All-purpose news and politics thread: Two Steps Beyond!(Part II)

[Malvolio]

I think that as long as it wasn't an obvious monster, or didn't make little booboos like admitting he thought the basic contraceptive pill was a form of abortion, or otherwise gave indications he'd be unable to judge fairly (i.e. do his job), he'd get confirmed.

Hmm, I wonder to whom you're referring in the second part of that sentence. I can't imagine.

[Tami]

Dear god, Graham is really trying to destroy every molecule of credibility possible.

Lindsey Graham Is the Saddest Story in Washington: His fight for Brett Kavanaugh completed his transformation into Donald Trump’s slobbering manservant.

But Graham is special. He really is. I can’t think of another Republican whose journey from anti-Trump outrage to pro-Trump obsequiousness was quite so illogical or half as sad, and his conduct during the war over Kavanaugh completed it. For the president he fought overtime, he fought nasty and he fought without nuance.

In so doing, he distilled our rotten politics — its transactional nature, its tribal fury, its hysterical pitch — as neatly as anybody in the current Congress does.

Has a diva at La Scala ever delivered an aria as overwrought as the one that Graham performed on the day when both Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee? I doubt it.

Why is Lindsey Graham acting like this?

Lindsey Graham learned the benefits of acting audaciously at a young age.

As a boy, no older than 6, he hung around his mom and dad’s bar in Central, S.C., dressing up as a cowboy and yukking it up with drunks for laughs.

This was four decades before anyone would call the little guy “Senator.” Back then his vaudeville routine at the Sanitary Cafe — which often included stealing slugs of beer from customers and taking drags off cigarettes poached from ashtrays — earned him a different nickname: “Stinkball.”

“I was the center of attention at that bar,” Graham boasted Thursday morning in an interview in his Capitol Hill office.

He’d just been escorted there by four police officers through press scrums and past throngs of protesters, proof that he was once again near the center of attention as the Senate considered the fate of Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh.

Graham said the relationship shifted within a month of Trump winning; he got in touch and told Graham he might have called sooner but he didn’t have his cellphone number.

“Well, there’s a reason for that,” Graham said he told him. They laughed about it. “He’s in on the joke,” Graham recalled. “A lot of this is theater.”

McCain wasn’t thrilled with Graham’s newfound friendship with the president.

“Why do you play golf with him?” Graham said McCain would ask him. “I told him I hope you understand. . . . The best place to talk to him is in his world.”

To take Graham at his word, he has truly grown to like Trump. And even if he doesn’t agree with everything the president does or says, Graham sees him as a good vehicle for a conservative agenda.

There’s also, of course, the unsaid calculus: Graham, like Trump, is up for reelection in 2020, and his popularity is inextricably linked to the president’s. If the people of South Carolina like Trump, well, then Graham better like him, too.

He's been in this neck deep from the start.

[Tami]

The double lives of vulnerable House Republicans

Vulnerable House Republicans have to lead double lives these days if they hope to hang on.

Take Dave Brat. At a private fundraiser in early September, the Virginia Republican joked to a roomful of Republicans about how he mimics archconservative House Freedom Caucus founder Jim Jordan on Fox News when discussing the FBI’s Russia investigation. He then encouraged Sebastian Gorka, a controversial former adviser to President Donald Trump, to get involved in Brat's campaign to gin up the base, according to a recording of the private event obtained by POLITICO.

But in TV ads, Brat has touted his work on issues that transcend party lines. One of them features images of puppies playing with children, and a narrator touting the congressman's work “to stop a federal agency from conducting cruel medical research on dogs.”

The two sides of Brat, a member of the Freedom Caucus, highlight the dissonant strategies House Republicans are deploying in their struggle to keep the House. As national Republicans implore endangered members to localize their races and tout bipartisan victories, hard-liners are urging them to embrace the president to get Trump voters to the polls.

Survival might ultimately depend on Republicans successfully doing both — not an easy feat since Democrats are reminding voters of their ties to Trump at every opportunity. But the conundrum is clear: GOP office-holders in swing districts can’t afford to repel independents by appearing too cozy with Trump, yet they also need Trump’s followers to turn out in force.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Lindsey Graham Is the Saddest Story in Washington: His fight for Brett Kavanaugh completed his transformation into Donald Trump’s slobbering manservant.




Why is Lindsey Graham acting like this?





He's been in this neck deep from the atart.

