The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    Dr. Ford should say "Yes."

    By Flavius on Fri, 09/21/2018 - 7:38pm |

    sometime over the weekend.. On whatever terms Atty Katz has been able to obtain by then. 

    But only after  Katz first  reveal's the Committee's proposed terms , and  the changes  Ford  requests  , while  saying  she will accept the  Committee's  terms if confirmed  by a majority of the Committee.

    Between now and  her Committee  appearance she should be thoroughly  trained. As  Kavanaugh has already been, With "mock" sessions  video'd ,critiqued and repeated as necessary,

    With members of her family attending ,the more the better,, Among other reasons  to support her if  they  feel the training  risks  undermining  her authenticity ..To some extent  ,counter intuitively , it takes training to seem natural.

    Bottom line: you gotta know when to hold and when to fold.

     

     

     

     

     

    Comments

    Three hours later. Furthermore..

     Actually, more of  the same. 

    o What Trump needs is for Dr. Ford not to meet the Committee.

    o What the Country needs is for the Committee to  do meet her

    -Either some of them will react as normal human beings   meaning causing the nomination  to fail.

    - Or not,  and their voters in their particular states will have to deal with that. A good thing.

    She should testify.

    A half an hour later.Grassly has ,by implication ,granted her request  for another 24 hours to decide. 

     She should say  Yes.  Dr. Katz should   assume   this is Grassly 's  attempt to provide some cover when he unilaterally decides tomorrow evening to schedule a vote on Monday.

     

     

     


    by Flavius on Fri, 09/21/2018 - 11:57pm

    I think we all know how this is likely to play out. Both people will tell a convincing story. One of them will be lying. Since they were alone in a room and it happened decades ago their will be no evidence to collaborate either version. In previous situation like this the "tie" goes to the accused. For years most men have gotten away with sexual harassment, rape and attempted rape unless there were several accusers or the rape was exceedingly violent and even then many have still gotten a pass. 

    It's true that if we believe the women occasionally an innocent man will be punished. But the previous system of believing the men has resulted in tens of thousands of men getting a free pass to sexually harass and rape. That's the choice we have to make as a society.


    by ocean-kat on Sat, 09/22/2018 - 1:22pm

    Maggie sounds mystified, not sure what's going on:

    The apologetic sentiment here given the nature of the allegation is something https://t.co/cXgM8Hq5Mj

    — Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) September 22, 2018

    by artappraiser on Sat, 09/22/2018 - 1:36pm

    Breaking, looks like a deal has been made for next week....

    Ford and her attorneys have once again outwitted and outmaneuvered the foolish GOP men of the Judiciary Committee. #Checkmate https://t.co/t63IcrToaU

    — Frank Rich (@frankrichny) September 22, 2018

    by artappraiser on Sat, 09/22/2018 - 2:42pm

    or is it more like, not a done deal but negotiation still going on?


    by artappraiser on Sat, 09/22/2018 - 2:47pm

    Major battle shaping up:

    News - former DOJ inspector general Michael Bromwich has joined Christine Blasey Ford’s legal team. (Note he also represents former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe). He has just resigned from his law firm effective immediately in light of objections within the partnership.

    — Laura Jarrett (@LauraAJarrett) September 22, 2018

    this will get the Deep State conspiracy folks to jump in?

    Edit to add: expect more Whalen type stuff? David Brock would know....


    by artappraiser on Sat, 09/22/2018 - 4:00pm

    I'm reminded of Tom Hanks' joke  in the penultimate scene of "Philadelphia". As I recall it:

    What do you call 80 lawyers chained together at the bottom of the ocean? 

    A good start.

    Bromwich is clearly a good start.

    Almost certainly he'll  equip  her to perform  credibly before the Committee.  And , smart woman as she is , recognizing that she'll not only sleep better in the intervening nights, she'll be more convincing in the hearingl

    In the best of all possible worlds -if it is going to be  televised -she would also benefit from help on the PR aspects of her appearance. Which the legal team might not think worth considering. I once participated in a quasi debate on Jane Pauley's then program and a couple of days of  coaching  sufficiently upgraded  my performance that the other side's PR guy said we won.  

