Just imagine the impact on women voters watching the spectacle of clueless Republican geezers like Orrin Hatch grilling Kavanaugh’s accuser. That alone ought to be enough for Republican leaders to abandon this fiasco before it costs them even more votes in the Midterm elections.
if he’s as smart as they keep saying he is, he will (with as much sincerity and compassion as possible):
1. sympathize with his accuser, express sorrow for her what anguish she’s been through all the years and praise her courage for speaking up;
2. truthfully answer what he remembers of that time in his life – fess up to youthful drinking binges if so – especially confessing indiscretions and regret for those he does remember and for those that may have happened even if he honestly doubts they did happen.
3. again acknowledge her pain, apologizing for any role he or his schoolmates could possibly have played in causing it, and how much courage it has taken for her to speak out.
4. offer to withdraw from the nomination if that is the will of the committee.
Yes, to spare his daughters. ~They should be so proud of daddy.~
If he bails, does Trump have someone ready that Gooperz would push through before the mid-terms?
One report said that she sought medical attention after it happened. Although it wouldn’t prove he was the culprit (unless she named him at the time), there should be a record of her trip to the doctor for physical and/or mental health reasons.
Admin plan to defend Kavanaugh relies on women https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/17/politics/brett-kavanaugh-white-house-supreme-court-nominee/index.html
‘Well, he never attacked me.’
That’s the WH defense plan for Kava-Nope.
I’m sure there are women who would/could say the same of Harvey Weinstein or Les Moonves or…
Just because it didn’t happen to you doesn’t mean it didn’t happen to someone else.
Corey – This is the week we we’ll get the turnover problem sorted out. 🙂 Even though we’ve lost two games, I still enjoy watching more than I have in years. It finally feels hopeful.
that offering to withdraw if it’s the will of the committee would allow goper members a technical way out without having to directly vote on confirmation which would betray their promises to rw core.
BiD, that medical attention probably was referring to the therapy sessions in 2012.
Patd
That would be the graceful thing to do. I wonder if any member of the committee will ask if he engaged in black out level binge drinking or if the nickname of his private club was “tit and clit”.
If he was accused of attempting armed robbery instead of attempting rape would we say, “Oh that was just in high school”
Applying the standards of a criminal conviction to this matter is irrelevant. A credible accuser who passed a polygraph seems sufficient for failing to meet the standards of admission to our highest court.
Poobah I agree with your assessment – or at least I would if we lived in a somewhat rational world. We no longer do, however, so I’m not at all certain that we’ll see what we think is the only logical outcome. Plus, IMPOTUS has gone twitter silent on Kavanaugh and Ford. I suspect McGahn stole his phone.
Here’s a story about the hazards of coal ash lagoons and hog feces ponds following Florence’s visit to NC that should get the attention of anyone who gives a shit about their environment – already bedeviled with hog stench, flies, toxic materials from coal ash linked to cancer, heart disease and neurological damage in children, and the SFB administration is easing environmental restrictions requiring groundwater monitoring, etc. – NC are you listening?
Al Franken was driven out for far less
From the story linked in my 9:20 comment, rearranged to provide a timeline:
Just how insane is this?
Given the way memory works after 35 years both Cav. and his accuser could be telling the truth. Because neither is operating from direct memories of the event but memories of memories of memories. So all memories from 35 years ago are suspect, If you don’t believe me just talk to a sibling or close friend about an event from your childhood. You will be amazed at what they remember as fact.
Then there is the false memory problem.
So from what I can see nothing has changed. The committee will vote to approve and it will quickly move on to the full Senate. Where he will be approved. BTW don’t pay any attention to Collins her vote is in the bag
I went to an Eastern prep school. It was co-ed with separate boys and girls campuses. We knew which maintenance people would buy booze for us. Several of us boys would take midnight hikes generally making mischief and consuming said booze. Those forays were never coed.
Every child in the school was a sexual being and bent on proving that fact to every other student. Over the years it came to light that several of the ‘highly respected’ male faculty members took advantage of (raped) numerous coeds. They have been pursued by the authorities. The name of one of the founders has been stricken from the property.
The accusation against Kavanaugh doesn’t surprise me. It strikes me as the type of thing more likely to occur in a non-coed environment. We had weekly Friday evening dances where the girls would be bused to the larger campus where the boys were housed. The dance-hall was in the old-gym and was well chaperoned. It was a fun time where we learned to have healthy fun together.
They didn’t have that type of socialization where the two principals in this semester’s case were schooled. It sounds as if Kavanaugh got snockered and tried to force himself on a sober young lady who wanted nothing to do with such hanky-panky. He may have no recollection of the encounter. She would remember every moment.
