If Kavanaugh has the tiniest iota of self-awareness, tonight’s boozy TGIF should be as downbeat as the one at Trump Tower on the night of 11/6/16. Forty years of ‘youthful horseplay’ and a long history as a mid-level GOP apparatchik substituting effort for talent are about to be examined in a media glare to which twilight ratfvckers like Bart O’Kavanaugh are cruelly unsuited, and the blows to his lace-curtain Irish self-esteem will be severe and unrelenting. Millionaire parents and the best Beltway prestige upbringing, and the best he can aspire to is ‘bagman for Donald Trump!’
Unfortunately for all of us, one has to assume his personal security is poised to prevent him pulling a Richard Cory…
IN CASE YOU'RE NOT PISSED ENOUGH: Grassley Says Workload Discourages Women Senators From Joining Judiciary Panel. “It’s a lot of work – maybe they don’t want to do it,” Mr. Grassley told reporters. https://t.co/x5pyE4IpmY
— Randi Mayem Singer (@rmayemsinger) October 5, 2018
Grassley says he is still going to be investigating and collecting information on Dr. Ford's allegations.
“She raised issues in testimony and if you raise issues in your testimony we ought to have information to back it up.”
— Sam Stein (@samstein) October 5, 2018
Maria Bartiromo asked Chuck Grassley this morning if he thinks George Soros is paying the elevator protesters. "I have heard so many people believe that. I tend to believe it," Grassley said. Trump tweeted the accusation about 80 minutes later pic.twitter.com/az8QtMZwma
— Dave Brown (@dave_brown24) October 5, 2018
Speaking of evil old men, is there nobody in the Iowa GOP who will challenge this vicious old fekker? It’s not as though the pig manure lagoons have poisoned the brains of every IA voter…
One of the pivotal and defining moments of 2016. McConnell really hasn't gotten his due as a central villain in the Russia plot to undermine the US election, but I'd guess history books will correct that over the long term. https://t.co/CGd1lXNgr5
— Susan Hennessey (@Susan_Hennessey) October 2, 2018
Fellow historians: How far back do we have to go to find a politician who did as much institutional damage to Congress as Mitch McConnell has?
— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) October 4, 2018
And then there’s Mitch McConnell. There were some dreadful Suthrun senators during the run-up to the Civil War, but I don’t remember any of them actually conspiring with foreign adversaries for personal advantage in their backwards little fiefdoms. Maybe he thinks he can get his wife’s rich Taiwanese parents to buy him asylum somewhere, once the GOP’s Backlash Decade comes crashing down?
sadcynic
murkowski is talking about being ‘present’ rather than voting no
NotMax
Grassley must purchase feet by the gross to have so many at the ready to insert into mouth.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
What the fuck is up with this Twitter thread? It’s a letter from Dr. CBF’s attorneys and my god is it awful. 99% of the comments are from RW howler monkeys and other concern troll assholes.
https://twitter.com/aterkel/status/1048366278098923521
“She’s a liar and should be charged with perjury!”
“She’s a Democrat tool”
What’s behind this claim that she “changed her story 3 times?”
Or that there’s nothing stopping CBF from releasing all of the evidence she has or something?
No corrabrating witnesses either. They even tore apart her claimed fear of flying.
Are they all bots or actual human trolls? I thought CBF was viewed as highly credible by a lot of people? I realize it’s just one thread but Christ…
Yutsano
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: What time is it in Moskva?
dnfree
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: that kind of right-wing commentary is all over the sites my right-wing Facebook associates comment on (which is why I see it). She is seen as a liar, paid agitator, someone with a criminal past that has now come out, someone profiting from go fund me scams set up by her lawyers, who should be disbarred. Lots of women commenting who could tell she was fake from her testimony. Often I am not sure we’re the majority, or the majority of people paying attention.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Yutsano:
@dnfree:
I feel like I’m being gaslighted and I sometimes worry I’m in a bubble. It was just surreal to see practically an entire thread of the same RW talking points repeated over and over again with little pushback that wasn’t vigorously pushed back in turn
Barb 2
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Russian trolls?
