The ridiculousness of the FBI investigation into the Kavanaugh allegations is on full display, as they apparently interviewed no one, then issued a report that no one is allowed to see, but the WH is convinced everything is cool.
It’s absurd for any number of reasons, but I am old enough to remember when if the WH tried to do some shit like this, both sides of the aisle would be livid, because if for no other reason, this is the executive just openly and brazenly thumbing their noses at the legislature. They ordered an investigation, and the WH gave them a sham. People who actually care about governance and the pocket constitutions they carry around in their blazers would be upset about this.
We’re a fucking banana republic.
SiubhanDuinne
Well, apparently it was persuasive enough for Joe Manchin ?
anon
If the report exonerated him , the WH would have leaked the report yesterday.
Amir Khalid
This is a test comment. Please do not read.
p.a.
Fascists invented Calvinball.
Lee Hartmann
One side of the aisle is not livid.
Immanentize
@SiubhanDuinne: I know.
Really Cole, please get on the Manchin vote. He is your Democratic Senator. There are a million reasons for him NOT to bvote for cloture even if he will eventually vote for the candidate….
Thank you.
D58826
And what do you have against bananas?
Anonymous At Work
The other 10 members of the Supreme Court (3 days after SPW becomes PPW) will drown out his vote.
D58826
@anon:
it would have been included in that test text message from yesterday.
tobie
I didn’t know the White House had the authority to tell the FBI not only what to investigate but how to do it. The FBI’s acting as if it would have needed the President’s permission to interview anyone besides Don Mcgahn’s approved list regarding the Ford and Ramirez allegations. Sources and methods of investigations are now under the WH’s control. How long before the FBI is told to investigate all Democratic Senators and Representatives. We are now in Erdogan’s Turkey, Putin’s Russia.
wvng
John, I’ve called both Manchin’s and Capito’s offices. I focused on Kavanauh’s lying and temperament. It is worth a try.
LosGatosCA
Face it – the FBI is very bad at its job other than generating talking points for Faux News and ratfucking Democrats.
Aleta
The politician who used S assault to get laughs at a pep rally had control over who the FBI could question. Senate Rs are fine with that.
Mart
Mike Sacks wrote six days ago, “worth noting FBI Director Chris Wray was two years behind Kavanaugh at Yale and Yale Law, where they both entered into the same conservative legal circles that would land them in the Bush Admininistration.” Kavman, dude, relax – we got this bro.
tobie
Heitkamp’s office in North Dakota is answering calls. Office staff says her vote will depend on the FBI report, which she’ll look at okay. She seems to have no objection to the process itself. What a friggin coward. Does she really think she’ll win Republicans in her state if she votes for Kavanaugh? Has she considered whether Democrats will turn out for a turn-coat?
jonas
There’s a famous story that after the Constitutional Convention had concluded in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin emerged from the hall and a woman asked him, “Well, Dr. Franklin, what have we got? A monarchy or a republic?” “A republic,” replied Franklin, “…if you can keep it.”
gene108
@tobie:
Just shows how tilted and wired the media is for Republicans.
AG Lynch and Bill talked for a half hour and she recused herself.
Wray and Rosenstein are classmates and former co-workers, respectively, of Kavanaugh and no one dares mention this gives an impression of impropriety.
I really wonder what the media reaction would have been, if Obama limited the scope of the FBI’s investigation of Hillary’s email server. I don’t have to wonder, I know there would be demands for impeachment*.
* Something that’s gone down the memory hole, but in the winter and spring of 2014 Republicans were making noise about whether or not to impeach Obama. They realized it might fire up the Dems, so the Boehner decided the House will sue the Administration over an provision in the ACA.
satby
@gene108: I wonder if the Democrats would have standing to sue over this truncated background check? Discovery could be fun.
satby
I’m old enough to remember when “if a rape is inevitable, you may as well lie back and enjoy it” was a real thing said to women.
Now they’re saying it to the whole country.
tobie
@gene108: Good point. Lynch had to recuse but Wray and Rosenstein are given free rein to steer a sham investigation of their friend. Apparently Rosentein and Kavanaugh worked together on the Starr investigation. How much more partisan can you get?
Ridnik Chrome
@SiubhanDuinne: It would really suck if a Democrat cast the deciding vote to confirm Greg Marmalard.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Well, all we can do is vote. Vote, canvass, get others out to the polls, do whatever we can to help. It was always going to come down to voting.
I know it’s disheartening, I know it’s maddening. But throwing up our hands is what they want us to do. They want us to give up. They want us to look at this shit and shake our heads and tell ourselves that this is how it is, and this is how it’s always been and how it always will be, and there’s nothing we can do, so we might as well not bother. This is what they want from us.
Well, fuck that. Fuck it sideways and inside out. Fuck that shit. It is not how it has to be, not if we don’t want it to be. Yes, we have a tough map this year, but never forget why that is. It’s because we won all the tight Senate races in 2012. We won. We kicked their asses, and now we have to hold a whole lot of seats in iffy states. Yes, it’ll be harder to hold them all this year. Yes, we might lose some. We might fall a seat or two behind. But we can win the House if we work at it, if we don’t let ourselves give up and give in to hopelessness. And then in 2020, they have the tough map. They’re the ones who are going to have to try to hold on to a whole mess of iffy seats.
I’d love to win back both houses this year, and amazingly, even with this map, we still have a shot at that. It’s a month to election day. They have their justice, almost surely. I always believed they would. Collins is worthless. Flake is worthless. He isn’t even running for reelection and he’s still scared shitless to cross his masters. Fuck them. Kavanaugh was always going to get confirmed, because that’s what they wanted, and nothing—nothing—was ever going to keep them from doing it.
So O.K. They get their justice. Give it to them. We will get the House. Maybe the Senate, maybe not, but we will get the House. This is what we have to do. Don’t listen to them. Don’t give up. There are more of us than there are of them. We can do this. We have to do this. So today is your day to piss and moan about the whole awfulness of it all. It is awful. But it isn’t the last word. The last word comes on November 6, and this time, we will have it.
Emma
They are what they are. They built their organizations over decades and this is the result. The question is are we willing to be as ruthless as they are in the politics of destruction in the short term? Go after the Democratic senators that vote yes? I know you say you vote for Manchin because the other option would be worse. HOW? Manchin votes for a drunken rapist whose primary role will be to bring back the 1880s. WHAT IS WORSE?
Ridnik Chrome
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
The Republicans are just fine with that. We might get the House for a few years, and maybe the Senate, too, but they’ll have their majority on the SCOTUS at least until Thomas retires or dies (I give him another ten or fifteen years) and maybe even longer.
Lulymay
@satby:
Yes! my husband is now age 85 and this is a saying that was commonly used in his group. The only thing different is today’s “man” thinks it but just is wary of saying it out loud.
tokyokie
@satby:
And I’m old enough to remember how that comment cost Clayton Williams the governor’s race against Ann Richards.
