Month: September 2018

The Republican Kavanaugh Strategy in a Nutshell 

by tristero

Here’s the Republican strategy in a nutshell re: Kavanaugh

#1 Put Blasey Ford in quarantine – Never talk directly to her, only through a “female assistant.” Say she’s compelling, pleasing, and attractive. Ignore her charges.

#2 Double down on slamming every Democrat in sight for “partisanship.” It works for the deplorable members in Trump’s base. What normal people see as out-of-control violent rage, they see as strength.

#3 Create a sham hearing to make sure nothing new comes out – It’s in the bag; they can afford a week’s delay. And if Kavanaugh goes into freefall, they’ll just force through someone else.

#4 If anyone notices it’s a sham, just repeat “Hey, you asked for a hearing, we gave you a hearing, you’re just playing politics!” This makes optimal use of a media addicted to reporting “both sides” no matter how ridiculously irresponsible one of the “sides” behaves.

#5 Calculate (correctly) that the leading Democrats will either stop talking about how bad Kavanaugh is or if they do, they’ll be mostly ignored by the media. As of this writing, there is exactly one article on the main pages of the online media that I regularly check about a Democratic congress-person discussing the hearing (Klobuchar on CNN) .

#6 Calculate (correctly) that the media will give Trump free publicity for his anti-Democratic antics. Hey, it boosts ratings and circulation.

#6 While the country is distracted by this insane circus, continue furiously to advance Trumpism.

The strategy is working beautifully.

KellyAnne and the presumption of innocence

by digby

“I’m a victim of sexual assault. I don’t expect Judge Kavanaugh or Jake Tapper or Jeff Flake or anybody to be held responsible for that. You have to be responsible for your own conduct. This is not Bill Cosby. Those comparisons on your network are a disgrace and the anchor should’ve called them out.”

Is she saying that Blasey Ford is responsible for her own conduct? That she shouldn’t have been at the party? Or is it that her conduct is dishonest for political purposes. I don’t know, but it’s pretty awful.

Meanwhile:

Kellyanne Conway on CNN says people ask her how she talks to her daughters about all this, and her feeling is: “How do I talk to my almost 14-year-old son? This is Judge Kavanaugh now. It could be anybody by next week. Respectfully, it could be any man in any position now.”

“Respectfully?”  Bullshit.

Statistics show that her daughters are far more likely to be sexually assaulted than her son is to be falsely accused. But for millennia society’s view of this is that it’s far more important than no man should have to even endure this possibility while women who actually are assaulted and abused must make the calculation that if they report, in he said/she said situation, as most assault are, the presumption goes to the man who denies it. Even in cases where there is evidence of violence, the new explanation is that the women asked for “rough sex” and she is required to prove that she is not a woman who likes such things. Most women don’t report and for good reason, even now that the laws no longer allow her own sexual history to be part of the evidence defending the accused.

I’m a big believer in the presumption of innocence as a legal concept. It should be up to the state to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that someone has committed a crime. That legal standard has nothing to do with Brett Kavanaugh’s situation, of course. He’s not on trial. This is an employment situation, much like all the other situations in which powerful men have been required to account for their behavior toward women. The bar for the Supreme Court is supposed to be high. It’s one of the most powerful jobs in the world with a guarantee of lifetime employment.

The problem is that when it comes to women’s bodily autonomy, the law is inadequate to defend it and society is muddled and confused, at best. Anti-abortion arguments pit the life of a woman against a potential life that is growing within her own body and refuses to even accept that her life, her decision, can take precedence even in the earliest stages. A woman’s right to control her body and her reproduction must come second.  With rape, unless she can prove that she was raped or otherwise assaulted, her knowledge of what happened cannot be given any more weight than the evidence she can bring to the table. Her bodily integrity can, therefore, be violated without consequence.