Or just the Trumpian cultists crawling out from under the garbage pile?
Non human alien mind warping the deplorables?
I see mob mentality in the behavior of the above groups. Some brilliant grad student is going to do a PhD about mob behavior in the Trump era.
NotMax
Was greatly disconcerted to hear from Mom that her long time housekeeper*, who is Hispanic, is anti-Dolt 45 as much and more than anyone here, is staunchly in favor and supportive of Kavanaugh.
*Housekeeper is too vivid a term perhaps, as she comes by to do the Big Cleaning Stuff one day each fortnight. And thanks to whoever recommended Wet ‘n’ Forget; both she and Mom now are ardent converts.
Sister Golden Bear
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Only 10% of Republicans said they believed CBF. 86% of Democrats said they did.
There were also some marked differences by race and gender. Guess which was the group with 59% support for Kavanaugh’s confirmation.
https://www.bustle.com/p/americans-believe-christine-blasey-ford-more-than-brett-kavanaugh-this-new-poll-shows-12118016
Ruckus
Mitch McConnell is the reason I’ve been beating on term limits for quite some time. I’m not talking 2 terms, but a lifetime appointment for an asswipe like mitch is too much. He’s basically a dictator now. And he was elected by less than 300,000 people. Out of 320,000,000. How many of us even had the chance to vote for him? Now are there other ways to fix this? Quite possibly. We could increase the number of people in the house to something approaching equal representation. Oh wait that doesn’t fix the senate.
We live with a government that was designed by committee to keep the wealthy happy and placate the riff raff. When it was designed it worked OK for what 30% of the people? 40% weren’t affected much and the other 30%? Yeah they got fucked. How have things changed? We are all affected greatly, because life is not even close to the same as it was over 200 yrs ago. First off there are a lot more of us and second those percentages are off just a wee bit now.
I have no idea how to fix what is arguable broken but I’m pretty sure that patching is the very least that is needed. There is way too much power in the money class and the propaganda wing of the conservative party is way out of control. How many congressional members are millionaires? There are 50 members who are worth more than 6.9 million. The top is Issa at 283 million. Just over half of them are millionaires, 271.
We are a country that is supposed to have a representative government but we are run by a wealth class that really doesn’t represent us well at all. And not all of the wealthy congress members are republicans. DiFi is #10 with a worth of almost 60 million. Six reps are wealthier than the wealthiest senator, Mark Warner (D) at just over 90 million.
Just a little thought for a Friday night.
NotMax
@Ruckus
I don’t begrudge people having money, I do their making ill or destructive use of having it or using it as a rationale for ill or destructive behavior.
frosty
@NotMax: I begrudge a lot of money. At some point it’s an indicator of sociopathology and hoarding. Not sure of the demarcation line though. Billion, sure. 100 million maybe.
Ruckus
@NotMax:
As I’ve said here before, it’s not the money by itself that is the issue it is that I have a hard time imagining people worth what a lot of our political leaders are as even being able to think what it might be like, worrying about having food for dinner or tuition for your kids college, or to replace a POS car, or the roof, or to even be able to buy the house in the first place, or to pay for healthcare and rent and food, or to have an idea that some have no clue what a vacation is – other than when you are between menial jobs, what retiring on SS alone is like, etc, etc. And then voting on killing the ACA, etc, etc.
Aleta
Major Major Major Major
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: you are being gaslighted, but per usual it’s the gaslighters who live in the bubble.
Ruckus
@frosty:
I’d have a hard time putting a line in the sand, but I think you are correct, at some point having more is only a dick measuring contest.
And I’ve met some wealthy people when I worked in professional sports and they were a cross section, some seemed well balanced and down to earth and others were fucking snooty bastards.
Platonailedit
When nearly half the voters can’t be arsed to vote, you get what you voted/nonvoted for.