Wayne
Trump recognized this as another opportunity to discredit the FBI. And it worked very well.
I expect this to filter through the court system when defense lawyers need to counter FBI reports on their clients.
James E Powell
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
Absolutely. People not voting is how we got into this situation. This is the most important election of our lifetimes. We will never be able to reverse the disaster of 2016, but we have to get started on the repair work.
rikyrah
Tell that truth, Cole.
rikyrah
Principles aside, FBI bends to pressure, Republicans have learned
Rachel Maddow notes that the FBI investigation into Brett Kavanaugh will not be made public according to FBI rules, though as Republicans have learned by now (and as the Hillary Clinton campaign can attest), FBI rules bend under pressure.
A Ghost To Most
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): You are far more optimistic than I am. We’re dancing on the edge of a razor.
James E Powell
@Wayne:
Well, he had some help from the FBI. All they needed to do was have a spokes-creature tell the press/media that they needed more than a week and they needed to have a no interference in their investigation. My guess is that the RWers are in complete control of that agency and they now serve Trump rather than the nation.
schrodingers_cat
We need to stop playing by the rules imposed by the R enabling media
We need to stop giving in to defeatism when Rs behave like Rs.
We need to fight to win.
To do that we need to take one day at a time.
When Ds won the presidency, and both houses hateful Mitch McConnell fought back he didn’t just give up.
rikyrah
Kavanaugh fails own test of judicial temperament
Rachel Maddow compares the standards for being a judge, as laid out by Brett Kavanaugh in a 2015 speech, with his unhinged, partisan rant before the Senate Judicial Committee.
BC in Illinois
Banana Republicans.
rikyrah
Reason for hacking case referral to Mueller investigation unclear
Ben Schreckinger, national political correspondent for Politico, talks with Rachel Maddow about the FBI referring the case of the hacking of an anti-Trump Republican to Robert Mueller’s Trump Russia investigation.
rikyrah
Republicans set schedule for viewing FBI Kavanaugh report
Rachel Maddow reports breaking news that Mitch McConnell has announced that the FBI has submitted its report, as Chuck Grassley has set a schedule for the report’s viewing, and protesters against Kavanaugh’s confirmation hold vigils across the United States.
James E Powell
@schrodingers_cat:
Because the Ds won the presidency and both houses, but the Rs still owned the press/media.
NotMax
Alain, site is going glitchy again. Same symptom as preceded a prior meltdown – notice the change of font size for the nym on the final comment as opposed to any others. That change replicates on whatever the bottom most comment is and bounces back to normal on that comment when its position is replaced with the next..
jonas
Look, for all we know, the investigation was done well and the report does get to the bottom of what happened to Ms. Blasey Ford in some way. The fact that McConnell and Grassley are treating it like it’s a ticking time bomb is the problem. Keep it top secret, and force a vote before we find out what’s in it.
Once again — all together now — “can you imagine if a Democratic administration were doing this?”
D58826
@Ridnik Chrome: From 1933-1937 FDR had both houses of Congress and SCOTUS still declared all New Deal legislation unconstitutional. He threatened to pack the court and at least one Justice flipped. I think the cliche was ‘a switch in time saved 9’
terraformer
And what happens if the November election isn’t a Blue Wave, but instead delivers a result that keeps the House under R control? What then?
I mean, we’ve known about election shenanigans since at least Ohio 2004, yet nothing has been done about it to ensure some level of verification. What if they steal the election, again? I shudder whenever I think about it. That’s really all we’ve got now, the vote.
Mike in NC
It was obvious from Day One that the criminal Trump family was going to use the Oval Office to execute a massive smash-and-grab operation to enrich themselves as much as possible before getting caught. The shitty NY Times could have exposed their long history of lawbreaking years ago but preferred to continue their decades-long vendetta against the Clintons instead.
Emma
@terraformer: Infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure. We need to go local as well as national. The school boards. The council members. The state judiciary. AND we need to be ruthless. These people are the enemy. Comity be damned.
AND the press. A lot of it is part of them. They are the enemy too. Hammer them ruthlessly at every bothsiderism instance.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
I’ve been mulling some thoughts:
On Renate Dolphin, I wish to fuck we can grow up as a country about sexual desire and intimacy. This includes dumping the phrase “slut shaming”.
The reason why I say that is that everybody likes what they like when it comes to intimate partners. Some prefer sweet monogamy with no frills, and that’s OK. Some prefer being intimate with their own gender, and that’s OK. Some prefer pleasure without emotional entanglement, and prefer that “slice of life” and that’s OK. Some prefer group oriented activities, and that’s OK. Some prefer either dominance or submission, and that’s OK.
With that in mind, a sweet young woman like Renate can go through her early life and finding her preference without cruel bullying. A woman like Christine Ford need not feel sullied over the behavior of idiots during adolescence. People can meander through their lives secure in not having their sexual choices judged by society at large.
Kay
One of the most powerful parts of Ford’s testimony was her recounting how Kavanaugh and his friend laughed at her. I think it was powerful for people because that’s not a female thing, it’s a human thing. That is what you remember. When people say “the ring of truth” they really mean the shock of recognition- “that’s true” you think, because it is true.
Here’s the President of the United States doing the exact same thing and encouraging and egging on others to follow him:
This is the quality of the people we’re elevating to the highest positions- this low. They’re worse than 90% of people. The bottom 10%
NotMax
@D58826
Not even close to all.
Persistent myth. The vote on the case that refers to was cast before FDR announced or submitted the so-called court packing scheme (which was killed in committee in Congress).
Alain the site fixer
Folks I’m trying to get edit comments working and so things may be slightly goofy off and on as I try something and have to rebouiod the cache. If I can get it all working correctly, you should be able to edit comments like in the past without seeing others’ stuff and without overly taxing the server.
ruemara
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: the fuck? Renate Dolphin didn’t sleep with anyone.
AND NONE OF THIS WAS ANYONE’S CHOICE
schrodingers_cat
@Alain the site fixer: Thanks Alain.
debit
@ Cole and everyone else. This is probably going to be an Eat a Shit Taco kind of day, but please consider how you respond to it. Do you want people to read your words and give up or keep fighting?
schrodingers_cat
@James E Powell: Well then, don’t take your cues from the media.
kindness
In the past too many times we have been told to hold our nose and vote for turncoat Democrats who hurt us all. With all due respect this is a vote that rises above that. Any Democratic Senator who votes to confirm Kavanaugh will never get a dime from me. And I donated to Heidekamp last time.
Penn
Canadian here.
I’m starting to think that one of the reasons that parliamentary systems are more stable than the US style government structure is that if you win an election in a parliamentary system you control all of the government, essentially. This means you don’t have to break the system to get things done, as the Republicans are manifestly doing. I means that there are fewer people up here claiming the government is the problem, because they can always just win the next election and have all the power anyway.