He is a liar. He said he definitely was not there. He said he clearly remembers not being there.
Yet he was there. He remembers. This is not his first lie to protect himself.
Maybe this will begin the conversation that not remembering that you assaulted someone because you were blackout drunk isn’t an acceptable excuse.
“Al Franken was driven out for far less”
craig, if I remember correctly, you authored a call for zero tolerance thread at that very time….
Franken & his accusers should have at the very least been heard under oath before being tossed under the bus by Gillibrand et al.
WARNING envisioning some of the following may cause nightmares
the guardian: Stormy Daniels’ tell-all book on Trump: salacious detail and claims of cheating
[…]
A copy of the book, Full Disclosure, was obtained by the Guardian. In it, Daniels describes her mounting disbelief as Trump began to win primary contests in 2016 for the Republican presidential nomination. Former castmates whom she had not heard from in years, but who had heard her story about sleeping with Trump in 2006, would call her up to marvel at the news.
“It will never happen, I would say,” Daniels writes. “He doesn’t even want to be president.”
But as Trump kept winning, Daniels writes, she began to think she might be in danger. The story she had to tell about Trump seemed more sensitive the more he won. And she had already been threatened once, years earlier, and warned never to tell the story about Trump, she has claimed.
Those moments of fear and doubt – and Daniels’ decision on the eve of the election to sign a $130,000 hush agreement – hang around a detailed description of Daniels’ alleged tryst with Trump at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, California. In the book, Daniels writes in sometimes excruciating detail about the president’s genitals and describes her disgust with herself for letting the scene play out.
She continued to answer Trump’s many phone calls over the next year in hopes that he would make good on his promise to put her on his reality television show, The Apprentice, Daniels writes. Trump even suggested that a cheat could be arranged to allow her to survive through more episodes of the show, she writes.
“We’ll figure out a way to get you the challenges beforehand,” she quotes him as saying. “And we can devise your technique.”
“He was going to have me cheat, and it was 100 percent his idea.”
Whenever she saw Trump on television for years afterwards, Daniels writes, an internal monologue would play out: “‘I had sex with that’, I’d say to myself. Eech.”
[…]
Trump’s bodyguard invites Daniels to dinner, which turns out to be an invitation to Trump’s penthouse, she writes, in a description of alleged events that Daniels has disclosed previously but which in the book are rendered with new and lurid detail. She describes Trump’s penis as “smaller than average” but “not freakishly small”.
“He knows he has an unusual penis,” Daniels writes. “It has a huge mushroom head. Like a toadstool…
“I lay there, annoyed that I was getting fucked by a guy with Yeti pubes and a dick like the mushroom character in Mario Kart…
“It may have been the least impressive sex I’d ever had, but clearly, he didn’t share that opinion.”
Daniels’ alleged relationship with Trump included one moment in 2007, she writes, in which she is with Trump in a hotel room watching a Shark Week broadcast on cable television when he receives a phone call from Hillary Clinton, then running against Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination.
“Then, to make it crazier, Hillary Clinton called,” Daniels writes. “He had a whole conversation about the race, repeatedly mentioning ‘our plan’…
“Even while he was on the phone with Hillary, his attention kept going back to the sharks.”
that’s right PatD, and I’m calling for zero tolerance again
thanks to Stormy we have a new nickname for him: Shroom!
Michael Avenatti took Tucker the f–king moron to school and it was great.
Tucker Carlson is willing to play the rightwing fool for $$$ and he is underpaid
The goopers are on the highway to hell. It looks like it is all downhill from here.
Good bye goopers I hope the tax cut was worth it
WHAT! why isn’t the 3rd man included? chuck et al must be afraid he’ll corroborate her instead of him
wapo:
Grassley says Monday’s hearing will be limited to two witnesses: Kavanaugh and his accuser
[…]
In Ford’s account to The Post, she said there was a third person in the room, Mark Judge, a Kavanaugh friend and classmate at Georgetown Preparatory School in Washington.
Grassley said Judge has not been asked to testify.
“At this point we have two people testifying. That’s all I can tell you,” Grassley told Hewitt.
Reached by email Sunday, Judge declined to comment. In an interview Friday with the Weekly Standard, before Ford’s name became public, he denied that any such incident occurred, calling the accusation “just absolutely nuts.”
Grassley said he has not decided who would testify first but assumes Ford would. He said he does not know how many rounds of questions senators on the panel would get to ask.
In response to a question from Hewitt, Grassley did not rule out the possibility that a female lawyer could be tapped to ask questions of Ford from the Republican side.