TriassicSands
@Ruckus:
It’s important to accumulate enough money so that you can 1) continue to be able to do anything, buy anything, and go anywhere you could ever want; 2) undo the damage to your reputation that you did when you were clawing your way to the top and screwing people right and left along the way; and 3) 2) is accomplished through philanthropy, but step 3) does more. It creates an entirely new reputation for you as a great and generous person who just wants to help others and is an expert in any field or issue on which you choose to spend money.
Unfortunately, steps 2 and 3, as performed by people like Bill Gates, allow the super rich to impose there values on those in need without necessarily having the expertise needed to make the best use of the money. Bill Gates, who never finished college, becomes the self-appointed (anointed?) expert on the needs of the educational system. Worse, although I don’t have his college transcripts on hand, my guess would be that as a student focusing on computers and technology Gates was mostly being trained, not educated. (We’ve had this discussion before on BJ — I consider training to be preparation for a job and education to be the foundation of making a better, more thoughtful citizen and human being. College curricula for the sciences and engineering tend to be so intensive that there may be little time for electives. And clearly there can be overlap.)
Aleta
Collins didn’t think of or write this stuff herself. More like she accepted what she was told by legal operatives. She’s a fraud. She got up there and posed as though she’d reasoned all this through (after weeks of saying she was carefully going through everything). Only alternative seems if she has a condition that has deteriorated her mind; if so, hiding it should be a crime by her handlers.
I wonder if they’ll try to get her to step down so someone else can be appointed by LePage and get a head start on the election in two years.
Mohagan
@Aleta: Thanks for posting this. History, like the Gods, grinds slow but exceedingly fine.
John Revolta
@Aleta: McConnell staff wrote Collins’ speech and staged it
?BillinGlendaleCA
@TriassicSands: Bill Gates’ mom was a long time regent at UW before Microsoft was a big company. While young Bill took an interest in math and took grad level com sci courses at Harvard, he was a pre-law major(his dad is a lawyer).
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Aleta: They’d better hurry up then, LePage is gone in January.
Steeplejack (sky-high wi-fi)
@TriassicSands:
Pretty sure Gates dropped out of college after one year to work on MS-BASIC and eventually launch Microsoft (MicroSoft, in its earliest days).
I played blackjack with Gates and Adam Osborne at COMDEX in Las Vegas—the very city I flew out of tonight—about a hundred years ago. Osborne is dead, Gates is a billionaire, and the company I was working for rocketed into oblivion. Doesn’t seem quite fair.
Steeplejack (sky-high wi-fi)
Damn it! Saved-nym feature saved my bungled e-mail from last time.
@TriassicSands:
Pretty sure Gates dropped out of college after one year to work on MS-BASIC and eventually launch Microsoft (MicroSoft, in its earliest days).
I played blackjack with Gates and Adam Osborne at COMDEX in Las Vegas—the very city I flew out of tonight—about a hundred years ago. Neither of them was particularly good. (Nor was I.) Now Osborne is dead, Gates is a billionaire, and the company I was working for rocketed into oblivion. Doesn’t seem quite fair.
Anne Laurie
The Repubs have been undermining — as in, digging holes in the public perception of their party — since at least Newt Gingrich’s heyday. How much ore can they loot from that legacy before the party collapses around them? Well, we’re liable to find out!
Steeplejack (sky-high wi-fi)
Amazing how a little turbulence really interferes with poking things on the 10″ touchscreen.
. . . Maybe not “a little” turbulence. Pilot just told the flight attendants to park it in their jump seats. (Not phrasing!)
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Steeplejack (sky-high wi-fi): He dropped out after two years.
Steeplejack (sky-high wi-fi)
@Steeplejack (sky-high wi-fi):
Turbulence gone. Where is the flight attendant with my next gin and tonic?
Current position: Texas/Oklahoma panhandles. Altitude: 37,000 feet. Outside temperature: –59°F. Ground speed: 573 mph. Remaining flight time: 2h 30m.