I’m unsure how the US comes back from the current administration. Is the system repairable at all? It used to run on expected norms and those are no longer operative. I guess you just have to legislate them all now.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@ruemara:
She says not, but the conduct of Big Brain Brett an his asshole friends tends to indicate otherwise. I’m OK with her denying it, because as a country, we’re really fucking stupid about this, and too eager to call middle teens slutty for engaging in sex, particularly with more than one partner.
In a healthy society, she wouldn’t have the peer pressure, then and now, to hide it.
SecondPlaceDarwinAward
The Kavanaugh Kapers, brought to you by President Toadchoad, and featuring sentimental oldies from Chuck and Orrin, The Amazing Coprolites.
NotMax
@Alain the site fixer
Presumably you’re already aware the entire site took a side trip to Database Errorland yesterday.
Bobby Thomson
We are. And elections aren’t going to fix it. In my lifetime there will be a real (France/Russia/Spain/Rwanda) civil war in this country. When 40% of the population no longer accepts norms and institutions, we’re pretty much done. When it’s acceptable to have mass punching down rallies, we should be done.
randy khan
More reason to call the Senate. Here are some numbers:
Collins – 202-224-2523
Flake – 202-224-4521
Murkowski – 202-224-6665 (To leave a message for her, you need to press 2 for messages from people who want responses; she doesn’t give you an option for someone who doesn’t want a response.)
Sasse – 202-224-4224 (added because he gave a floor statement last night that suggests he might at least be a possible no)
You can reach your own Senators by calling 202-224-3121 and asking for their offices.
rikyrah
Following report, Trump crafts underwhelming response to fraud allegations
10/03/18 12:48 PM—UPDATED 10/03/18 12:53 PM
By Steve Benen
The latest reporting from the New York Times on Donald Trump’s finances is absolutely brutal. Based on exhaustive research, the newspaper uncovered evidence of “dubious tax schemes” and “outright fraud” that Trump exploited to receive hundreds of millions of dollars from his father.
The findings paint a picture in which the president, far from the self-made man he pretends to be, relied heavily on illegal handouts. At the heart of the story is the prospect of criminal fraud, criminal tax evasion, and money laundering, which the American president exploited to fuel his rise to power.
Given that the Times’ reporting effectively made Trump look like a criminal, I was eager to see the White House’s response. Last night, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders issued a written statement condemning “the failing New York Times” – these folks do strive for message consistency – for publishing a “misleading attack.” Her statement didn’t point to any factual errors, though, Sanders quickly changed the subject to the nation’s low unemployment rate.
This morning, the president himself weighed in via Twitter.
……………………
The Center for America Progress’ Seth Hanlon, a veteran of the Obama White House, added this morning that the IRS “uses the ‘time value of money’ concept and charges compounding interest on unpaid taxes.”
Politico’s report noted, “[I]t’s not clear why Trump fixated on that idea.”
My thought exactly. The paper of record just published an indictment of sorts that characterizes the nation’s president as a fraud and a cheat. In response, Trump is puzzled that the newspaper relied to the “time value of money” to make its case? That’s the response?
Meanwhile, NBC News reported this morning that the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance is reviewing the allegations raised in the New York Times’ reporting
gene108
@Emma:
Manchin voted against confirming DeVos. He voted against gutting the ACA. He voted against the tax scam bill. There’s always tension about what Manchin will do, but he’s voted the right way on the two most important policy things Republicans have tried to pull this year.
Also, too would be Democratic voters are not energized by the sort of rigid ideology and win at all costs mind set that dominates Republicans. Our voters want good, honest government that produces results and are easily discouraged, when the results don’t come fast enough.
Republicans know this, which is one reason they keep trying to make government dysfunctional, because then a good chunk of would be Democratic voters don’t see a point in voting.
Bobby Thomson
@Kay: and Ari Fucking Fleischer tried to argue Trump wasn’t mocking her.
It’s shameful that he isn’t in prison or at least covered in spit wherever he goes.
Brickley Paiste
Facts matter, even when you’re angry.
grandpa john
@James E Powell: How about those purer of heart voters who decided to send a message by voting third party? Wonder if any of them are now getting the message?
Mnemosyne
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Given that Kavanaugh and his buddies are being accused of giving girls a combo of alcohol and Quaaludes to facilitate gang rape, I sure wouldn’t make an automatic assumption at this point that she consented.
Brickley Paiste
@Bobby Thomson:
Good thing that all of us progressives have weapons and training about how to use them!
Tazj
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I think they used her name because Renate rhymed easily in their cruel poems. I guess they all knew her and she went on a date with Brett but why take their word over hers? You should not only have the right to sleep with whoever you want but a right to privacy about that.
Jeffro
@rikyrah: the reason he’s fixated on the “time value of money” is that – y’all watch – he wants to pretend to his followers that “sure, my dad gave me a little money when I started out, $1M, $2M tops. But now the Failing New York Times wants to turn that $1M, with decades of inflation, into multi-millions or something. Fake News!”
Never mind that he was a multimillionaire due to his dad’s gifts before he was out of high school. Never mind (MUCH bigger picture) that he and his siblings are big-time tax cheats – see also, “All County Building Supply & Maintenance”
Seriously, he’ll be talking about how the NYT is blowing his kiddie “allowance” all out of proportion…
Alain the site fixer
@NotMax: I saw one report of it, but when I looked it was fine. What time of day was it (Eastern)? I haven’t been around like I am some of the time.
Ridnik Chrome
@kindness:
Any Democratic Senator who votes to confirm Kavanaugh should have his or her ass booted out of the party.
@debit: They’ve been putting extra shit on the shit tacos lately.
zhena gogolia
I just watched Rita Hayworth and Fred Astaire dancing to Cole Porter’s “So Near and Yet So Far” in You’ll Never Get Rich (1941). A few minutes of absolute perfection — pure beauty and grace. As the country was about to be plunged into a life-and-death struggle with pure evil. Somewhat like today. At least we know what we’re dealing with. They are worthless pigs. Can’t we defeat a bunch of worthless pigs? (Apologies to pigs)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qn7YcPQgPDo
Jeffro
Anyway, back to the topic at hand: if the GOP thinks they’re going to drive up THEIR turnout by putting Kavanaugh on SCOTUS, I got a blue tsunami for ’em…
And if he goes on, the next Dem president sure as hell better pack the fuck out of the court. Six flaming liberals added in the first 60 days of her/his term: a must.
NotMax
@Jeffro
“Barely kept me in bubble gum and caviar.”
:)
schrodingers_cat
I don’t think it is in the bag for Rs yet. Otherwise Propotinus and Eats Bricks and Paste wouldn’t be here to spread the cheer.
KithKanan
@Ridnik Chrome: Any Democratic Senator votes for Kavenaugh and I’m booting my own ass out of the party. I reregister No Party Preference the same day (admittedly easy for me to do because there’s zero penalty for it, even as regards primary voting, vs registering Democratic in my state).
