizarre' Behavior, Suggests FBI Probe Could Become 'Farce'
I was surprised and disappointed on hearing, then reading (see below), a suggestion the FBI investigation was limited by White House direction, which i would't have thought would be either appropriate or possible. Hope it's not true. Noted, Lindsay graham loves the idea.
Related:
FBI 'immediately moves to interview other Kavanaugh accuser' as probe starts of Trump's Supreme Court nominee
Agents have been given seven days to complete investigation
VIDEO
Andrew Buncombe Washington DC @AndrewBuncombe 1 day ago 68 comments
The Independent US
FBI agents have immediately reached out to other women who accused Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee of sexual abuse of misconduct, it has been reported.
Mr Trump ordered the FBI to carry out a supplemental investigation that was “limited in scope” in order to update Brett Kavanaugh’s file. Within hours of doing so, agents were reportedly contacting the lawyers for at least one of two other women to have accused the 53-year-old judge of misconduct. Investigators said they would like to interview her “as early as tonight”, according to the Los Angeles Times. Her lawyers instead agreed to an an alternative time, possibly over the weekend.
The New York Times said the woman contacted by the bureau’s agents was Deborah Ramirez, 53, from Boulder, Colorado, who said Mr Kavanaugh had exposed himself to her and forced his penis in front of her face during a drunken dormitory party at Yale University 35 years ago. Ms Ramirez’s lawyer, John Clune, this week told reporters she was wiling to testify about the alleged incident. Mr Clune did not respond to enquiries.
Meanwhile, Michael Avenatti, who represents a third accuser, Julie Smetnick, revealed he had been practically pleading with the Senate Judiciary Committee to hear from his client.
Ms Smetnick has said she was present at up to 10 parties in Maryland in the 1980s where Mr Kavanaugh and a friend, Mark Ford, drugged young women to prepare them for gang rapes. The two men have denied this claim.
In an email sent on Friday to Mike Davis, counsel to the senate committee, Mr Avenatti wrote: “In light of Senator Flake’s comments moments ago, please let us know when we can meet with the FBI and provide the facts and evidence supporting my client’s sworn declaration. Time is of the essence.”
On Saturday afternoon, NBC reported the White House had directed the FBI to limit its probe to the claims of Ms Ford and Ms Ramirez, and not to include the accusations of Ms Smetnick. Mr Avenatti said on Twitter: “If true, this is outrageous. Why are Trump and his cronies in the Senate trying to prevent the American people from learning the truth? Why do they insist on muzzling women with information submitted under penalty of perjury? Why Ramirez but not my client?”
A spokesperson for the FBI told The Independent it was referring all enquiries to the White House, which did not immediately respond.
The Pernicious Double Standards Around Brett Kavanaugh’s Drinking
"Brett Kavanaugh’s habit of dissembling makes it hard to take his word over Ford’s"
Thursday’s Senate hearing served as a reminder of the blithe impunity afforded to those privileged enough to have whole systems invested in their success.
Andrew Harnik / Reuters / Shutterstock / The Atlantic
Megan Garber Sep 28, 2018
[...]
If “devil’s triangle” is a game that, indeed, involves bouncing coins into cups, there was, as of Thursday afternoon, seemingly no evidence of this on the internet, when people watching Kavanaugh’s hearing, inevitably, checked. No evidence, that is, until shortly after Kavanaugh testified as to his personalized definition of the term. At that point, congress-edits, the Twitter bot that tracks updates made to Wikipedia pages from congressional IP addresses, recorded a change made to the entry for “Devil’s Triangle”: “‘Devil’s Triangle’: a popular drinking game enjoyed by friends of Judge Brett Kavanaugh.”
The edit might have been a clumsy joke; it might have been a flimsy attempt to corroborate an explanation of things that, in the context of the rest of Kavanaugh’s sex-suggestive and booze-bragging yearbook page, would seem to defy common sense. Either way, it was fitting: Thursday’s hearing, in its assorted grotesqueries, was its own kind of clumsy joke, precisely because of its transparent display of reason-defying entitlement. The event—the raw but measured testimony of Christine Blasey Ford, followed by the rage-fueled indignations of Brett Kavanaugh—was a testament to the corroborative effects of power: the ease with which those who edit entries and chair committees and run countries can rearrange the facts of the world until they conform to, and allegedly confirm, the tales told by the powerful.
[...]
In the course of their conversation, Klobuchar had mentioned that her father battles alcoholism; he still attends AA meetings, she said. Because of that, Kavanaugh, perhaps because he felt bad or perhaps because he’d received some good advice, later apologized for his comments; she tersely accepted. What’s notable in the exchange, though, isn’t simply the I’m-rubber-you’re-glue defense, articulated by a person seeking a seat on a body that claims to value dispassionate reason above all; it’s also how deeply personally Kavanaugh takes Klobuchar’s question in the first place. Her query, after all— given Ford’s long-standing claim that Kavanaugh had been “stumbling drunk” when the alleged attack occurred, and given Kavanaugh’s insistence that he recalls no such event—was extremely predictable. Kavanaugh, however, was unable to treat her question, which of course he could have denied outright, as a simple matter of fact. He interpreted it instead, it seems, as he interpreted so many other questions on Thursday, as an extension of the smear campaign that he claims is currently being leveled against him: the “revenge on behalf of the Clintons” he laid out in his opening statement. The vast left-wing conspiracy that somehow eluded Neil Gorsuch but has settled its cruelties on the house of Kavanaugh.