I don’t have all the answers to these complicated questions. But I do know that it’s long past time we recognized that our system and frankly, our way of thinking, is inadequately serving half the human population. I don’t want innocent men to be accused or punished for crimes they did not commit. (Again, being denied a promotion to the Supreme Court, particularly after pitching a tantrum worthy of a 5 year old on national TV is not such a situation. And false accusations are very rare.)

But until we deal with this inequity in our legal system and society at large, what we now have cannot be called justice in any real sense of the word.

.

Is he just addled or psychopathic?

by digby

Trump’s addled hypocrisy and intellectual limitations are often illustrated by his past tweets.  There’s even a meme called #theresalwaysatweet.

I’ve never seen it happen within the same 24 hour period before though. Last night:

The White has told the media that the president’s instructions do not supersede the White House instructions.

Hookay. This is working out just great.

.

We’re Forgetting A Few Things 

by tristero

We’re wrong about Kavanaugh, they’re saying. Forget those seamy, salacious charges. This is a man with truly extensive qualifications, an extremely hard and dedicated worker.

Man, is he ever.

Brett Kavanaugh enthusiastically will seize any opportunity that presents itself to tout coat hanger abortions. As the record shows, he’s gone quite a distance out of his way to make life miserable for women who want a safe, legal abortion.

Kavanaugh is also a highly partisan and relentlessly ruthless far right political operative. He stopped at nothing in his attempts to destroy at least one Democratic president. Even though a mere fraction of the documents regarding his political hit jobs have been made public, it is clear that this is a man who’s worked day and night for years to oppose even the semblance of moderation in American politics.

He also intends to keep those political hits coming: in his latest appearance, he openly threatened to take personal revenge on his Democratic opponents – he said they “sowed the wind for decades to come” — once he’s on the Supreme Court. I have no doubt he’ll work at least as hard as Clarence Thomas has at being vindictive. (Note to media: why hasn’t Kavanaugh’s blatant threat against Democrats received the appalled attention it clearly deserves?)

Kavanaugh has also worked hard to support the weirdest delusions of the Republican base: he helped push a bizarre conspiracy theory regarding the death of a presidential counsel — a theory with no basis whatsoever in consensual reality.

Kavanaugh has also signaled through his writings and behavior that once he is on the Supreme Court, he will do everything in his power to ensure that Donald Trump and his cronies in the White House will be shielded from accountability to the law.

Let’s not forget any of his many achievements. Let’s not forget how incredibly hard Kavanaugh worked throughout his career to harm women with his legal decisions and debase our politics with his partisanship.

In addition, Kavanaugh attacked Blasey Ford, he’s a sloppy, belligerent drunk and a perjurer. He’s also  insufferably elitist, entitled, and barely able to contain his rage even when sober. In and of themselves, these behaviors and character flaws all disqualify him from sitting on the Supreme Court.

But even if he was the sweetest, kindest, gentlest, and most humble human being on earth, his extremist views and hyper-partisan career demonstrate profound bias, the very antithesis of judicial balance.

In short, while his bad character should be enough, there is far more than that to disqualify him. Brett Kavanaugh is a uniquely awful choice for the Supreme Court.

They fell in love and it was so darned sweet

by digby

Trump on Kim Jong-un: “We fell in love. Ok? No really. He wrote me beautiful letters.” pic.twitter.com/fscz1sWYS6

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) September 30, 2018

The “Hey, WATCH THIS!!” administration
by Tom Sullivan

“He absolutely can do it, constitutionally, but it is not wise.”
— David Rivkin, a conservative constitutional lawyer for the George H.W. Bush and Reagan administrations

Legal scholars, including conservative ones, view with alarm the many institutional norms our sitting president already has shredded. Taking a flamethrower to the place, as Al Pacino raged in one of his roles, is precisely what many among the unshakable #MAGA base wanted. If they (and we) are lucky, there will be time to regret their impulses later. It is as if “Hey, WATCH THIS!!” became a governing philosophy. It will make for an eye-opening section in political science.