    I'm greedy. I not only want her to win on Wednesday I want her to avenge Anita Hill's treatment.


    by Flavius on Sat, 09/22/2018 - 6:27pm

    One difference in this confrontation is that it is happening on the other side of the tracks from all that talk of lynching Thomas invoked.
    The present issue is much smaller. Almost tactile.


    by moat on Sat, 09/22/2018 - 7:08pm

    So Flavius, oceankat's comment has inspired my thinking, and interested me when I had little interest in how this morality play and kabuki show would go up until now. I'd say if she comes across as Jane Eyre wronged she'll be just fine, but definitly not if hoity toity outraged liberal feminazi. And Kavanaugh. As an elite Yalie who is already contra Trump typology--which a Supreme Court Justice of necessity has to be--he better act the gentleman and humble scholar. Even a whiff of pridefulness like, say that which Mr Darcy, falsely appeared to have,  that will do him in, he'll be no better than all of them lying cheating scoundrels of country music.

    You?


    by artappraiser on Sat, 09/22/2018 - 9:33pm

    Horses for courses.

    There are people who make a living getting that sort of question right. Not me.

     Given that ,  my gut feel is that her image shouldn't an accident.:

    An accomplished scientist :  "decisions should reflect the relevant data...?

    A militant angel : " justice must be done" ?

    Ms mouse:  " I'm  just doing my duty?"

    Whatever , seems to me her team should  deliberately chose one which they keep  in mind as they rehearse and role play this week, As no doubt team Kavanaugh will be doing  in another part of the forest.

     

     


    by Flavius on Sun, 09/23/2018 - 12:47am

    Editor in chief of Politico sez:

    I think the GOP is wildly underestimating its peril with this Christine Blasey Ford stuff. Has the potential to break through with women in a major, major way. Men have trouble grasping the extent of what women have had to deal with their entire lives, and how it's affected them.

    — Blake Hounshell (powered by blockchain) (@blakehounshell) September 22, 2018

    but I think Steve Bannon knew this a long time ago with his comments about how the #MeToo movement showing up at the Oscars scared the bejeesus out of him. I also think that one should always keep in mind that the category "women" is a majority, so here all the arguments for and against minority grievance politics don't really apply if you have an issue that unifies most of the category.


    by artappraiser on Sat, 09/22/2018 - 3:59pm

    But it doesn't seem to unify most of them.

    I'm going to tell a story that I don't really want to tell. I have never told this story to anyone and I never would to anyone who knows my mother. But no one here knows me or my mother so...

    Some years ago I was visiting home and saw a news report of a girl who sued the Boy Scouts to be a part of their group. My  mother and I argued about it until she said,"Well I hope she gets raped." I was shocked silent. I had no more words, no way to respond. 

    I spent a long time thinking about this. My mother is a good person. I don't think she actually meant it. Where could this have come from. My mother is smart but uneducated. She worked at a local department store and quickly took over management of several departments. There was paperwork and math she had to complete as part of the job. More than that she began to breed fish for the pet department instead of buying the fish to sell. Breeding fish isn't rocket science but it doesn't happen by just throwing fish together.

    But she was uneducated. She doesn't know much. She reads romance novels and when she does her lips move. She only reads as fast as she can speak. She was a good student in high school but when her mother got sick she had to drop out of school to take care of her as she was the oldest female child. That's just how it was back then. She gave up her childhood and her education to clean the house, cook meals for the family with 5 children, and care for a sick mother. How much that must have hurt her. How much suffering she must have dealt with and ignored.

    Sometimes those who have suffered don't want to see others escape the pain they had to deal with. Sometimes they don't want others to have the options they were denied. It doesn't even have to be conscious. Just the unacknowledged suffering and pain long denied can make one cold to the pain of others.


    by ocean-kat on Sat, 09/22/2018 - 5:29pm

    Sometimes those who suffered instinctively want others to avoid suffering, even if it defies all logic and reason.  Sometimes they see a perceived risk to someone else and their knee-jerk reaction is "don't do it!", even if their clearer mind might conceive of how it could actually be a good thing for that person to do.

    In your mother's case, perhaps she was of the opinion that girls shouldn't join a boy's club - an opinion shared by many of her generation and many today - and in frustration simply went for the lowest hanging argument.  It shut you up, didn't it?  ;-)  But it was also, at least possibly, at the heart of the fear she felt for the girl ... and why she was against the very idea.

    You wrote a very moving and eloquent synopsis of your mother's intellect, ocean.  Does it surprise you that pieces of her heart, and yours, snuck in as well?


    by barefooted on Sat, 09/22/2018 - 7:49pm

    All I would say is that a woman like your mother might surprise you with her reaction when men don't act like those in the romance novels. Especially once she has reached a certain age when she doesn't give a damn any more about appearances.

    My mother had a similar education level but far far less work experience. She had better reading skills but never read books. She kept up with politics from TV news. She would read the newspaper but nothing too dry, it had to have a "human interest" twist to interest her.  She loved to read advice columns in the newspaper, but also, as a child of non-English speaking immigrants growing up on a farm, since youth, she especially loved gossip and biographical stories about the rich and famous in magazines (older versions, like Life Magazine, of the newer People or Vanity Fair kind of thing). For the same reasons many of us like to read fiction, to figure out what "the other" is like and what they like.