To put a guy who reacts so defensively and in such an entitled manner, as Kavanaugh did throughout the hearing to a matter-of-fact situation, into SCOTUS would do a grave injustice to the American judicial system.
Rachel Mitchell, the veteran sex crimes prosecutor from Maricopa County, Arizona who was chosen by the GOP to question Christine Ford and Brett Kavanaugh, sent a memo to Republican senators calling Ford’s allegations a “he said, she said” case that “is even weaker than that.”
You can read the five-page memo and a four-page timeline at the end of it in full here:
FBI Ends Brett Kavanaugh Probe Without Talking To Dozens Of Witnesses | The 11th Hour | MSNBC
"Brett Kavanaugh’s habit of dissembling makes it hard to take his word over Ford’s"
MSNBC Published on Oct 3, 2018
The FBI investigation of Kavanaugh will be viewed by senators on Thursday setting the stage for voting to possibly begin on Friday. Ashley Parker, Frank Figliuzzi, Elisabeth Bumiller, & Eugene Robinson all join to discuss.
As FBI background check of Kavanaugh nears its end, probe appears to have been highly curtailed
The FBI has been conducting a background check of Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)
By Matt Zapotosky , Robert O'Harrow Jr. , Tom Hamburger and Devlin Barrett October 3 at 9:03 PM
The FBI background check of Brett M. Kavanaugh appeared to remain curtailed in its scope Wednesday even as agents neared the end of their work, opening up the possibility that the bureau would again face criticism over what some will view as a lackluster investigation.
The Washington Post has been able to confirm interviews with only six witnesses, five of whom have a connection to the professor or her allegation.
The investigation was always unlikely to answer definitively whether Kavanaugh was guilty of sexual misconduct decades ago. But the probe’s limited scope — which was dictated by the White House, along with a Friday deadline — is likely to exacerbate the partisan tensions surrounding Kavanaugh’s nomination.
Even before the probe had ended, several people who claimed to have information that could be useful said they ended up mired in bureaucracy when they tried to get in touch with the FBI. Democrats also cried foul over what they saw as inappropriate parameters that the White House seemed to be imposing on the bureau.
VIDEO - Why is Trump now questioning Christine Blasey Ford's credibility? The Fix’s Aaron Blake analyzes why President Trump is now questioning Christine Blasey Ford credibility just days after calling her “credible." (JM Rieger/The Washington Post)
The White House and the FBI have treated each other warily throughout the process, people familiar with the matter said. Both sides were mindful that their written communications might one day be subject to subpoena, particularly if Democrats take control of the House of Representatives in next month’s midterm elections, the people said.
[Yet another Trump lie. The guys lucky it's not against the law to lie to the public.]
President Trump has insisted publicly he was not curtailing the FBI probe. But privately, the White House restricted the FBI from delving deeply into Kavanaugh’s youthful drinking and exploring whether he had lied to Congress about his alcohol use, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.
Some of those involved in the case complained that the bureau did not follow leads that were offered to it.
The FBI, for example, interviewed Deborah Ramirez, who accused Kavanaugh of exposing his penis to her at a gathering when both were college students at Yale, and Ramirez’s team provided agents with more than 20 people who might have information relevant to her claims. But as of Wednesday, Ramirez’s team had no indication that the bureau had interviewed any of them.
VIDEO - White House attacks Democrats' treatment of Kavanaugh White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said the opposition to Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is a "coordinated smear campaign" by Democrats. (Reuters)
Instead, the bureau interviewed three people who Ford said attended the party: Mark Judge, Patrick Smyth and Leland Keyser. The FBI also talked to two other friends of Kavanaugh’s who were listed as attending a gathering during the same summer that Ford alleged she was assaulted: Chris Garrett, who went out with Ford for a time, and Tim Gaudette.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said that agents also had apparently not talked to Kavanaugh himself.
“The White House confirmation that it will not allow the FBI to interview Dr. Blasey Ford, Judge Kavanaugh or witnesses identified by Deborah Ramirez raises serious concerns that this is not a credible investigation,” she said in a statement.
The FBI similarly had not — at least as of Wednesday — interviewed Julie Swetnick, who said in a declaration that Kavanaugh was physically abusive toward girls in high school and was present at a house party in 1982 where she says she was the victim of a “gang” rape. But the bureau did ask Judge, who was named in the affidavit, about her claims.
It is not abnormal in background checks for the White House to tell the bureau what to do. Background checks, unlike criminal investigations, are done for the benefit of the White House so that officials might have more information on people they want to nominate for critical government jobs.