I’ll still crawl over broken glass to vote for any D over any R for as long as the Rs are what they are (and I wish I had any hope that they will ever change), but trying to reconcile my partisan identity with continual disappointment is tearing me apart, and my mental health is shitty enough right now as it is.
HeleninEire
@Kay: Those three assholes need to be doxxed. Who are they?
NotMax
@Alain the site fixer
Honestly don’t recall precisely but pretty sure it was early evening, blog time.
Mart
@gene108: Yes, Defeat bluedogs in the primary, never vote against one in the general.
HeleninEire
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Oh how very idealistic of you.
Mull away while we women concentrate on not being raped and murdered.
gene108
@Penn:
We can and will. I think a lot of people are at their breaking points, with regards to what Republicans are doing.It used to run on expected norms and those are no longer operative. I guess you just have to legislate them all now.
Every government, at some level, runs on expected norms. When one major party in government disregards those norms, any style of government can collapse.
Mnemosyne
@KithKanan:
Can I ask if you’re in one of the states with a Democratic senator who’s likely to vote for Kavanaugh? Because changing your affiliation in, say, California, where both of our senators fought hard to kill this nomination, seems like cutting off your nose to spite your face.
AFAICT, the only two Democrats who are even making noises about voting “yes” are Manchin and Heitkamp. You might be better off calling or faxing to give them your opinion.
NotMax
@Alain the site fixer
While you’re poking around under the hood maybe you could find a minute to excise that final “s” on the word Misbehavings in the sidebar? Been an eyesore for many months.
debit
@HeleninEire: See, I read that as an affirmation of ye olde fandom saying: Your kink is not my kink and that’s okay. Not something I would expect to draw ire.
KithKanan
@Mnemosyne: Yes, I live in California. Yes it’s an irrational response, but it’s better than my first response to hearing Manchin was thinking about voting for Kavenaugh, which was to think about taking out a loan I can’t afford to donate the max amount to Manchin’s Republican opponent.
I seriously can’t be in a party with an elected representative who thinks (or votes, whatever they think privately) this arrogant perjuring almost certainly abusing shithead deserves elevation to the supreme court. It’s an absolute red line for me. And since trying to take them out in the general is even stupider and more counterproductive than my leaving the party, leaving the party is the only way I can rationalize the situation to myself and stay… well… as sane as I already am, which isn’t very.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Mnemosyne:
True dat.
Ridnik Chrome
@schrodingers_cat: I get Eats Bricks and Paste, but who’s Propotinus?
Kay
@Bobby Thomson:
because it’s indefensible. So they all have to lie. And they drop down another couple of floors on the decency scale.
And it’s spreading. It’s infected their whole party and their whole base. “Lock her up” doesn’t fire them up anymore so he has to go lower- he now has to mock the assault survivor to get a rise out of them. A month from now it will have to be worse.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@debit:
Yup – and American prudishness over sex while presenting and sexualizing every male-female interaction is all over this story.
Seeing and hearing conservative flyover country women aged 45 and above on this stuff is a real eye opener, and genuinely irritating.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Penn:
I am sure there were Americans asking that in the 1860s. Go read up on the Dreed Scott decision, it was basically a conservative packed supreme court powning the libertards for the LUZ and that blew up into a civil war, but the country survived.
schrodingers_cat
@Ridnik Chrome: He/she is not on this thread, they are on AL’s morning thread slagging on Rahm and other Ds.
Kay
@KithKanan:
I’m disappointed in Manchin too. Kavanaugh flattered him. I thought Manchin was tougher than, that attention from an elite wouldn’t impress him. I’m ashamed of him. Get off your knees, buddy. Kavanaugh isn’t all that. There are a thousand just like him.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Absolute bottom of the bottom.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Yep. That cut to the soul…if you had one.
burnspbesq
@James E Powell:
Ask yourself why that is so. Ponder the demise of Air America, and the permanent financial crises of Mother Jones and The Nation.
If you want to own something, fucking invest in it. This is not rocket surgery.
Kay
@KithKanan:
The worse thing about conservative Democrats is not that they’re conservative. It’s that they kowtow to Republicans. They don’t have any self-respect. They’re so thrilled when a Republican gives them the seal of approval. It’s gross and subservient. Ugh. Develop some pride.
jacy
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: much more likely she turned one of them down and they decided to make her a joke. The joke would have been funniest to them if she had never slept with any of them.
Emma
@KithKanan: Congratulations. You have reached sainthood. Now go away. We’ll keep fighting for you, even if you don’t fight for yourself.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@Mnemosyne: Nor would I make an assumption that they were telling the truth about the “club.” Gangs like theirs have been known to pick a lower status member of the group to smear, because they can. And enjoying banging more than one or guys serially in HS was a smear then. It shouldn’t have been then and it shouldn’t be now.
They are privileged bullies, and like trump, facing the possibility of consequences for the first time ever. As sadly remote as that is for Bart O’K.
Ceci7
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Agreed. Yes, it’s possible she didn’t sleep with any of them, or that she was drugged to remove her consent. But why should anyone think less of her if she did have sex in high school? As you note, the one-two punch of prudishness and sexualization is everywhere and it harms those of us who are supposed to carry all the shame.
eric
@Kay: Oddly, no, there are not. Kavanaugh is a perfect storm of pedigree, sexual aggression, white privilege, partisan anger, and shameless and unapologetic whore to republican executive power. There are people that have some of these, or all of these to a degree. But Kavanaugh is the undistilled essence of the caricature of a Machiavellian “prince.” This why they are fighting so hard for such a flawed nominee.
celticdragonchick
@jacy:
Exactly.
scav
Apparently this really is how a job interview works for those currently ruling classes: all a mere token formality as the job / position / partnership / spot in Ivy League Class of Whatever have all been kept warm and waiting. Expect to read soon how Kavanaugh archieved his robes entirely on his own shining merits and to universal plaudits: a self-made man of the people risen from hardscrabble obscurity (complete with ironing board and never ever any loans or gifts from daddy).
burnspbesq
@KithKanan:
You can’t be in a party???
IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU.
It’s about the fucking country.
You can either get the fuck over yourself and do what is required to save the country, or you can kindly get out of the way and let the people who care about the country get it done for you.
Fucking precious free-riders …
schrodingers_cat
@jacy: I find your interpretation far more likely. Have we reached peak Mansplaining yet?
AnonPhenom
The Republicans managing the investigation of Kavanaugh have not discovered anything they did not want to find, much the same way their investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election also did not discover anything they did not wish to find.
I guess that means it’s time for everyone to move on, look forward, or whateverthefuck…
trollhattan
This ghoulish female “friend of Brett” I just heard interviewed on NPR–and boy did she get some airtime–is the prototype rich white female Trump voter. Positive “the Brett I know” would NEVER do such a thing, that he’s been attacked unfairly, and that Ford’s testimony and actions have been deeply suspicious from the start, why, just look at the timing and how the two front doors were years before her therapy visits and her shoe size and….