    I tell you all of this because I would like to offer how she turned out learning that way. At the meeting planning her funeral, when the priest asked all 6 of us (husband and children) how he could best describe her in a few words, we all agreed wholeheartedly that it should be "bleeding heart liberal." She was pretty damn feminist, too, anytime she heard about sexual harassment. She always turned it back on personal experience, I remember her relating to me in adulthood when one case or another was in the news about how every young woman has had to deal with one of those piggy old uncles or cousins rubbing up against them at a wedding or some such, and then rolling her eyes.


    by artappraiser on Sat, 09/22/2018 - 8:09pm

    P.S. One of my mom's much older sisters had similar work experience to your mom, ran a dept. store shipping dept. with a 6th grade education, after she raised a family. She was a much more analytical person than my empath mom, and much more of a hard worker, obsessive. Took no guff from anyone since driving the truck to the farmer's market for her immigrant parents at 13,  but still very very kind.  I really admired her a lot, I thought her an incredible woman till the day she died at 92 (my mom lived only ot 76). I can see her knocking a sexual harasser or bully on his ass and I would have like totally trusted her to select our next president if we didn't have a democracy. So I think education and being informed isn't everything.


    by artappraiser on Sat, 09/22/2018 - 8:18pm

    Oh, and I forgot to make an important point. What the main big deal about Ford's story being told in public, and on TV, and everything Flavius is saying about P.R. and such: this is the way someone like my mother judges things about politics. From one person's story. Like you would as a juror in a courtroom. Not reading books or news, that's not how she judged what was going on. Rightly or wrongly, it's the way a lot of people judge things, especially women who haven't had a lot of education, like a juror does in a court case. Unless, they are totally under the thumb of husbands. In my experience, though, when given the chance, even those types want to be seen as having an independent mind if given half the chance. There are few real versions of the mythical 1950's "little woman at home" except in cults or those raised in ultra conservative religious environments. Some will judge her as making it up for political purposes or having faulty memory, but that will because her performance didn't ring authentic to them, not because they don't think women don't get fair treatment, most probably do.


    by artappraiser on Sat, 09/22/2018 - 8:43pm

    I just hope that I am never called upon to rip up my world on the basis of conscience.
    I like my little world. But I get it. I would rip it up if I had to.
    Please don't ask me to do that.


    by moat on Sat, 09/22/2018 - 8:59pm

    I'm not sure I see it as so deep - when we take sides, we often use the standard toolkit to fight the other. Kesey nails it in Cuckoo's Nest when McMurphy goes to fight an orderly - they're not fighting about anything racial, but they inmediately adopt racial insults as part of getting ready to fight. I figure we do the same for sexual, class, religious, and other divides - we use what will hurt them, not what makes sense - like Demi Moore telling her commander to "suck my dick" in GI Jane. The level to how pissed off or how bad we're losing or how important the issue is may effect how serious a weapon we grab from the stock toolkit. (Of course in marital and sibling fights we havea broader knowledge if things that will hurt, so doesn't have to be so stereotyped, or is just a stereotype within a family context. 


    by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 09/22/2018 - 8:31pm

    I agree that there are several reasons why one might attack. One might be malign, or just want to win an argument, or have more complex reasons that go deeper. It seems to me that one would have to be deeply angry to reach to that degree on the nasty scale. Maybe some people easily go that far to the nasty just to win an argument but that's not how I argue with my mom or she with me. My point was that suffering doesn't always make a person more empathetic. Sometimes pain can make them less empathetic too.


    by ocean-kat on Sun, 09/23/2018 - 12:27am

    It's just that think it is much more common these days (since like Anita Hill, or perhaps Oprah) for women of all ideological types to share these things among each other when they used to just keep it to themselves. And it's not as rare as good men think and women now know it's not that rare because they have shared it with others. Now they also share it on the net where they can have anonymity if they chose, on blogs and such. Look at this thread on twitter started by a Karen Tumulty admission, of something that happened to her at age 9, look at all the "Me Too's" in Reply, for one example, they just go on and on and on, and few trolls, hardly any.  Let's say like 1 in say 25 men do such things, then it's a pretty good chance that it has happened to many more women, like 1 in 10 or more, and they have revealed it to female family and friends. The point is: while all of them might not think it's possible to do anything about men like this, they don't ever think well of men who do it and wouldn't want such a man to have a position of respect in society if they had anything to say about it. It would be less about empathy with other women and more about making sure men like that don't get rewarded, like anyone that's considered an asshole for other reasons.