The background check for Kavanaugh, though, was anything but ordinary. Witness interviews were disclosed in near real time, along with complaints that the bureau was not doing enough. The high-profile nature of the matter spurred many who felt they had information to offer the FBI to reach out proactively.
Richard Oh, an emergency room physician who lived in Kavanaugh’s first-year residence hall, said he contacted the FBI office in Denver to describe overhearing someone tearfully telling another student about an incident when Kavanaugh was a student at Yale. The incident, which Oh described to the New Yorker, involved a fake penis and a male student exposing himself.
Oh said he was put on hold and waited so long that he eventually submitted information through the FBI website.
“So far I haven’t heard back,” Oh said Tuesday. Wednesday night, he said that was still the case.
Lawyer Alan M. Abramson said he represented a friend of Ramirez’s who was hoping to share an account of a conversation the two had in the early 1990s about an incident in her freshman year. The friend, Abramson said, was among those whose names Ramirez’s lawyer had passed to the FBI.
Abramson said that when the friend, whom he declined to identify, did not hear from the bureau, he called a supervisor, who referred him to a field office, which said it would pass his information on. “I have not heard from them yet, but I am hopeful that they will still contact me,” Abramson said in an email to The Post.
Kerry Berchem, who attended Yale a year after Kavanaugh, said she contacted the FBI about text messages she received from a close friend of Kavanaugh’s — messages that she believes suggest Kavanaugh or his friends might have been trying to preemptively rebut negative stories that could surface during his confirmation process. Berchem said agents could determine nothing untoward happened but expressed frustration at not being interviewed.
“I’m simply trying to have relevant investigators ask the right questions,” Berchem said in an interview with The Washington Post. “If there was an anticipatory narrative to discredit or conceal the Ramirez allegations in July or September, then the Senate should know about it and take that into account.”
A "farce" as many have labelled this investigation sums it up pretty well. No keenness in the White House to find the truth. The FBI trussed and bound. Putin, Orban, Duterte, et al, would be proud of their fellow authoritarian-minded leader, and his party.
From left, Sens. Jeff Flake, Lisa Murkowski, and Susan Collins Alex Wong and Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
As senators weigh an FBI report on sexual misconduct allegations against Brett Kavanaugh, eyes are on five swing votes — all but one of whom are still undecided.
The lawmakers to watch are Republican Sens. Jeff Flake, Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, as well as Democratic Sens. Heidi Heitkamp and Joe Manchin. Given Republicans’ razor-thin 51-49 majority in the Senate, their collective votes will be the deciding factor in whether or not Kavanaugh is ultimately confirmed to the Supreme Court.
Heitkamp — a red-state senator facing a stiff reelection battle in November — announced Thursday afternoon that she will be opposing Kavanaugh’s nomination. But the other four senators haven’t yet said where they stand.
Flake and Collins on Thursday appeared to signal that they are satisfied with the scope of the FBI report and its findings. Collins has said she found the report to be a “thorough” review even as Democrats have lambasted it for its limited scope, sentiments that Flake echoed.
We’ll be keeping tabs on where these five pivotal senators stand as a procedural vote on Kavanaugh approaches this Friday. Here’s what each of them have said so far.
* Susan Collins: “It appears to be a very thorough investigation, but I’m going back later to personally read the interviews,” Collins told reporters about the FBI report on Thursday. Later in the day, Collins reiterated the sentiment, noting “I’ve not yet finished going through all the materials,” according to CNN’s Manu Raju.
* Jeff Flake: Flake said much of the same. “I think Susan Collins was quoted saying it was very thorough but no new corroborative information came out of it. That’s accurate,” Flake told reporters at the Capitol on Thursday. “I wanted this pause; we’ve had this pause. We’ve had the professionals, the FBI, determine — given the scope that we gave them, current credible allegations — to go and do their review, which they’ve done.” Flake was at the forefront of calls for a one-week delay on a Kavanaugh vote, which would enable the FBI to conduct an investigation.
* Lisa Murkowski: Murkowski has held her cards a bit closer to the chest, noting that she is still working on reading the entirety of the report herself. “I’m not wasting any daylight here,” she said. She did add, however, that she agreed with an assessment Collins had previously made that Kavanaugh was not likely to overturn Roe v. Wade.
* Heidi Heitkamp: Amid all the furor surrounding the FBI report, Heitkamp — who crossed party lines to back Neil Gorsuch — has announced that she will be voting against Kavanaugh citing concerns tied to the sexual misconduct allegations as well as his temperament. “Dr. Ford had nothing to gain and everything to lose by coming forward with her deeply personal story,” Heitkamp wrote in a statement outlining her decision.
* Joe Manchin: Manchin has yet to offer a definitive take on the FBI report and the nomination. “Heidi made her decision. I’ll make mine,” he told reporters. He has previously praised the accomplishments that Kavanaugh has made during his adult life and suggested that the hearing last week could offer him an opportunity to “clear his name.”
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