And we’ve got a sort of tailwind from the SSW at 90 mph.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Anne Laurie: They sure found out here in CA after Prop. 187. If polling holds there may be very few Republican Congresscritters from there in Southern CA. I saw and ad for Katie Porter who’s running against Mimi Walters, it was making her look like Trump’s twin.
TriassicSands
@Steeplejack (sky-high wi-fi):
I had an O-1. It would look ridiculous today, but back in ’81 it was a good “little” computer and the software bundle included at no cost was extraordinary.
The story of how Gates and Microsoft got their big break is one of the all-time “lucked-out” tales in business. And it apparently depended on someone else (the head of Digital Research) being…something — many adjectives could apply, none are particularly flattering.
The idea of the self-made “man” is one of capitalism’s great fairy tales. Luck and other people are almost always much more important than the myths allow.
Steeplejack (sky-high wi-fi)
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Sorry. Going by 40-year-old memories and industry scuttlebutt, not your fancy-shmancy Wikipedia articles.
?BillinGlendaleCA
I decided to test out my camera’s dynamic range, so I took a picture and all I did was increase the exposure of the shadows and decrease the exposure of the highlights, I didn’t add any saturation or vibrance. Here’s the result.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@TriassicSands: Basically, they sold IBM an OS that they didn’t quite own…yet.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Steeplejack (sky-high wi-fi): The internet, it’s a very useful thing. It’s also a series of tubes, NOT dump trucks.
Steeplejack (sky-high wi-fi)
@TriassicSands:
Yeah, Gates’s billions got their start with the MS-DOS “royalty” that was exacted on every IBM PC and clone for many years.
I had that first Compaq “suitcase” portable. Pimped it out with a RAM card to hold the OS and the program currently in use, then I could use the floppy drive all for data. Blazingly fast (for the time). I wrote a lot of dBASE and FoxBase code on that thing.
Steeplejack (sky-high wi-fi)
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Very nice! Postcard worthy. And not in a ’50s Technicolor way. Vibrant colors, but everything looks as it should, not amped up.
Uh-oh. More turbulence. North-central Oklahoma.
OzarkHillbilly
@Steeplejack (sky-high wi-fi):
Global warming my ass.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Steeplejack (sky-high wi-fi): Just Jim Inhofe lobbing snowballs. Remember kids, climate change is a Chinese hoax.
ETA: About the pic, thanks; maybe I should have added the Kodachrome LUT to give even more of an oldie tyme look.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: You’ve been talking to your neighbors again, haven’t you.
Steeplejack (sky-high wi-fi)
@OzarkHillbilly:
You know what they say: location, location, location!
TriassicSands
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
But the real key is that IBM was trying to get the operating system from DR. The story I’ve heard allowed Gates to get the deal with an OS he acquired from someone else (didn’t quite own yet, indeed), but if DR’s head hadn’t been…something (a jerk, dismissive, rude, ???) then IMB would have used DR-DOS and Gates would have been working on BASIC (and the route to billionaire status would likely have been much less likely).
I had both DR DOS and MS-DOS and DR DOS was better, but it wasn’t what IBM ended up with and the rest, as they say, is history. Another case of an inferior product winning out due to factors having nothing to do with quality.
Steeplejack (sky-high wi-fi)
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
No! Natural is better.
OzarkHillbilly
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I only have one neighbor and she’s fairly liberal. What are the chances?
gene108
@Ruckus:
Increasing seats in the House will not fix the Senate but it will really change the politics in this country.
I assume the added districts will mostly go to Democratic leaning urban areas. So instead of “how can Democrats compete in rural areas to control the House” to “how can Republicans compete in urban areas to control the House”.
We would hopefully see Democratic control of the House for a generation or more. Even if the Senate remains an obstacle to progress, you will be able to investigate Republican Presidents and we wouldn’t have to sit through scam investigations like Ken Starr, Fast and Furios, the IRS broo-ha-ha over targeting conservative non-profits, and Benghazi.