Buying it hook, line, sinker and judge, the lot of them. Because “shot a man in Reno” would have been waved off as “youthful indiscretion.” Ugh.
Hill Dweller
@Kay: But Manchin fires a shotgun in his political ads. Isn’t that toughness personified?
Emma
@gene108: So we’re still asking women to go to the back of the bus “for the general good.” Yea, NO.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Ridnik Chrome:
Procopius, I presume.
guachi
If Manchin votes yes it lets Collins off the hook to vote no.
debit
@burnspbesq: Yep. But don’t hurt his/her feelings! Or they won’t vote. That’ll show everyone.
ETA: All these fuckers want is another 6 years on the gravy train. All politics is local. You don’t like the way they vote? Move there and vote against them. Or donate to their primary opponent.
Oh edit, honey, I love you so much. Let’s never fight again.
sixthdoctor
@guachi: I’d be shocked if Collins votes no.
japa21
Donnelly, who last I saw was behind in the polls, has come out and said he will vote “NO” on Kavanaugh. Heitkamp is also behind in the polls. Actually, she would probably benefit from voting “NO”. Voting “yes” won’t help her and may hurt her. Obviously, Donnelly decided voting “NO” may be his best bet.
Manchin, who is comfortably ahead in his race, probably won’t hurt himself if he votes “NO” but may hurt himself if he votes “yes”. All he has to say is that he is concerned about Kavanaugh’s character and his temperament and that Trump could nominate someone else with better character and temperament who would still have a similar judicial philosophy to Kavanaugh and is someone he could support.
eric
@japa21: The one person a “yes” helps is a republican (collins)!
Brachiator
@trollhattan:
Didn’t some people say the same thing about Jeffrey Dahmer?
NotMax
@sixthdoctor
And Milli Vanilli appeared to be a very competent singing duo.
KithKanan
@burnspbesq: You’re not wrong. I need to get the fuck out of the way, for what is left of my own sanity. I’m a really shitty person, and trying to follow politics while feeling paralyzed and helpless to change it in any way (because I have such a low opinion of myself that I am absolutely convinced anything I do to try to help the situation will actually make it worse) is seriously interfering with every aspect of my life.
Matt
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
Absolutely get out and vote. But we need to start thinking about what happens afterwards.
Let’s say turnout is way up, massive Blue wave. Morning after the election, Trump announces that the FBI has “detected” a massive Chinese hack of the electoral system, declares the result invalid, and promises that new elections will be held “once the machines have been secured”.
Who exactly will stop that? The GOP congresscritters who get to keep their jobs? The five Republicans on SCOTUS who all got their seats from lying and partisan ratfuckery?
People say that “2018 is life-or-death for democracy”, but IMO the 2016 election was a high-dose radiation exposure. Democracy is still up and moving around, maybe feeling kinda bleh, but it’s had all its bone marrow and gut cells destroyed and is just waiting to die.
zhena gogolia
@KithKanan:
Just calm down. Stay a Democrat and vote.
Sister Golden Bear
@Amir Khalid: Ce n’est pas un commentaire.
Kay
Will they at least force the supreme court justice to retract his vow to punish Democrats and liberals who come before him in court?
Can we at least preserve some fig leaf of actual justice? Or does that fall the needs and wants of Brett Kavanaugh too?
He announced he loathes half the country, and plans to rule on that basis. Can we get some protection from him? You know, since we’re paying his salary and all?
Emma
@Matt: There is such as thing as passive resistance. We need to work out where best to jam the sabots.For example, if millions of people decided not to file taxes, there aren’t enough IRS officers to go around.
KithKanan
@zhena gogolia: To stop me from voting Democratic in any election ever, they’ll have to kill me, regardless of whether I remain registered as one.
NotMax
@Matt
But – but – radiation is good for you now.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I should be beyond being shocked by how little the Rs care for, to quote Superman, truth, justice, and the American way. And yet I’m shocked. I also seem to be grief-stricken. I need a little while to pull myself together.
D58826
Lats face it, if sex videos existed at the time and we had one with KB screwing half the senior class, the GOP would pass it off as a school project in human sexual response.
Ruviana
@Brachiator: Dunno about Dahmer who was pretty isolated but absolutely about Ted Bundy who was, incidentally, an active Republican. I think he was an aide in the Republican governor’s office in WA state during part of his time there. People were shocked that such a nice conservative young man could be accused of such things until everyone saw it was true.
ETA: OMG the edit button’s back!
Emma
@Kay: No. No. No. And you know it.
Kay, you have been an inspiration to me. I am a very passive voter — I give money and vote, and that’s pretty much it. You’re involved, and I admire your ideas. We need to create and/or encourage groups thinking the same way. We need to bypass the press and get the message out. We need to take back local offices.
Here’s an idea: we’re always raising funds. Let’s target those very low excitement races — school boards, county commissioners, judges in state courts. Take those back.
HeleninEire
@debit: Yeah, maybe. I read it as a purity pony thing. “Wouldn’t it be great if everyone just got along??” We are so, so, so far from that. There are so many more battles to fight. Battles that I thought we were at least marginally winning. We need to focus on what’s important. TBogg’s Mumia Sweatshirt comes to mind.
Apologies to @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: if Debit interpreted you more accurately than I.
Raoul
I for one am shocked that decades of horse race journalism has yeilded the results of an ungovernable politics, where one party is malfeasance top-to- bottom, and the other is a mish-mash of disparate interests unable to excercize power with any alacrity.
RIP founding fathers great experiment (with wishes there had been publicly recognized founding mothers). 242 years is a pretty good run!
(I’m not really quite this resigned to collapse. But it keeps getting closer.)
Raoul
Oh, and your post title is spot on. A good chunk of this mess is at the feet of Congress (and I’ll make a rare both sides argument here). We’ve had decades of our legislative branch ceeding ground. And here we are.
Rommie
Adam has posted, more than once, that the FBI doesn’t want to be left holding the bag on the “investigation”
At the moment, they are holding a stinky bag of poo, right out there in the open. What/where’s the response?
It’s crazy time for crazy time! Blackout Bart is getting measured for that robe…(insert Buford T. Justice swearing here)
Ruviana
@SecondPlaceDarwinAward: The best K-Tel compilation album ever!
LAO
I’m so angry I can’t see straight.
exhale — now, I’ll go and check out the thread,
Brachiator
@Penn:
I don’t think that this is true at all. I do not think that the US government is perfect, not by a long shot, and Canada may be remarkably stable, but parliamentary governments all over the world deal with fractures and stress, and sometimes collapse.
Raoul
@Emma: Yup.
I gave over $1,000 to MN House races this fall. Many of those candidates raise small amounts. But the next four years will matter greatly in terms of state implementation of health care, redistricting, etc.