[…continues…]
I say he doesn’t withdraw and keeps denying –he takes advice from the Predator in Chief…
perhaps he and Clarence can compare notes on being sexual predators
It shows contempt for women. There are no excuses for such behavior
GOP will resist having the eyewitness who defends KavaNAUGHT. He wrote a book about their binge drinking in school — which refers to K as among them
Maybe so KGC, but it’s not his decision. Just a matter of time before WH pulls the plug.
craig, if what Grassley says in wapo’s story about limiting it to only two witnesses doesn’t change to include the witness, I sincerely hope sen flake and the dems make sure his book will be made part of the record.
Everything is subject to Bink’s approval…I kinda like ‘shroom — seems more diminutive.
Which Whitehouse — the one where SFB is in charge or the one the alleged resistance is in charge
And the condom was ridiculous yesterdaywell no more than usual
Or, he could be tiny-Toadstool
Methinks at this point it’s a flip of the coin… tails… he withdraws… heads… Jack is correct… or vice versa. And neither scenario will surprise me.
If the hearing on Monday does go through… there will be lots and lots of popcorn here at the trail.
Bottom line, Kava or more properly kava kava has deleterious side effects.
hahahaha
Drudge Report promotes hit piece on the wrong ‘Christine Ford’
https://yhoo.it/2QDGr03
Do I have this right, she was a ninth grader (15-yo) and he was a senior (18-yo)? If true, emasculate the turd.
Actually she was the older person but neither was 18
From the 0600 18 Sep WaPo article:
Ford has alleged that Kavanaugh pinned her down and clumsily groped her during a prep school party when Ford, 15, was a sophomore and Kavanaugh, 17, a junior. Now 51, Ford, a research psychologist, told The Post, “I thought he might inadvertently kill me.”
Due to his friend’s book, we know this was not a one-off. He drank to excess frequently and who knows what else he did
My bad but I heard an interview with her and I thought she said she was the older. Doesn’t matter though — he’s
a repeat offender and a liar.
Thank you for the deference, Flatus. Kavanaugh is toast, one way or another.
Honestly, i don’t know what to make of the allegations- we all want to seek Kavanaugh sunk for partisan reasons, but 35 year old here-say is a rather low-standard, and there will be caterwauls from liberals when it comes down on one of their candidates.
IMO, 15 isn’t old enough to go to parties where unsupervised kids are getting drunk.
Bink, I’m more concerned about the perjury indications in the withheld documents.
I just heard Flake interviewed – he ain’t changing his vote to “no”. The 11 angry white repugnican men on the committee will approve moving the nomination to the floor for a vote.
Well Merrit Garland never even got to the hearing stage so I think the goopers are the ones who have started this
From what i understand about the hearings, he’s already perjured himself [twice?]. Correct me if i’m wrong, please. I listened to one day of hearings where he evaded every question asked by a Democrat, and was lauded and asked no real questions by Republicans, although that describes every hearing i’ve listened to during the Trump regime.
Alright, in keeping with the thread, i’ve got $5 to the donations page if i’m wrong that says he does not withdraw.
You can tell the guy REALLY wants that lifetime position.
I’m with Flatus… I’m more concerned about his supposedly perjury in these hearings.
And I LOVE Al Franken… think he was railroaded… would love to see him run for president. But this whole affair shows why Craig was correct in saying at the time of the accusations made against him that he had to go.
Susan Collins ,worthless person – Maine
She is the weakest of the weak and the front for gooper lies
Well, Rick Scott’s not getting a pass for his “stewardship” of the coastal environment. Red Tide Rick was heckled out of a campaign event by protesters.
I agree with Bink. Kavanaugh ain’t withdrawing his nomination and SFB is not going to do so either. I’ll see Bink’s $5.
Having held the high ground on MeToo and now fielding unprecedented numbers of women congressional candidates, Dems are well positioned to earn the votes of college educated suburban white women who can make the difference in winning the House and Senate. Kavanaugh is kerosene on an already blazing fire.
Pogo, Bink — My read of Trump’s uncharacteristicly mute response is that he’s already given up on Kavanaugh. As we know he only does what’s good for him. He will calculate that he is better off rallying his base against unfair Democratic Party tactics slandering a “good man”, instead of defending a prep school drunk.
Birds of a Feather no wonder SFB likes him
I think they are using the message the condom put out yesterday…..everyone needs to be heard. (and now we have Susan (I’ll do anything to stay in office) Collins spreading lies about Ford not appearing.