That alone would help restore some sanity to our politics.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: For Misery, slim.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@gene108: It’d also reduce the chances of having a Republican President.
OzarkHillbilly
@?BillinGlendaleCA: In Washington Co. it’s a dawgdamned miracle.
Steeplejack (sky-high wi-fi)
@OzarkHillbilly:
Appear to be roughly over your position—eastern Missouri, about to cross into Illinois.
Altitude: 35,000 feet. Ground speed: 577 mph. Outside temp: –49°F. Wind 48 mph from the SW.
About 80 minutes’ flight time left. I can do this! Maybe with one more G&T. I feel like I’m the only passenger awake.
. . . Flight attendant confirmed: yes, I am the only one awake. But I think she was joking?
OzarkHillbilly
@Steeplejack (sky-high wi-fi): Waves.
Chris Johnson
@dnfree: That’s the intention. It can be all of the above: Russian troll teams, 4chan /pol/, wingnut facebook groups and so on. The whole purpose is to make you feel outnumbered. It could be ONE DUDE behind 57 proxies running scripts. Don’t be fooled.
Steeplejack (sky-high wi-fi)
@OzarkHillbilly:
Turn on your flashlight next time!
gene108
@Steeplejack (sky-high wi-fi):
Caught a red-eye back from SFO after visiting my cousin, March.. I hadn’t taken one in about 10 years.
What I noticed was the seats were much, much narrower. I was brushing shoulders against to two men on either side of me. Never was, literally shoulder to shoulder, with other passengers before. And all of us are medium sized builds.
Chris Johnson
@Ruckus: I don’t think we get to focus on the billionaires running things right now. Not just yet. But remember it… you’re not wrong, and it’s pernicious.
The ultra-rich have been attacking us this whole time. Attacking specifically women is new and I think that’s a bridge too far. Once we fight back against the assaults on women, we may be in more of a position to fight back against the impossible disparities of wealth and the way that society is structured to only reward the worst imaginable people just because they were really good at stealing and exploiting.
No single human being can legitimately be worth billions of dollars. Nothing they can possibly do, or be, legitimizes them being more powerful than many entire countries.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Steeplejack (sky-high wi-fi): Flashlight, OK. Green Laser, not OK.
Allegedly the green laser I have has a range of 10 miles.
Peej01
@sadcynic: so Senator Daines doesn’t have to rush back from his daughter’s wedding to vote.
gene108
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
That too would be an added benefit.
This is the sort of outside the box thinking Democrats need to embrace, in order to counter the Republicans willingness to win at all costs.
The last time seats in the House were increased was 1911. There is a good civic reason to update things after 107 years.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Chris Johnson:
400 lbs, check; living in mom’s basement, check. Trump warned us about that guy.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
/fixed
Steeplejack (sky-high wi-fi)
@gene108:
I will (somewhat sheepishly) admit that I upgraded to first class. I don’t fly very often. This is a long-ass flight. And, as you noted, the whole air-travel experience keeps getting worse and worse. So I went for creature comforts.
JGabriel
@Platonailedit:
Except that a majority of American voters voted for a Democratic House, a Democratic Senate, and a Democratic President. So, no, we didn’t get what we voted for.
We got what Republicans and Russians rigged in the 2016 elections to give themselves, despite the will of the American voters.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: @dnfree: @Barb 2:
SFAW
It’s not that, Fishmouth. It’s that — unlike you and your colleagues — most women have no interest in fellating Shitgibbon’s teeny-tiny eenie-weenie, the way you, and Lindsey, and Flake, and Cotton, and Tillis, and McConnell, and the rest of your traitorous partei do. Of course, there are always exceptions (see “Collins, Susan”), but you racist, fascist, anti-Semitic, misogynistic motherfuckers lead the way.
trnc
Nice to think so, but history is written by the winners, unless it’s removed completely like schoolbooks printed in Texas.