    by artappraiser on Sun, 09/23/2018 - 2:08am

    I hope you're right, I know awareness and activism has increased these last two years. But still I can't understand how so many women could have voted for Trump.  He's so terrible, so disgusting, so overtly misogynistic. I just can't wrap my mind around that.


    by ocean-kat on Sun, 09/23/2018 - 2:33am

    Everything public with Trump in the campaign period was easily dismissed as consensual, all disgusting locker room talk but women think most men do that, even the pussy tape was about consensual: when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Most women don't see other women as angels and men as predators, they know many women are transactional about sex with men and would be willing to tempt a wealthy or powerful man with sex.  But the ability to say no is the important thing, that's what makes the difference, forcing, or taking advantage of naivete or innocence, that's taking it too far. A reminder that after the "pussy tape" he then he brought in some of Clinton's accusers who had accused Clinton of forced non consensual, for contrast.

    Yes, it's clear since he showed so many more bad sides as president he's losing women who voted for him as they've seen how truly misogynist he is, not just a jerk in the locker room. And the point with Kavanaugh is that the GOP is deathly afraid of losing any more.

    A reminder also with Trump, the two suits that have made the big news are transactional, not involved with assault. The two stories are not that negative about the relationships, actually, and Karen McDougal actually has talked quite fondly about their affair. Any harassment or assault accusations against him have not gotten much attention and would be easy to dismiss.

    Force or threat of losing your job, or humiliation in the workplace, those things make a big difference, is not just the cheating scoundrel that broke your heart but you still love of country music.

    Edit to add: nearly all of the Me too's on the Tumulty thread are about assault of one kind or another, not even about harassment. And more than once someone says something about how it probably happened to mom too, but "in the sixties, those things just weren't discussed." They are not talking about misogyny, that's not against the law. They're all talking about assaults; note the hashtag is #WhyIDidntReport something against the law.


    by artappraiser on Sun, 09/23/2018 - 4:33am

    I'm sure a lot of things happened, but the ethos was free love and enjoyment of nudity and bodies and sex. By the 70's we were much more cloistered, our Looking for Mr Goodbar, Eyes of Laura Mars period - sex is out front, but a scarier desperate tinge to it.

    I agree there's a big difference between sexifying things and the forced, non-consensual stuff. It's where MeToo runs into problems w TimeIsUp - the former with a much better focus on intolerable coercion; the latter taking on too much social engineering and human behavior at once. I suspect the GOP is able to play the too-expansive view into their insincere buckets and tropes. Like the "Kavanaugh wanted them to look a certain way" - uh, I don't tell women to strip down, but that seems to be a lot of current behavior.


    by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 09/23/2018 - 7:07am

    Totally agree with you there personally. Heck, personally I think some things that some women see as traumatic assaults I don't, i.e., grabbing a breast at an office party when everyone is drunk and you yell at him and her never touches you again.The creepy uncle who rubs up against you at the weddings. To me, those who are traumatized about things like this need help precisely because: this shouldn't cause real trauma! It would be nice if everyone in the world was nice and everything that happened in the world was nice,  but they are not and it is not.

    My point is: most women do find this behavior offensive even if not the most egregious variety, and talk about now when they didn't use to.And if they've been lucky enough for it not to happen to them, it's happened to a friend or family member.  And they no longer blame themselves or the friend because they realize it happens to a lot of women.

    My only reason for making that point now, precisely: it's a whole lot of women, not just feminists, think guys like this are assholes and not only are they not someone they want to have anything to do with, they don't want them to be anybody's boss much less a supreme court judge if they had any say in the matter. It's about character for many more than it is about crime, about someone who feels he is entitled to take without asking, who doesn't have to follow normal courtin' rules.

    That what the GOP fears is absolutely correct to fear.

    I didn't say that he's got to act gentlemanly and humble for nothing. It's the romance-novel-reader type I was thinking about there, not feminists. They won't want "the creepy guy" on the Supreme Court.

