Poll: Kavanaugh confirmation. Place your bets, ladies and gents!

I only have wishes/preferred or desired outcomes -- making bets about this scares me tbrrwu

Follow your heart, LL. Nothing we do in this thread will change Kavanaugh's fate and the next nominee will be just as bad in terms of swinging the court hard right, but the emotional impact of Kavanaugh getting seated is a separate kind of badness the nation shouldn't have to deal with.

chose option 2 -- wishful thinking more than logic, like others

a)

Anyone changing their prediction?

I'd like to think differently, but I don't see how today changes the numbers, or even how it could have changed the numbers

Nope

on the betting markets it went from about 52% to 47% after Ford's testimony. it continued to drop through Kavanaugh's opening statement and rebounded quick after Graham and the subsequent questioning. he's at 77% now. barring something unexpected I think he's in.

I think they'll confirm him, I don't think anything that happened at the hearing made any difference to his chances, and I don't understand the minds of the people who think otherwise.

so what will this guy do if he gets in apart from a serious effort to ban abortion

question is what won’t he do

the supreme court doesn’t make law, they uphold or strike down law. so he will empower a lot of bad lawmaking.

what are some of the new laws being mooted

Think of some - you're probably right.

so what will this guy do if he gets in apart from a serious effort to ban abortion

Theoretically overturn same-sex marriage, gut labor unions, further restrict the rights of arrestees, make it more difficult to sue corporations.

Decriminalisation of rape coming? Or at least for the right element from the right background?

isn't it effectively already decriminalized? or at least it's so seldom prosecuted that it may as well be.

yeah, nearly came back and added something along the lines.

BUt I think overall this is going to be directing things in totally the wrong direction.
justice department needs to be rethought and reformed. Parts of it possibly wiped clean, erased.

This was, imo, a foregone conclusion from the moment Kennedy announced his retirement. That it resulted in a political moment which may have disgusted me even more than the election of Trump seems, unsurprisingly, to have made little difference with respect to the inevitable outcome. I'd love to be proven wrong even though I'm now utterly convinced that the GOP will in every instance opt for the most debased of all available options.

lock thread

They think they're going to win decisive victory in the culture war with this appointment. It's too precious for them to give up.

Reality go bye bye.
maybe people will go back to the old narratives again.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I voted for what I want, not what I think is likely.

― El Tomboto, Monday, September 24, 2018 10:25 PM (six days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

same

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

We can be sure McConnell will keep McConnelling. A lot depends on if Flake will Flake and if Collins Collins out like usual.

I wonder how Senator Boozman will vote

Tonight I was fantasizing about the most epic speech that could possibly come from Mark Judge’s mouth (even if it is in an alternate universe). A speech in which he condemns Kavanaugh, republican senators, the president, and people pushing lies, fear and hate. He says something about real American heroes and the principles on which our country was founded. He continues with “...and that is why I am ashamed of what I have done”. Mark Judge then admits his and Kavanugh’s guilt and whole-heartedly apologizes to Ford and accepts whatever punishment comes his way.

I know, I have stupid fantasies :(

more likely to come from Mike Judge's mouth

Then Kavanaugh is so ashamed that he withdraws himself from the nomination process and demands that Merrick Garland be appointed in his place, and then the republicans are so ashamed that they all agree to do it

and then Piggy from Voivod comes back to life

hey this alternate reality sounds pretty groovy

and THEN everyone’s like “wait a second, we make enough food to feed everyone in the world, there’s no reason for anyone to go hungry. it’s a distribution issue - and we can fix it.

we could poll alternate universes to see which one most ilxors would prefer to live in

This exact universe but I have a nice peppermill

that's this universe if you just go to the store and buy a nice peppermill

we have enough nice peppermills to give to everyone; it's just a distribution issue

Peppermills for all. It's a campaign platform that is nothing to sneeze at.

Make America Spicy Again

late on this, but going back and reading some of the documents that came out from Kavanaugh's high school years, it's weird how much he was simultaneously a prick and a priss, which I guess is sort of a uniquely prep school combo, an uptight rich dudebro with excessive planning and time management skills for his age and a deep underlying anxiety.

Even his overly inside-joke-riddle yearbook is so fucking tryhard.

why did you revive this thread? My shoulders started tensing again.

(it's okay -- revive away!)

Oh, it's a very specific type that I'm unfortunately very familiar with. they're also known as "yes ma'am" guys

Eddie Harasskell

ugh what a read: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/12/inside-georgetown-prep-culture-of-omerta-scandal?mbid=social_twitter&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=twitter&utm_brand=vf&utm_medium=social

Yeah.

big story in NYTimes about Deborah Ramirez

among other things

Ms. Ramirez’s story would seem far less damaging to Mr. Kavanaugh’s reputation than those of Dr. Ford, who claimed that he pinned her to a bed, groped her and tried to remove her clothes while covering her mouth.

But while we found Dr. Ford’s allegations credible during a 10-month investigation, Ms. Ramirez’s story could be more fully corroborated. During his Senate testimony, Mr. Kavanaugh said that if the incident Ms. Ramirez described had occurred, it would have been “the talk of campus.” Our reporting suggests that it was.

At least seven people, including Ms. Ramirez’s mother, heard about the Yale incident long before Mr. Kavanaugh was a federal judge. Two of those people were classmates who learned of it just days after the party occurred, suggesting that it was discussed among students at the time.