The Clinton doctrine ties a nation’s success to it’s treatment of women. We’ll get a chance to see how that theory holds up for a world power.
dnfree
@Major Major Major Major: It’s a big bubble. Or they have a lot of bubbles and they float from one to another. I have the feeling sometimes that not everyone commenting on Balloon-Juice lives in a ruralish area of a blue state, as I do. Illinois has voted Republican in the past for senators and governors. What happened to Wisconsin and Minnesota could happen here.
dnfree
@TriassicSands: DR-DOS! I’d forgotten about that. It was all the rage, back in the day. We had a Betamax, too.
dnfree
@Chris Johnson: Thanks, and I know you’re right, but the vast number of possible outlets and fellow commenters makes the far right FEEL like they’re the majority. One particular relative-in-law can spend all day going from Facebook page to Facebook page liking and commenting on every article. It’s clear he doesn’t even read the articles, just sees the picture or meme.
Tenar Arha
@?BillinGlendaleCA: That’s amazing. Wow. It’s those blues of the sky & water, the reds of the flowers…wow.
Hobbes83
Meh. McConnell, is only what happens when you take Gingrich’s tactics going back to the late 70s and follow them to their logical conclusion. Gingrich used to call Democrats traitors while C-Span cameras rolled in empty chambers during the middle of the night, and McConnell is a traitor to his country because he actively allowed a foreign power to interfere in our election simply for a continuation of his own power.
J R in WV
Well. Pretty angry, still. For an old white guy, amazing how hostile people attacking women and minorities can make me.
So I contributed to more female senatorial candidates in Nevada and Arizona. A sizable contribution to each. Helps a tiny bit…
Matt
Anybody want to start a betting pool on how many days into the SCOTUS session before Drinky Brett shows up slurring and/or red-faced shouting in court? I give it a week.
Citizen_X
This is a threat, isn’t it?
Don’t testify against loyal Republican operatives, ladies! Senator Ghastley will put you on trial!
PenAndKey
@Citizen_X: Yes, that’s a threat. It’s also grandstanding, but only if the GOP doesn’t maintain power after November.
If they do? I fully expect the kangaroos to hold court.
opiejeanne
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Mimi Walters doesn’t even live in the 45th district, the one she represents in Congress. She lives in the 48th, in Dana Rohrabacher’s district. How is this possible?
kindness
The last 6 months have really drained me. I’m horrified all too often over the beliefs of people I know. I feel kicked in the gut too many times. It’s wearing on me. Reagan’s years were similar but not this bad. At least Reagan’s clowns weren’t in cahoots with the Russian Overlords. I have to withdraw from time to time to make it through. Get away from computers, news and go to happy places. It works. Don’t get me wrong, I’m donating money, speaking my piece and will vote and help others to the polls come November. But this horror show that is Washington. Damn. Sure is depressing to see what they’ve done to the Republic.
@opiejeanne: The legislature passed a law this year that they don’t have to live inside the boundries of the district they represent. Jerry Brown just signed it last month. I disagree with it completely but….
opiejeanne
@kindness: Thanks, but she didn’t just move there and she’s a Federal legislator. I don’t think the bill Brown just signed would do squat about Federal rules. Is there a Federal ruling that they don’t have to live in their districts?
Oh, hey, I don’t want to move from Laguna but I want to represent you chumps in Anaheim Hills and Tustin and Irvine, and Laguna Niguel is almost the same, right?
Bill Arnold
@Aleta:
That’s a lot worse than I thought from just quick-reading her speech transcript (with no legal background).
A helpful reminder that Republican party heavies/operatives currently feel free to lie about everything, in part because the blizzard of talking points is so heavy that the in-filter-bubble-living rest of the party never hears any different takes.
Aardvark Cheeselog
To be fair, modern communications and travel technologies make practical many things that would have seemed fantastic to an antebellum dixiecrat.
SFAW
@dnfree:
“Had”? You got rid of yours????
Well, if you need to borrow one, let me know