    If she's believable to women about her hurt and he is in turn aggressive toward that, it will read as he's one of those bad behaving assholes to many women. A guy they don't want to see becoming a judge.


    by artappraiser on Sun, 09/23/2018 - 11:56am

    P.S. Trump's had another major fail on this front. His tweet is the inspiration for #WhyIDidntReport I have to hasten to add that doesn't make him a equal to the assaulters, that makes him another clueless male, it's another indicator of "stupid" and uncaring about what women hate. (Lots of em don't like his being clueless about taking children away from their parents, either, if you noticed.)


    by artappraiser on Sun, 09/23/2018 - 12:07pm

    p.p.s. All of this is why Clarence Thomas playing the race card worked, i.e., "high tech lynching of uppity black man." He offered a victimhood narrative instead of going with the prosecution/persecution of a female victim of bad behavior. The perfect black gentleman being lied about. That some of the stories were so gross, i.e., talking about Long Dong Silver, didn't mesh with this gentleman appearing before the committee. He didn't attack her there, though others backing him did.


    by artappraiser on Sun, 09/23/2018 - 12:16pm

    The NAACP, Urban League, and National Organization of Women did not buy the persecuted black man ploy, they all opposed the appointment of Clarence Thomas.


    by rmrd0000 on Sun, 09/23/2018 - 3:41pm

    Charles Blow of the New York Times reminds us that the black public did support Clarence Thomas. Thurgood Marshall retired as a Supreme Court justice soon after the beating of Rodney King. Thomas’ lynching comment did allow him to gain support in the black community. Blacks later regretted their support

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/23/opinion/clarence-thomas-brett-kavanugh-anita-hill.html

     


    by rmrd0000 on Sun, 09/23/2018 - 10:46pm

    Odd you should cite him on this because Blow happens to know about childhood sexual abuse intimately; I always meant to read his book on topic after reading the op-ed cited at the link, but never got around to it.


    by artappraiser on Mon, 09/24/2018 - 12:55am

    Blow references "civil rights groups in a bind" as of July 4, 1991, this is from NYT August 1, 1991:

    N.A.A.C.P. and Top Labor Unite to Oppose Thomas

    The nation's largest civil rights group and the leaders of organized labor said incoordinated announcements today that theyopposed the nomination of Judge ClarenceThomas to the Supreme Court. "JudgeThomas's inconsistent views on civil rights policy make him an unpredictable elementon an increasingly radical conservative court," said Dr. William F. Gibson, chairmanof the National Association for theAdvancement of Colored People, in making.....


    by NCD on Sun, 09/23/2018 - 11:49pm

    Thanks for the link. The NAACP and Urban League did the right thing in opposing Thomas.

    Other women are coming forward accusing Kavanaugh of abuse.

    As if on cue, today is sentencing day for Bill Cosby. Cosby had his supporters as well.


    by rmrd0000 on Mon, 09/24/2018 - 8:36am

    I don't think we can discuss incident A or B as traumatic or not in isolation from the culture at large and the pattern of behavior a person has lived with from childhood. Let's consider the person who was sexually abused as a child or was "just" a victim of sexually inappropriate behavior. Or perhaps had been raped. Having put it behind her she enters a work place and finds her boss or coworker grabbing or rubbing against her at an office party. That could be very traumatizing. She may not want to tell her story of her rape or of years of abuse as a child but she may be ready to confront the the grabby boss or sleazy uncle. Someone who experienced a childhood or life free of sexually inappropriate behavior might be more able to deal with sexually boorish behavior.


    by ocean-kat on Sun, 09/23/2018 - 2:11pm

    Sure, even though I didn't use that particular kind of example, that's basically what I was saying, I was saying that they have a more serious problem than most women. My point here is to argue that all together. a majority of women, traumatized and not traumatized and inbetween, find boorish behavior as well as more seriously criminal behavior as not the stuff of the making of Supreme Court judge. Seriously, the majority take it seriously.

    Honestly, here I suspect a lot of them are going to want to know, are going to be watching for: is he still like that 17 yr. old creep and trying to hide it? Where some who are not passionate feminists might just go sigh if it was about a football player or a country western singer that they don't have to have anything to do with.


    by artappraiser on Sun, 09/23/2018 - 2:29pm

    Older women are doing it, telling sexual assault stories on C-Span instead of twitter. For me it's dejas vus allover again Anita Hill, when every Tom Dick & Harry learned about sexual harassment from Jill, Mary and Sue spilling their stories.

    I think lots of women don't tell because they assume most men are complicit and it's just the way things are and men won't be supportive. Clarence Thomas was still appointed, yes, but another end result was more acceptance of sexual harassment laws. When before that many men wouldn't think it necessary because they thought it rare.