After the hearing, fat, old white guys on the committee will say –youthful indiscretion and look what a wonderful guy he is now and send him on to the floor
I don’t want him on the court not because he lied but because he is a big giant asshole of an entitled white guy who thinks the constitution as originally written is the only way to interpret it
and because of his support for the idea that the president is above the law I don’t really care why they turn him down just that it happens
FWIW, I’ve never seen a ‘prep school drunk’. I suspect he was the typical binge drinker common among males in that cohort.
It’s Dr. Ford or Professor Ford
this letter so far signed by more than 200 should at least get equal play as his 65 ladies in media coverage
huffpo: Alumnae Of Christine Blasey Ford’s High School Circulate Letter Of Support
A group of women who went to Christine Blasey Ford’s high school are circulating a letter to show support for the woman who has alleged that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh tried to sexually assault her while they were in high school.
“We believe Dr. Blasey Ford and are grateful that she came forward to tell her story,” says a draft letter from alumnae of Holton-Arms, a private girls school in Bethesda, Maryland. “It demands a thorough and independent investigation before the Senate can reasonably vote on Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to a lifetime seat on the nation’s highest court.”
The women also say that what Ford is alleging “is all too consistent with stories we heard and lived while attending Holton. Many of us are survivors ourselves.”
The letter is a boost of support for Ford, who has been thrust into the political spotlight and had her credibility questioned by going up against Kavanaugh and the White House. The signatories span decades at the school ― before, during and after Ford attended.
More than 200 women had signed the letter as of late Monday morning, said Sarah Burgess, a member of the class of 2005. (One notable signature: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, class of 1979, who said Monday afternoon that she had added her name to the letter. ) Burgess said she and some of her schoolmates wrote the letter because hearing Ford’s story felt “personal.”
“I know that in the coming days, her story will be scrutinized, and she will be accused of lying,” Burgess said in an email. “However, I grew up hearing stories like hers, and believe her completely.”
Susanna Jones, the Holton-Arms head of school, put out a statement Sunday night in support of Ford.
“In these cases, it is imperative that all voices are heard,” Jones said. “As a school that empowers women to use their voices, we are proud of this alumna for using hers.”
[…continues…]
I figure that the rippers will give kavanaught the job. Then, the new Congress can impeach the baseturd on the perjury charges.
more on kav’s preppie buddy mark judge
wapo:
[…]
In two memoirs, Judge depicted his high school as a nest of debauchery where students attended “masturbation class,” “lusted after girls” from nearby Catholic schools and drank themselves into stupors at parties. He has since renounced that lifestyle and refashioned himself as a conservative moralist — albeit one who has written about “the wonderful beauty of uncontrollable male passion.”
Judge credits Georgetown Prep as the place he learned to write, even as he blames it for sending him down the path to alcoholism and immorality.
[…]
In his 2005 memoir, “God and Man at Georgetown Prep,” he wrote that he co-published the school’s underground student newspaper in his senior year, dedicating it largely to documenting the school’s party scene. One issue pictured a music teacher at a bachelor party “chugging a beer, surrounded by a group of us with raised mugs, sitting down while being entertained by the stripper.”
Judge never wrote about any sexual violence at those parties, nor did he mention Kavanaugh attending any. But Judge’s 1997 memoir, “Wasted,” references a “Bart O’Kavanaugh” character who passes out drunk and throws up in a car.
In Judge’s telling, it took him years to realize the error of his high school ways. He eventually got sober, rediscovered Catholicism and briefly took a teaching job at Georgetown University.
[….continues…]
If they don’t get Kavanaugh – they get nothing because it will be too late before the mid-terms and then Yertle might as well go pound sand
can we bring a class action against all sfb appointments?
Poobah, you could be right. On the other hand, McGahn, who’s trying to keep the nomination on the rails, may have gotten to him and made him aware of the damage he was doing to the nominee’s prospects. I realize that assumes SFB is a rational individual who is willing to listen to those around him who he should listen to – naaah, you’re probably right. But I’m leaving my $5 where it is.
if he does withdraw, my bet is on amy to be next pick. she gives IMPOTUS more distraction from the Manafort and woodward fallout. … another shiny toy for the media to play with.
Amy Coney Barrett (born 1972) is a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. She was previously a professor of law at Notre Dame Law School and the John M. Olin Fellow in Law at George Washington University Law School. [wiki]
she was considered at top of list until Kavanaugh was sprung on us. BTW mitch wasn’t that happy with kav being nominated.
She’s a rightwing Catholic and I think she will have a hard time
If they just want a win they should nominate Merrit Garland
…
NEW THREAD