On top of that, Lowbrow Lindsey is angling for Attorney General once Trump finally gets around to firing the Krooked Keebler Elf. None of this is theater with Graham, NONE of it, he’s seriously slurping Trump in order to weasel his way into the Abominable Administration.

[Tami]

On top of that, Lowbrow Lindsey is angling for Attorney General once Trump finally gets around to firing the Krooked Keebler Elf. None of this is theater with Graham, NONE of it, he’s seriously slurping Trump in order to weasel his way into the Abominable Administration.

Which is insane, to anyone who has paid attention to how Trump treats his staff and cabinet members.

[Raiders]

Dems need to stop crying and protesting, and get their asses out there to vote next month.
Like Obama tells them, “don’t boo, vote”

[4saken1]

On the Left, Eyeing More Radical Ways to Fight Kavanaugh

Heck, I'd settle for an actual investigation........

[worstblogever]

Rand Paul is a doctor, even if his degree is from a non-accredited school.

He created the board that gave him his license to practice opthamology, and it mysteriously was disbanded around the time he decided he would rather follow his father's footsteps into being a terrible politician. Like, that's entitlement. When you can't pass a board exam so you have your father and rich pals pull strings just so you can claim to not be a failure.

Last I heard, Wagner was trailing Wolf by double digits, so the chances of my state getting a Republican in the Governor’s Office are pretty damn slim.

Wagner will likely be one of the bigots the GOP offered up that I will point and laugh at on the evening of Nov. 6th.

[Tazirai]

I think the more important part here is 'Russia Today DC Correspondent'. The Greenwaldian Left, ladies and gentlemen.

What does that mean? Curious.

[Farealmer]

The left got another voice today.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BopoXpYnCes/

[Tendrin]

What does that mean? Curious.

How familiar are you with Greenwald's last couple years of work?

[Tendrin]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world...cid=spartandhp

In a stunning move that could set back the country’s efforts to expand its global presence, the Chinese Communist Party announced late Sunday that the missing president of Interpol, Meng Hongwei, was under investigation on “suspicion of violating the law” and was “under the supervision” of an anticorruption watchdog tied to the party.

Creepy as... a creepy thing.

[Iron Maiden]

Dear god, Graham is really trying to destroy every molecule of credibility possible.

What men like Lindsey Graham fail to understand is the Jekyll/Hyde personality some men have when it comes to sex. Women have been raped by people they thought were their friends. This story was in our local paper Some are willing to stoop to taking advantage of someone who has had too much to drink (which was not the case with Dr. Ford)

The night I was raped I went quite willingly with my rapist,” the Chesterton woman told me. “He was my friend and we hung out within our group of friends and we worked together. He had a serious girlfriend at the time and I hung out with her sometimes, too.”

The woman admitted she was “seriously and dangerously drunk” that night.

“I could barely walk,” she told me. “I remember going to his room and throwing up immediately into his trash can. The next thing I remember was waking up face down in his bed while he was raping me.”

She passed out, she said, waking up the next morning and leaving without saying a word.

“I did not feel like I was raped because, before I passed out, my intention was to sleep with him,” she said. “That was my drunken intention. In the harsh light of the sober day, I was excruciatingly ashamed of my behavior and I felt it was my fault.”

She could hardly look him in the eye after that night.

Not because he raped me. It was because I was embarrassed of my actions that night,” she said. “In 1996, it did not matter that I was too intoxicated to make good decisions and that he should have been respectful of the fact that I was in no condition to consent. That was not the paradigm under which we lived.”

Is it the paradigm in 2018? No. Not nearly enough. We know this. Maybe the Kavanaugh investigation will also launch an examination of this long-secretive subject in our country. Maybe not.

“It infuriates me when I hear people defending this nominee with arguments questioning why this woman would come out now,” the woman said. “I still cannot publicly tell my story. I don’t want my kids to know… my husband… my parents… my friends, colleagues, family, acquaintances, clients… I don’t want any of them to know.”

“My rapist is married with three lovely children,” the woman said. “They look like a family we would be friends with. He is probably a great guy who made a dumb decision that night. None of that changes the fact he was a rapist the one time I needed him not to be.”

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Lindsey Graham's only law experience was in the U.S. Air Force Judge Advocate General's Corps. He was just a judge advocate in the United States Air Force. But any lawyer can be appointed Attorney General.

And Trump had ZERO experience as a full blown politician, yet, he was elected president.

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New UN Climate Report Dims Hope For Averting Catastrophic Global Warming

Keeping temperatures from rising beyond the Paris agreement’s ambitious target will require unprecedented social changes. But, Trump and the GOP keeps saying climate change doesn't exist.