    Makes me think of this tip to men who are afraid of women right now because of #MeToo, the walking on eggshells syndrome: if you attempt somehow to just once express sympathy for a woman going through this kind of thing, you then break the spell of war of the sexes. You don't really have to be Mr. Feminist all the time, you've just indicated you are an individual apart from tribe Men vs. women.


    by artappraiser on Thu, 09/27/2018 - 2:29pm

    See the statement by an organization of 6,000 Mormon women:

    Nonpartisan group of 6,000+ Mormon women calls on Judiciary Committee—naming "the four members who share our faith,” Hatch, Lee, Flake & Crapo—"to immediately suspend the confirmation proceedings” for thorough independent investigation of K, to "prevent harm to SCOTUS legitimacy" https://t.co/by6D90cDGc

    — Philip Gourevitch (@PGourevitch) September 25, 2018

    The reasoning is the same as I suggested it might be: our leaders should not have this kind of taint. It comes from a perspective of a job interview for a leader. It's not about empathy for victims, it's about role models. Some women may excuse this stuff away for an average joe, but most women are not going to be happy to see that kind of guy get a role model position.

    And once again, Trump is different because his misogyny or whatever you want to call it,  that which has been publicized, it is not assault but consensual stuff. And Mormon women don't for the most part go along with feminist political correctness as regards sex roles.


    by artappraiser on Tue, 09/25/2018 - 12:38pm


    by artappraiser on Sat, 09/22/2018 - 9:42pm

    as to the above story:


    by artappraiser on Sun, 09/23/2018 - 1:45pm

    There was this too Saturday:

    Spokesman for GOP on Kavanaugh nomination resigns; has been accused of harassment in the past

    An adviser for the Senate Judiciary Committee has resigned amid questions from NBC News about a previous sexual harassment complaint.

    by Heidi Przybyla @ NBCNews.com Sep.22.2018 / 10:11 AM EDT


    by artappraiser on Sun, 09/23/2018 - 4:39am

    Good reminders that this is not a legal proceeding but basically both job interview and a sales job for supporters of the nominee:

     


    by artappraiser on Sun, 09/23/2018 - 1:05pm

    Yet Graham's framing it as "ruining Kavanaugh's life" by not giving him one of the highest positions of responsibility. It's owed to Kavanaugh, because because because. How are these people so entitled?


    by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 09/23/2018 - 10:50pm

    And here comes Deborah! (I think I am so done with this now until the main show, can't take anymore, not sure I'm even going to read this):

    Senate Democrats Investigate a New Allegation of Sexual Misconduct, from Brett Kavanaugh’s College Years

    By  and  @ NewYorker.com, Sept. 23, 7:49 P.M.

    Deborah Ramirez, a Yale classmate of Brett Kavanaugh’s, has described a dormitory party gone awry and a drunken incident that she wants the F.B.I. to investigate.

    This new story by @JaneMayerNYer and @RonanFarrow is a must read. https://t.co/8hDbKeuykm pic.twitter.com/KvLQiVtJgV

    — Sheera Frenkel (@sheeraf) September 24, 2018

    Edit to add Maggie's two cents:

    Trump is calm, two of the people in touch with him say, and sticking with Kavanaugh. But there is drama between Kavanaugh team and some White House aides, who Kavanaugh team blame for WaPo leak out of their moot session last week.

    — Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) September 24, 2018

    and Frank's touche! comment

     


    by artappraiser on Sun, 09/23/2018 - 9:12pm

    Yeah, i'd read Kav's Starr committee stuff a few weeks ago, quite icky but no one cared, now it's news after a week of twitter. Looking less and less like their slam dunk.


    by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 09/23/2018 - 10:19pm

    If Deborah said you emolumented would she be lying?


    by NCD on Sun, 09/23/2018 - 10:44pm

    That's disgusting. What are Molar Mints?


    by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 09/23/2018 - 10:47pm

    See? two guys get together and there's locker room talk! not clutching pearls, just sayin'


    by artappraiser on Mon, 09/24/2018 - 12:38am

    1 guy gets together as well, tho "if a rude comment falls on the internetz and no one likes, did it exist...?" The existential crisis of our times.


    by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 09/24/2018 - 2:05am

    Women. Pearls. It's always about jewelry isn't it.


    by ocean-kat on Mon, 09/24/2018 - 2:47am

    Partly - pearls before swine. Or if kitchen/cooking types, Pearl Jam.


    by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 09/24/2018 - 2:56am

    Avenatti has a third woman and is in process of besieging the committee about her claims (but I note he has a court hearing on Stormy Daniels in L.A. this afternoon and then there's the Rosenstein resign/fired story that will drown this out, who knows what will happen with Kavanaugh now):

    Warning: My client re Kavanaugh has previously done work within the State Dept, U.S. Mint, & DOJ. She has been granted multiple security clearances in the past including Public Trust & Secret. The GOP and others better be very careful in trying to suggest that she is not credible

    — Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) September 24, 2018

    We will be appearing in court this afternoon in Los Angeles at 2 pm PST for @stormydaniels. We expect the court to provide guidance as to the case schedule and potential depositions of Cohen & Trump, as well as rule on Trump's motion to dismiss the defamation claim against him.

    — Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) September 24, 2018

    My e-mail of this morning directed to Mr. Davis, Chief Counsel for Nominations for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. The American people deserve to know the truth and evidence regarding the allegations. There must be no effort made to avoid it. pic.twitter.com/8pcdW0PqQ1

    — Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) September 24, 2018

     


    by artappraiser on Mon, 09/24/2018 - 11:50am

    I didn't know much of anything about Laurence Tribe so I went to Wikipedia  to get an overview. There are a few criticisms of the man who is obviously both smart and accomplished. 

      Tribe has stirred controversy due to his promotion of unreliably sourced and conspiratorial claims about President Trump.[35][36]Dartmouth political scientist Brendan Nyhan harshly criticized Tribe, saying that he "has become an important vector of misinformation and conspiracy theories on Twitter."[35] According to McKay Coppins of The Atlantic, Tribe has been "an especially active booster" of the Palmer Report, "a liberal blog known for peddling conspiracy theories".

    Seeing that he is a supporter of The Palmer Report which has been sighted here quite often as a reliable source I looked it up too to see if that offers any clues to judging either Tribe or Palmer. Turns out that Palmer has a few critics of his own. 

    Palmer Report is a liberalAmerican political blog.[1] It is written by Bill Palmer, who describes himself on his website as a political journalist who covered the 2016 election cycle from start to finish, along with more than fifty additional writers.[2] Palmer previously ran a site called Daily News Bin, described by Snopes.comeditor Brooke Binkowski as “basically a pro-Hillary Clinton'news site.' It was out there to counter misinformation with misinformation.”[3] The site has been criticized for building a large following based on "wildly speculative theories about Donald Trump." 

    The Palmer Report has been criticized by the Slate for publishing misinformation. Palmer Report also has false and unproven claims according to Snopes, which Mr. Palmer calls the National Enquierer. The Atlantic has some more: 

    It’s more wish-fulfillment stuff. “Trump About to be Arrested!” Well, yeah, when’s that gonna happen? And we know it’s coming from the left because I know it’s coming from known players. Bill Palmer used to run the Daily News Bin, and it was basically a pro-Hillary Clinton “news site.” It was out there to counter misinformation. Which, okay, fair enough. But then he started to reinvent it as a news site, more and more, and he changed the name to the Palmer Report. The stuff that he puts out there, it’s nominally true. When you click on it, it’s some innocuous story [with an outlandish headline]. That is very harmful, I think.

    Seems to me that it is easy to despise Trump, actually hard not to, without having to invent lies or deliberately distort the truth.  

     

     

     

     


    by A Guy Called LULU on Mon, 09/24/2018 - 1:58pm

    According to..... blah blah....where's the actual evidence, not somebody's opinion.

    According to "political scientist" (there are scientists in politics?) Brenden Nyhan, whose gig seems to be Up and Coming Chief Tribe Critic, this, from a link in your link, is  a "wildly delusional" re-tweet by Tribe:

    Mr. Tribe had retweeted a Twitter user who had claimed that Steve Bannon, President Trump’s chief strategist, was being investigated for physically threatening White House staffers.


    by NCD on Mon, 09/24/2018 - 2:40pm

    Tribe quotes Avenatti, therefore I went to the Palmer Report. I had no other choice (snark)


    by rmrd0000 on Mon, 09/24/2018 - 3:14pm

    "Palmer Report had some dodgy stories with hyperbolic headlines that I couldn't be bothered to read, so I went to Slate to find an old non-specific but damning-sounding complaint."
    As I've said before, much of what Palmer is doing is just aggregating important stories - with a headline - from major news outlets like Reuters & AP. Those are actually the stories you've seen here, except when I post an obvious interesting bit of Palmer speculation *WITH A QUESTION MARK*. If someone is too fucking braindead to tell the difference, they should put down the laptop & go find rubber bands or non-dangerous pets to play with instead (though even that has its hazards - YMMV). And since I use Palmer's work, I'd feel like a shit just ignoring his effort & posting the source (though I sometimes do that if the direct source makes the news much clearer).