The Washington Post’s Ellen Nakashima examines the corrosive effects of the Trump presidency on the presidency itself. Has granted pardons (Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s, for example) to political allies without consultation with the Office of the Pardon Attorney. He has revoked the security clearance of critics (former CIA director John Brennan; others are on Trump’s to-do-to list). This month, Trump declassified and released law enforcement material connected with special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation:

Constitutionally, such actions are defensible. But the president is “eviscerating precedent and procedure,” said David Rivkin, a conservative constitutional lawyer who was an attorney in the George H.W. Bush and Reagan administrations.

“As far as the mechanics of government are concerned, it is creating anger and disharmony on both the side of the political masters and the career people,” he said. “It breeds resistance. It’s negative synergy.”

Trump’s un­or­tho­dox approach — taking actions, in many cases, without consulting key advisers — may bring a much-needed shake-up to the federal bureaucracy, some conservative scholars say. But others say it not only risks eroding the norms of government, but also may lead Congress and the courts to erect guardrails that constrain the presidency, leaching it of the flexibility integral to its effectiveness.

Some of Trump’s actions may have the salutary effect of sweeping out the bureaucratic cobwebs that periodically need sweeping out, such as the way we over-classify documents and issue near-permanent security clearances:

“Shouldn’t we look, every couple of administrations, at least, at the structure of the executive bureaucracy and ask ourselves, ‘Is it working the way it should work?’ ” said Charles Kesler, a government professor at Claremont McKenna College.

But the cavalier manner in which Trump flexes his Article II powers “creates an opportunity for mischief, if not maliciousness,” says Paul Rosenzweig, a George W. Bush administration veteran now a senior fellow at the R Street Institute, a “center right” think tank.

Stripping Brennan’s security clearance and issuing a pardon to Arpaio, says David Rivkin, a conservative constitutional lawyer for the George H.W. Bush and Reagan administrations, “sets up a pernicious dynamic. He absolutely can do it, constitutionally, but it is not wise.”

Trump is nothing if not unwise.

NBC and the Wall Street Journal reported late Saturday “the White House counsel’s office has given the FBI a list of witnesses they are permitted to interview.” That list omitted investigation of claims by Julie Swetnick that Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh engaged in sexual misconduct at parties as a student at Georgetown Preparatory School.

Fiddling about with the inner workings of the Justice Department would be another norm-breaking Trump action corrosive to the rule of law.

NBC amended its story after Trump denied it Saturday night. You can trust him, can’t you?

NBC News incorrectly reported (as usual) that I was limiting the FBI investigation of Judge Kavanaugh, and witnesses, only to certain people. Actually, I want them to interview whoever they deem appropriate, at their discretion. Please correct your reporting!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2018

* * * * * * * * *

For The Win 2018 is ready for download. Request a copy of my county-level election mechanics primer at tom.bluecentury at gmail.

If only you believe in miracles

by digby

RIP Marty Balin

He was underrated as a lead singer for Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship because Grace Slick was so dynamic. But he was one of the greats who created that 60s psychedelic sound.


Here’s the Rolling Stone obit. 

One of my very favorite love songs ever:

.

The lack of self-awareness is staggering

by digby

Senate Republicans are furious at what they see as a campaign to deny Trump and Kavanaugh in order to push the confirmation process past the midterm elections and, if they win the Senate, keep the seat open until the next presidential election.

When I heard a nearly hysterical Lindsey Graham self-righteously make this accusation and then declare that he had voted to confirm Sotomayor and Kagan I nearly threw my laptop on the floor. Leaving out the name Merrick Garland and that Neil Gorsuch was confirmed without much resistance from Democrats was too much.

I guess that’s what they mean by “just plowing through.”

That quote above is from an article about how Washington is broken. Apparently, both sides are equally to blame. Such a shame. If only the Democrats would continue to take mountains of shit and help Donald Trump and his cynical, nihilist Republican party destroy the country everything would be ok. Damn them…

.