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The Fraudulence Of Susan Collins

People who expected Sen. Susan Collins, allegedly one of two remaining Republican moderates in the Senate, to save us from Brett Kavanaugh have not studied her record.

The Maine senator has reduced the choreography of legislative head-fakes to a sublime art, in order to preserve her bogus reputation as an independent-minded centrist. When a contentious issue arises, Collins will elaborately explain that she hasn’t made up her mind yet. She needs to give the issue careful study. And then, wondrously, after very careful and well-advertised study, she almost always votes with Mitch McConnell. Funny how her research invariably leads to that conclusion.

She is especially loyal to her party when her vote is pivotal on important legislation or nominations. She has voted to confirm virtually all of President Donald Trump’s nominees. Collins also voted for the Trump tax bill (which passed 51-49) and for the confirmation last year of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.

In the most drama in which she played a critical role, Collins joined two other Republicans in calling for what turned out to be a rigged FBI inquiry. She then voted to confirm Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court ― not with ambivalence but almost giddy enthusiasm. In her floor speech on Friday announcing the decision, she did not present her conclusion as a close or difficult question. To hear Collins tell it, Kavanaugh’s record on a federal appeals court shows that he’s the most even-handed and brilliant jurist since King Solomon.

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Christine Blasey Ford Can’t Return Home Due To ‘Unending’ Threats, Lawyers Say

“We thought it was bad back in 1991, and it’s even worse today,” Lisa Banks, another of Ford’s attorneys, told MSNBC.

**********

Former Yale Law School Dean: Kavanaugh’s Confirmation Is An ‘American Tragedy’

Robert Post warned that Kavanaugh, a Yale alumnus, will undermine the Supreme Court’s “claim to legitimacy.”

**********

Colin Powell: Trump Has Changed ‘We The People’ To ‘Me The President’

“The world is watching,” the former secretary of state warned. And neither Trump or the GOP gives a flying fuck. That's the problem.

[Mister Mets]

I think that as long as it wasn't an obvious monster, or didn't make little booboos like admitting he thought the basic contraceptive pill was a form of abortion, or otherwise gave indications he'd be unable to judge fairly (i.e. do his job), he'd get confirmed.

Kavanaugh was incorrectly accused of saying he thinks the basic contraceptive pill is a form of abortion.

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...tion-inducing/

This was a lie that was also quoted by Hillary Clinton.

Alito had conventional qualifications, but only four Democrats voted for him, so I doubt that a generic Republican nominee would be able to get confirmed under those circumstances (Republican President, Democratic Senate.)

The junk science Republicans used to undermine Ford and help save Kavanaugh

The article's a bit misleading. The reason that the mistaken-identity theory was ridiculed was that a Kavanaugh ally named a specific person as a suspect, not because there was universal agreement on the science.

The situation is one that would be difficult to test, since Ford didn't share the incident for anyone with decades. It's going to be tough to find relevant scientific studies on that one.

True. If the Attorney-General doesn't have to be a lawyer, Trump can appoint Kanye West as the next Attorney-General once he is done with Jeff Sessions.


Why should Lindsey aim for the position of Attorney-General when he can be Chief Justice of the United States for life?

Some Chief and Associate Justices of the Supreme Court were previously not judges

For example, Earl Warren was previously the District Attorney of Alameda County and the 20th Attorney General of California, but not a judge yet Warren was appointed the 14th Chief Justice of the United States (1953–1969). For a Chief Justice who has never previously been a judge, Earl Warren's Supreme Court made four landmark decisions: Brown v. Board of Education (1954), Gideon v. Wainwright (1963), Reynolds v. Sims (1964), and Miranda v. Arizona (1966).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Warren

Elena Kagan was also not a judge (She was Dean of Harvard Law School, and Solicitor General.) There's no historical or traditional reason for everyone appointed to the Supreme Court to be a judge. It's done now because their work as judge would provide an indication of what kind of Supreme Court Justice they would be.

An odd point on why Trump is not conventionally qualified is that Supreme Court Justices, and cabinet appointees need Senate Approval. A President does not. So we can have Presidents less qualified than many of the cabinet since the voters are the ones to make that decision (I'll note that we're in an era of relatively unqualified Presidents, with Bill Clinton, George W Bush, and Barack Obama having unusually thin resumes with Clinton the first small state Governor to become President, George W Bush serving as executive in a state where the legislature has the power, and Obama having less than one term in the Senate.)