    2) You (Lulu) do realize the irony of Buzzfeed - aka the group that released the still-unconfirmed Steele Dossier 18 months ago - attacking Laurence Tribe for "spreading unconfirmed information"? That Wikipedia stuff you quote is 9 months old - you're welcome to actually read Seth Abramson's Tweets & Palmer's Report to see if they've improved over a very long news cycle, if they've been relatively accurate - or you can be lazy as fuck and rely on Wikipedia to toss some turds in the wind & hope the stink fouls the air. i mean, we've got a GOP that this week used a PR firm & possibly the SOC nominee himself (who perjured himself several times last week) to create an alternate reality smear of an alternate universe rapist up on the grass knoll while covering up new accusations & trying to "plow through" before the Dems could catch on - but you're concerned that Palmer Report uses too big print & excitable headlines?

    Yeah, Palmer's repetitive & overblows his headlines & makes you click more than you'd like - which is presumably how he funds his lemonade stand. Alternatively he could take anonymous feeds form the White House and publish a completely bogus 180-degrees-untrue story to try to sabotage the career of the acting head of the FBI, only to be shot down within hours by a respectable newspaper - that would be the NY Times flacking for Trump & getting their dicks whacked by WaPo almost immediately, and *STILL* doubling down with another obvious misreading of events leaked by people who weren't even there.


    by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 09/24/2018 - 4:56pm

    jesus Lulu why does everything have to be a hidden conspiracy with you?  he's one of the foremost scholars of Constitutional Law in this country, wrote the textbook they use in Constitutional Law courses, and also an expert on impeachment. Became a talking head expert during the Clinton impeachment. Not ashamed of his slant in that field against originalist conservatives, he is very transparent about it, he is  one of the co-founders of the liberal American Constitution Society, the law and policy organization formed to counter the conservative Federalist Society. He therefore helped "Bork" extremist orignalist Judge Bork for the Supreme Court, testifying against him in the hearings. He was part of Gore's legal team in trying to dissuade the Supreme Court from handing the presidency to George Bush.

    I would be very surprised if such a person was not disturbed by the secretive non-transparent, goofy, zany, crazytown irregular and maybe anti-constitutional Trump presidency and interested in and would seek out all kinds of sources of information on it that might help understand the situation.

    I would be very surprised if such a person did not fight like the dickens to make sure the Supreme Court did not have an originalist conservative majority for decades to come.

    He put his whole life into caring about the U.S. Constitution and how it should be read and followed--as a liberal--that is his agenda, it's very transparent. Nothing hidden here and I don't get why it bothers you knowing your politics you should be all for him-he's such a peacenik that he supports some animal rights organizations-- the only reason I can think of is that you have gone off the deep end with the paranoia. The only thing to be suspicious about would be if he didn't have an opinion.


    by artappraiser on Mon, 09/24/2018 - 3:32pm

    p.s. This is not a reporter or journalist or even a blogger making up a complete narrative, a story that splains it all for you! If that's what you want, experts tweeting is not where you want to go, go to Russia Today or Washington Post or whatever is your want. This is an expert trying to figure out and analyze WTF is going on in real time on the topic of his expertise and sharing it with his list of followers. He is not vouching for sources, he is looking at all that he finds useful, just like one does in a court of law. He is pointing to them and saying "what about this?" And maybe one of his followers chimes in replying "nah, that's no good, here's why."

    And yes, he is someone with a transparent agenda once he has figured out what is going on. So if your agenda doesn't match his, for example, you'd like to see more extremely conservative Supreme Court justices, you might want to dis things he's pointing to. Or maybe you have some other agenda about yourself, like cutting down his credibility as an expert for your own so you get more followers, or maybe you think he has gone mad and lost it and has Alzheimers.  Then you might also dis what he's pointing to. This is Twitter, not  journalism, it's just a tool to communicate with others of your chosing. Nothing to get so het up about trying to figure some mysterious conspiracy.Get it?

    If you don't agree with the guy, maybe you still learn something about his type of thinking, if not, don't look at his stuff. No reason for a jihad unless you are looking to steal some of his followers away, in which case you are at the wrong site. All you had to say here was "I don't trust this guy because he's a liberal constitutional expert that hates what Trump is doing to this country."


    by artappraiser on Mon, 09/24/2018 - 4:16pm


    by artappraiser on Mon, 09/24/2018 - 1:32pm

    The scuttlebutt from Fox News reporter trusted by NYT reporter and Politico's editor-in-chief is that McConnell doesn't have the votes and Kavanaugh is in trouble

    More than that... one of the most diligent/experienced Hill reporters... https://t.co/JXDQu421CK

    — Glenn Thrush (@GlennThrush) September 25, 2018

    by artappraiser on Mon, 09/24/2018 - 9:31pm

    Two accusers and a third in the wings. That makes one wonder how many shoes there are and how many are still left to drop. There has got to be some limit to how much they will push him through.


    by ocean-kat on Mon, 09/24/2018 - 9:58pm