I think races like Beto’s are very exciting. But some of us are better off giving to school board races, state supreme court justices, etc. The right figured this out decades ago.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
@rikyrah: If I were at Wharton I’d revoke his MBA. The time value of money is an elementary concept of economics and finance, and I guarantee is taught at Wharton and any other MBA program worth a damn and has been for decades. I went to a mere public university for my degree in economics and it was covered there. He doesn’t like it because adjusting for inflation to today’s dollars makes it look like he got even more from daddy than he did, but even the unadjusted totals have to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
There’s no solution to what we’re facing except winning elections. The GOP is covering for Trump, but give them a guy like Trump who’s actually not a total incompetent buffoon and they will do the real and permanent damage. We need another FDR era where the non-crazies are in charge for about three straight decades to fix this mess. It (hopefully) starts in a month.
On the media – we’ve been complaining about bias and false equivalence for decades. It’s not going to change until we change it, so does anyone know how we might go about doing that? The dynamic is obvious – they have a propaganda machine that picks the outrage of the day and the rest of the media has to react to the outrage and thereby amplifies the message. There has to be a way to combat it but I don’t know how. Everyone knows it’s THE problem and has been forever but how do we stop it and re-level the playing field?
zhena gogolia
@What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?:
We are people who care about things other than money. Therefore the money is all on their side. I don’t see a solution to that.
NotMax
@Ruviana
The covers of The Kinks’ Lies and the Rollins Band’s Liar are sumthin’ else.
Raoul
@Brachiator: Yeah. Since the end of World War II, Italy has had 61 governments.
That’s in 73 years. And sure, we poke fun at Italian disfunction, but the parliamentary system has not helped.
CarolDuhart2
@zhena gogolia: And remember @KithKanan, the fact that we even have a shot of derailing it is because in places like California, the Republican Party is a shadow of its former self and isn’t even competitive for them, Add two more Republican Senators to the mix an it would have already been a done deal.
For those who think Trump can do this: remember elections are administered on the local and State level per the Constitution. The fact that we have so many elections on the local level is a feature, not a bug. Screw with that, and a whole lot of mayors and state representatives and school board members are very unhappy and near chaos. The truth is that there is no national election system.
Now, I know it’s going to be: 2004, and 2000, and 2016. But its one thing to screw with one line on a ballot in certain states. It’s another to turn over the entire chessboard. So relax about that scenario. Instead vote Dem all up and down the ballot-don’t undervote for things like state rep and state senator and mayor and county officials who actually count the votes, and in some places, actually run the elections.
J R in WV
If rape seems inevitable, relax while you get your knife out.
Maybe that’s a better plan?
Now Imma gonna test this so-called edit function….
This started really slow… I think the 5 minute limit needs to start when you click the save button on your edit the first time…
Second time. Timer should really restart when you do a save – REALLY!
Thanks guys for the test edit possibility. Really sneaky, no announcement, just slide it in there.
CarolDuhart2
@What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?: Start by supporting the liberal media we already have like Stephanie Miller, Thom Hartman, and others I can’t remember at the moment. We still have community radio and it’s still easy to get slots. Perhaps do a little old-school stuff and do pamphlets from time to time. And of course, support podcasts, WCPT and other progressive/liberal radio stations, Daily Kos radio and much more.
And even the smallest Democratic Party org can do an e-mail message once in a while.
brantl
@terraformer: 2000, not just 2004.
smintheus
This is like when Nixon decided that rather than releasing the actual tapes to Congressional investigators he would give them his own edited versions of the tapes. Congress didn’t fall for that. Neither did the public.
The question now is whether we have a public that’s worthy of its name.
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
@Matt: I genuinely hope you’re wrong. But I’m not going to lie. The same thought has been circling my head for a while now. I donate and volunteer. It’s not like I’ve given up. But on some level, I wonder if we haven’t already passed the point of no return. There are plenty of folks talking about “civil war”, and yes, we survived one once. The price was damned near unbearable, and there’s no guarantee it would work out the same way. I’m going to do everything I can to change the course of this country, but I can feel myself trying to brace for a worst-case scenario in November. It can happen here. It has. It could again.
Ruviana
@NotMax: Lol
bemused
@satby:
One quibble. They don’t want us to enjoy their domination. They want us to suffer. Vicious bullies to the core.
Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot
@A Ghost To Most:
Careful there, Ghost. You’re in danger of being pilloried for defeatist wrongthink and cast into BJ outer darkness with the likes of TenguPhule, John Cole, et al.
Can’t be too cynical around this blog about our fucked-up politics and attendant fucked-up electorate, you know — might cause someone somewhere to get discouraged and not vote or something.
I mean, it’s not like there’s some incipient fascist takeover going on or anything. And even if there is, why, we’ve got the demographics on our side.
All those millions of Latinos and young people who seldom/never bother to do their minimal civic duty — even though they are among the most vulnerable to the negative effects of rightwing policies — are gonna show up any election cycle now, just you wait and see! And white women? Shit, with all the blatant Republican misogyny surely the majority will cease voting for the misogynists (despite the fact that most Republican women are the kapos of misogyny) — if not in the coming mid-terms, then in some future election sometime, most definitely.
And once us Dems have both Congress and the Executive at the same time, hell, we’re gonna pack that SCOTUS like there’s no tomorrow! That’s totally gonna happen!
So knock off that pessimistic “dancing on the edge of a razor” shit, it’s not helpful (or so we’re reminded continually on just about every thread around here).
Hoodie
We’re a fucking banana republic.
Been headed that way since Reagan. I can’t shake the feeling the Dems were punked on this, that McConnell knew about K-dog’s past indiscretions, knew the Dems would have to bring it up and saw it as a vehicle to energize the knuckledragger base and get others mad at the Dems for causing a stink. Maybe Feinstein should have sat on Ford’s letter and let it leak out, but I can see how she might have felt she didn’t have any other choice.
The republicans have a built in advantage that people tend to be lazy and avoid confrontation, so they reflexively dump on the person viewed as causing problems, when all that person may be doing is raising a question as to how shitty they’ve been treated and maybe someone should have to answer for it. A lot of people hate you simply for daring to question, as it disturbs the status quo and might make them have to examine their own actions. I’ve seen this in my experience more times than I care to remember.
Omnes Omnibus
@What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?: He does not have an MBA.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@J R in WV:
Even better
“That Ford should have avenged herself by raping Kavanaugh’s career was inevitable. He should have relaxed and enjoyed it.”
I think that will make a fine reply to the next conservative who tries and lectures me.
zhena gogolia
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yeah, he throws the word “Wharton” around as if he graduated from the business school. He got some bogus bachelor’s with the name Wharton on it.
hueyplong
Thought I’d do a spot check of site functionality.
smintheus
@Hoodie: The public backs Ford, not Kavanaugh. The notion that criticizing Kavanaugh is unpopular and harms Democrats is of course being spread by Republicans; so why are they urging Democrats not to self immolate, if that were in fact what was actually happening? You’d have thought that Republicans would be sitting back silently and enjoying as the Democratic Party self destructed.