He wasn’t legal and he knows it

by digby

He lied a lot. But this one really gets me:

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh has repeatedly said that he was legally allowed to consume beer as a prep school senior in Maryland. In fact, he was never legal in high school because the state’s drinking age increased to 21 at the end of his junior year, while he was still 17.

Kavanaugh’s drinking has come under intense scrutiny after California professor Christine Blasey Ford alleged that a heavily intoxicated Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her while they were both teenagers at a Maryland house party during the summer of 1982.

The legal age in that state was raised to 21 on July 1, 1982; Kavanaugh did not turn 18 until Feb. 12, 1983.

In a Fox News interview on Monday, Kavanaugh said, “Yes, there were parties. And the drinking age was 18. And yes, the seniors were legal.”

In testimony Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he said all of his comments during the Fox interview were accurate and could be made part of the record.

Pressed at the hearing about his drinking habits in high school, he again claimed he had not broken the law.

“Yes we drank beer, my friends and I, boys and girls. Yes, we drank beer. I liked beer. I still like beer,” he said. “The drinking age as I noted was 18, so the seniors were legal. Senior year in high school, people were legal to drink.”

There is just no way he wouldn’t have known he was drinking illegally in high school. Somebody had to have had a fake ID and he probably had one too. It’s just not something anyone would be unaware of.

I understand why a federal appeals court judge trying to be confirmed for a Supreme Court seat wouldn’t want to admit that he’d ever broken any laws. For all we know, he’s lied about this in all of his FBI background checks in the past and would, therefore, have also committed perjury. Not a good look to be sure.

But it’s simply not believable in any way that he didn’t know he was drinking illegally during High School. I’d guess the majority of people in this country broke tht law. But we don’t lie about it 35 years later. That’s weird. Especially for a man who claims to have been a choir boy.

There are many reasons why this man is as unfit for the Supreme Curt as Donald Trump is unfit for the White House, not the least of which is the fact that he’s credibly accused of sexual assault. He’s a partisan political operative who pretty much admitted it in the hearing on Thursday and made it clear that he planned to wreak revenge on the Democrats with his “reap the whirlwind” threat if he gets on the court.

But like Donald Trump he seems to be the kind of congenital liar who does it even in situations where it’s easily disproved, basically falling back on the “you can believe me or you can believe your eyes” challenge.

.

Nobody on the planet has thinner skin than a Trump voter

by digby

Honestly, these jokes are very mild:

More than a dozen fans walked out of Wanda Sykes’ show at Count Basie Center for the Arts Thursday, after the comedian opened with a series of jokes about President Donald Trump.

Sykes began her set poking fun at Trump’s assertion that world leaders at his recent United Nations address were laughing with him, not at him. (If that was the case, “What was the joke he told?” Sykes quipped).

She also joked that, while other presidents seemed to have aged at a faster-than-typical rate while in office, the general public seemed to be aging more quickly during Trump’s administration. Trump hadn’t aged a bit, Sykes deadpanned.

Bunch of people heckled @iamwandasykes at her Count Basie Theatre for doing a significant amount of material about our…current political climate.

Her response: “What do you expect? I’m a black lesbian.”

👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏 pic.twitter.com/6wQMr5QnKL— Courtney Marabella (@CourtMarabella) September 28, 2018

A few minutes after the show began, some attendees began heckling the comedian.

“Do some comedy!” one attendee shouted.

“Too political!” another yelled from the crowd.

Sykes, a frequent Trump critic, paused briefly to ask what displeased attendees had expected to see at her show, and continued with her set.

Attendees said they believed one of the hecklers and his party were removed from the theater by staff. A few said they walked out because they thought it was unfair the heckler had been asked to leave.

The walkout erupted in the theater lobby with yelling and heated arguments as attendees turned against staff and against each other.

I love how they can’t admit they’re Trump voters. But hey, being a lying jerk is definitional for these people.

And to think they call liberals snowflakes …

.