Emma
@Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot: oh what the heck. Never mind.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Hoodie:
In what way? This is all a kabuki show for the republicans internally. Remember it was going to be a confirmation strictly along party lines last week until the some of the Republican senators blinked. Supposedly the story was Fienstien figured Judge McCrybaby was dead meat because of his gambling debts – what sane person wants an easily bribeable judge? Ford was only brought up when Fienstien saw the Republicans were totally out to lunch.
The people who gotten punked and gas-lighted are the so called serious conservatives, who yet again are letting their sides crazies turn their own beloved institutions into a farce. As Ann pointed out, Judge McCrybaby is easily impeachable, assuming he doesn’t just self destruct right out of the box by doing something so outrageous even the other conservative justices can’t tolerate it like launching into a drunked rant against every women in the country at his swearing in ceremony.
Kay
@eric:
It’s really just perfect. The tax cheat President hires the perjuring judge. Their actions actively contradict the jobs they hold.
Kavanaugh will be sworn in. He’ll take an oath. As he takes it remember how he blithely and repeated violated the last one he took, which earned him a promotion. Why bother? He obviously doesn’t think it means anything. Is it for my benefit? I hope not- I think it’s a joke. I have more respect for any random criminal defendant who doesn’t lie on the stand than they I do for Judge Kavanaugh. They’re his moral superiors.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I wish I were a famous tweeter so I could retweet this
Sasse talked two weeks ago about thinking daily about leaving the Republican Party because of trump, and today is voting for the nominee who almost certainly told trump his back would be covered in USSC cases, because that nominee will work for the non-trump Republican agenda on that court. The Washington “Democracy Dies in Darkness” Post’s lead congressional reporter wants Ben Sasse to stay in the Senate for ever and ever because he puts on a show of thoughtful integrity when it means dick-all
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot:
It’s not. Constant defeatism isn’t productive and I would argue not healthy, even for you; it’s okay to vent a little but all I’ve ever heard from you recently is defeatism. You need to actually suggest solutions sometimes to not be pushed away.
And really, what do you expect from the rest of the BJ community? This is what happens when people get sick of seeing the same attitude from someone over and over again and is perfectly legitimate. There are other blogs out there y’know
Chetan Murthy
@KithKanan:
Some of what you wrote above troubled me, b/c I was unable to read this clearly, even though you wrote the above several times. But you’ve written it plainly now *grin*. There’s nothing wrong with your position — I also feel impending gloom about Manchin&Heitkamp, both of whom I donated a ton of $$ to, and this in the past few weeks. I thought about how I’d feel if they voted for Rapey-K, and realized that even if they did that, they’re still better than a fucking GrOPer in that position, and it’d be harder to get a better Dem than them. Which is its own sort of depressing.
[j/k]Hey, you could always register as a GrOPer, vote in their primaries, and always vote for the most fucked-up candidate! HAHA! What could go wrong? Is it too early to start drinking?[jj/k]
ruemara
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Christ on a cracker. SHE SAYS NOTHING HAPPENED.
You’re really taking their word over hers and saying it’s slut shaming as opposed to listening to the woman. Good. Lord.
Kay
@Hoodie:
It could even be true and it doesn’t matter. Democrats can’t operate within this framework. They can’t give the opposition veto power over their positions because the opposition might be up to something. It just won’t work. They’ll be frozen in fear.
Try to do the “next right thing” and hope it plays to your advantage.
I was listening to local Christian radio yesterday and they’re going hard with the “what about OUR BOYS” tactic. It’s the craziest thing. These insane people are actually asking people to CHOOSE between their sons and their daughters. They cannot imagine a scenario where both groups would benefit by treating one another decently. Nope. It’s boys lose or girls lose. They’re picking boys as the winners. Girls must take a hit to “save” the boys.
If you have a son and a daughter it must be a real dilemma. I think I’ll go with the ideology that says I don’t have to throw one of my kids under the bus, thanks. NOT adopting this craziness.
Ladyraxterinok
@NotMax: Remember ‘Sunshine Units’ from Nixon or Reagan?? GOP never gives up!!
jacy
@ruemara:
I had a thing like that happen to me in high school. Some guy who I wouldn’t go out with spread the rumor that I had slept with him. Luckily, the majority of my friends were boys and they beat the shit out of him. Boys don’t spread rumors about girls they sleep with. They spread rumors about girls who turned them down. (And I was definitely not a virgin in high school, but I chose who I wanted to sleep with. For some boys, not being chosen was the real problem.)
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
What he said.
The other side isn’t ten feet tall if and if you listen carefully you can hear the horror and screaming coming from them.. Just keep in mind if the Right was any good at this, they would have found a faithful conservative judge who’se whole life wasn’t mess from constant drunkenness.
ruemara
@jacy: Yeah, that’s what folks are missing. They abused women. That doesn’t mean it was just sexual. If she thought she was just friends and never got put in a situation where they could assault her, then of course a lot of what they’re saying is the equivalent of sour grapes. That people are making it into slut-shaming is infuriating. How about you listen to what she says instead of thinking she was a slut in high school and is hiding it and those liars are telling the truth now?
Mnemosyne
@jacy:
That’s my assumption as well. It’s pretty typical for insecure guys to claim they slept with someone they didn’t.
MagdaInBlack
Saw a clip last night, which I cannot find, but will paraphrase:
Basicly: Awful lot of black men were lynched on the word of a white woman, but now that its a white man accused….those women are all liars.
Mnemosyne
@ruemara:
And I totally understand her horror and disgust at finding out that guys she thought were her friends were talking about her behind her back and telling other guys what a slut she was. It’s a major betrayal no matter what.
Immanentize
@MagdaInBlack: ooo. That is very good. It is very good because it is so damn true.
TenguPhule
@schrodingers_cat:
McConnell won because he’s a natural fascist who broke all the rules and did anything and everything to win.
How far are you ready to go to win? Because the other side has no bottom.
TenguPhule
@Penn:
no, its not.
Dust off your country’s emergency invasion plan for the USA. You’re gonna need it sooner then you’d think.
Brachiator
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
I wish that people would stop monitoring other folks’ attitudes, and demanding optimism.
Maybe some people will give up if they read others’ expressions of fear, hopeless, or defeat. But others simply redouble their efforts and carry on.
I do not believe in karma or inevitability. I do not believe that I must lose simply because some people express fear or doubt. Sometimes people just need to vent, to let loose all their fears. But this does not mean that they have let those fears beat them down.
We all have no problems letting people’s freak flags fly. Let’s allow folks to wave their fear flags a little bit, too.
And of course, you can always just skip over remarks that frighten you.
I hate the mis-applied concept of “community.” It always raises the issue of community standards, watchdogs and censors. We’re just people with similar points of views on some issues talking. And I appreciate the fact that John Cole is very loose with any crackdowns and prohibitions. Obviously, this depends on people acting like adults and being responsible. But the result is a much better level of conversation than you see in a lot of other places, where “community” is replaced by rigidly enforced ideology.
As always, your mileage may vary.
Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot
@Emma: Never mind what, exactly?
Yeah, I was sarcastic as all get-out, but what of it? I’m not alone in thinking we’re well and truly fucked, but like many (I believe, actually, the vast majority) who have that view I keep fighting even though I have little expectation of victory.
I’ve participated (mostly by canvassing, registering voters, and donating some $$) in every election cycle since ’68 (when I was a young teenager and did some simple grunt-stuff — like mimeograph flyers — for my dad’s Rust Belt union working for Dem candidates). I’m continuing to do so right now, and plan to not stop till the FSM takes me to Its noodly bosom.
More often than not in those past 50 years the candidates/causes I supported lost, though there were plenty of sweet victories (Obama’s win in ’09 — when I took almost a month off work and moved to New Mexico by myself as a full-time volunteer to help move that state from red to blue — was personally the sweetest). I haven’t given up, I’m not going to stop fighting, and I’m not encouraging anyone else to give up (quite the contrary — you could ask my young Bernie-bro/lefty purity-pony friends).
I’m not patting myself on the back here (many — millions, in fact — have done far more than I ever will), simply trying to provide some context to my obviously-pessimistic outlook. You can believe, as I do, that shit’s fucked up and bullshit but still fight the good fight against fascism.
I’m on your side, even if you roll your eyes at me for being such a negative-Nellie.
Mnemosyne
@jacy:
Some guys just can’t handle the realization that the woman they want to sleep with doesn’t want to sleep with them. They think they deserve to get everything they want, when they want it, and they get REALLY angry when it turns out that a woman has a mind of her own.
This is where a lot of the “incel” stuff comes from: male entitlement. They think they should be able to fuck supermodels without the women having any say in it. These assholes were mad that she wouldn’t have sex with them, so they got their petty revenge by spreading rumors about her. “Stopping slut shaming” would have done nothing to stop them.
TenguPhule
@Alain the site fixer:
Around 11 am hawaii time yesterday.
TenguPhule
@guachi:
If you think Collins is voting no on this, I have a bridge to sell you.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
Yes. Well said.
I hope that some of these people grew up and became better people, or look back and see what horrible little clowns they were.
Mnemosyne
@Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot:
Really? Because that’s exactly how I interpreted your comments — all is lost, so why even bother voting?
Though the real problem is that we suddenly have a spate of new and troll nyms in this thread that just happen to pick up on any signs of frustration and start to try and amplify it into Yes, all is lost, no need to vote!
TenguPhule
@Kay:
No, we can’t. Rule of law is going away and its not coming back while Republicans pollute the air we breathe.
TenguPhule
@Emma:
Mostly computerized for non-filers now.
The system has been designed to make this kind of tactic much easier to thwart with less manpower.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
Nope. These dopes play at asserting an entitlement that they don’t have. Most of these guys are losers who are morally and psychologically stunted. They cannot form any stable relationship with any women, so they create these elaborate fantasies about what they should be able to have if they weren’t such total losers.
Think about this for a second.
These clowns do not inhabit a world in which they will encounter a supermodel, nor would most of these women necessarily give them the time of day just on the basis of their whining about it. They are delusional. And tiresome. Most of them are sitting in a basement playing with themselves. The only thing that they are entitled to are their pathetic fantasies.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?:
Wharton can’t do that, because Trump doesn’t have a MBA. He was in an undergrad Real Estate program was Wharton ran.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
Here’s the problem, though — because the incels feel so entitled to what they want, they lash out violently when they don’t get it. Elliot Rodger is their folk hero, and there have been several copycat murderers who lashed out in a similar way.
TenguPhule
@Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot: Well Played.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
Most of these people are harmless. Friends, family, the authorities have to watch out for the nut jobs.
Again, most of these people make noise about being entitled, but they are losers who know that they cannot magically get their wishes fulfilled.
I had to look up who Rodger was. He was kinda sad, a kid with mental problems from age 8. And from his own testimony, he was more consumed by his loneliness and inability to deal with the world than feeling entitled to anything:
He was as sad as a lovelorn delusional person (male or female) who becomes a stalker.
Anyone who holds this guy up as an example or hero clearly has problems.
lethargytartare
@debit:
you must have missed the part where he decided to, on the balance, find the fratboy rapists and their perjurer representative more believable than the woman saying she didn’t fvck any of them.
I’ll admit, it was cleverly disguised, but pretty effed up all the same.
Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
“There are other blogs…” So, did you happen to read the blog-father’s post yesterday titled “I’m In a Foul Mood…”? Or, you know, his closing thought in this post (“We’re a fucking banana republic”), which he’s expressed numerous times before?
I’ve been reading (and sporadically commenting on) BJ since before Mr. Cole had his Terri Schiavo/straw-breaking-the-camel’s-back moment back in ’05. I have as much right to be here as anyone, whether you approve of my “defeatist” attitude or not.
And of course your (and Omnes’, and Mnemosyne’s, etc.) pushback on my (and others’) pessimistic outlook/attitude is perfectly legitimate, in the sense that you (all) quite obviously believe that such pessimism is unhelpful to the cause. You have every right to feel that way, and perhaps you are correct. I don’t think you are — mostly cuz I don’t see how that actually works — but maybe I’m wrong.
What’s not legitimate is you (or anyone else) telling me to take my “defeatist” wrongthink elsewhere. I think I’ll stick around, thank you, I like this place, and I even like (most of) the commenters who I may not always agree with (you included).
I don’t think I’m being abusive or even overly antagonistic, it’s just that 50 years of political engagement have given me small reason to be all that sanguine about our current and very real (far as I’m concerned) descent into fascism. I’m not intending to be discouraging, but if anyone is discouraged to the point of actually “giving up” in even some small way by what I’ve written here — I highly doubt that — I say, “Seriously, that’s all it took?”.
You demand that I “suggest solutions” in order to stay in good graces. Sorry, I don’t have any “solutions”. Do you? Cuz that would be awesome, I’m all ears.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@Matt:
But the president has no power to declare an election invalid. He can say whatever he wants to. But he can’t nullify an election. If he tried, I don’t have any faith that McConnell or Ryan or any other Republican would say boo to him. But there’s a whole government full of people who would not let that happen. Officials all over the country, in state and federal offices would never go along with that kind of shit. The bureaucracy that runs the government wouldn’t make it happen. Also, the demonstrations that would happen would make the women’s march look like one of Donald Tяump’s sad little rallies.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
And look, I understand why people are down. For a little while it looked like maybe we could keep the shitbag off the court. I even thought maybe we could. But in the end, it all came down to Collins and Flake, and we really should have seen what the foregone outcome was. They were always going to vote for him. Always. We conned ourselves into thinking maybe they might do the right thing, but we should have known it was never going to happen.
So we lost. As we were always going to. We made a good fight of it, but that’s all we could have done. And now it’s over, and the work of the election, which was always waiting for us, is still there. We can win this, and now it’s time to get to it.
Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot
@Brachiator: Thanks.