We also uncovered a previously unreported story about Mr. Kavanaugh in his freshman year that echoes Ms. Ramirez’s allegation. A classmate, Max Stier, saw Mr. Kavanaugh with his pants down at a different drunken dorm party, where friends pushed his penis into the hand of a female student. Mr. Stier, who runs a nonprofit organization in Washington, notified senators and the F.B.I. about this account, but the F.B.I. did not investigate and Mr. Stier has declined to discuss it publicly. (We corroborated the story with two officials who have communicated with Mr. Stier.)

and

Ms. Ramirez’s legal team gave the F.B.I. a list of at least 25 individuals who may have had corroborating evidence. But the bureau — in its supplemental background investigation — interviewed none of them, though we learned many of these potential witnesses tried in vain to reach the F.B.I. on their own.

Two F.B.I. agents interviewed Ms. Ramirez, telling her that they found her “credible.” But the Republican-controlled Senate had imposed strict limits on the investigation. “‘We have to wait to get authorization to do anything else,’” Bill Pittard, one of Ms. Ramirez’s lawyers, recalled the agents saying. “It was almost a little apologetic.”

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island and member of the Judiciary Committee, later said, “I would view the Ramirez allegations as not having been even remotely investigated.” Other Democrats agreed.

Ultimately, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, concluded, “There is no corroboration of the allegations made by Dr. Ford or Ms. Ramirez.” Mr. Kavanaugh was confirmed on Oct. 6, 2018, by a vote of 50-48, the closest vote for a Supreme Court justice in more than 130 years

wow susan collins must be concerned

hard to see how any of that's going to matter at this point, but maybe I'm overly jaded

first of his name

has anyone read the link i posted? they describe the orchestrated attempt to destroy CBF's credibility as part of their attempt to get him onto the supreme court at all costs.

baby beer boy bret was not going to fail, in other words. they would have said and did say anything to ensure his success.

Really resonated. He said when dogs killed chickens, they would take those chickens and wrap it around those dogs’ necks. And as those chickens rotted around those dogs’ necks, those dogs lost the taste for chicken. And I think that’s what Republicans need to start doing with the left.

there it is! the dead chicken strategy :(

i haven't stopped thinking about this fool ever since i heard the interview on the radio (in the car in the rain on the way to see a show w a friend) weeks ago. it's DARVO + dead chicken shame, a real cocktail of coercive/abusive tactics. being exposed to the details of their slandering of her character over and over takes its toll. the only thing that makes me feel better is to share it with others.

it = information about the larger strategic push by conservatives to force their agenda on all of us

I read the link and was deeply disturbed. I just have this feeling that alternate reality is going to win over facts and it depresses the heck outta me.

well, don't get depressed and fucking fight.

yes, i agree! it is really depressing and also we need to check the urge to tap out on account of it being depressing.

i believe it will help if the greater dynamic (the shockingly cruel coercive behavior of those pushing the conservative agenda) can be exposed. one conversation at a time, if necessary. that's why i listened to it even though tbh it was quite hard!

Maybe my capacity for comprehending metaphor is slipping but ... is he calling Trump a dead chicken?

has anyone read the link i posted? they describe the orchestrated attempt to destroy CBF's credibility as part of their attempt to get him onto the supreme court at all costs.

i heard it when it came out! don't feel too bad - i've pushed various segments from the daily over the last several months that i thought were genuinely good and unique and containing information that wasn't anywhere else, and i'm pretty sure no one has ever clicked/read any of them

mike davis is one of the worst people on the planet. he shares many similarities with the people involved in the disinformation campaigns with tobacco and climate change. i'm sure they have a secret poker game in a really smoky, hot room where they talk about all the terrible things they've accomplished over the past week

yes he is evil

regarding the dead chicken -- no, it's not trump -- i would recommend reading the transcript of the interview -- they go into detail about what the chicken is. i can copy and paste it but it's really long. i would read from the point where they list the tenets of the strategy and the dead chicken stuff is in there.

not only evil but his entire evil philosophy is predicated on "FU mom & dad!" which is juvenile and petty on top of being evil

Saw an awful, awful play last week.

The protagonist is a meek and lonely man who can’t get dates because he stalked a girl when he was 17. His name ended up in a blog, that detailed the things he did to the girl—and the blog took on a life of its own, where other women came forward to detail their own experiences of being victimized. Now, when women google his name, they find this blog with some true and some fictional stories about what he did as a perpetrator.

The play centers on a court case, where the man is trying to get the blog removed from the internet. Some things the playwright did to try and get you to feel that the perpetrator was the victim:

1) The protagonist is meek, soft-spoken, boyishly charming in a bumbling sort of way.
2) His mom and dad died of cancer back to back when he was younger.
3) The girl who he stalked was the one who started the blog, and she herself may or may not have embellished things to reflect how being stalked made her feel (which she finds out by believing his words instead of her memory)

I went into the play thinking it would be one of two things: something informational about digital privacy and its importance, or some bullshit Brett Kavanaugh garbage. It was the latter.

Instead of trying to explore what forgiveness and atonement look like in the digital age, it paints the victim as a liar who has ruined the life of a young man. Further, the play misrepresents the GDPR, which is damaging to digital privacy in a big way.

I assumed it was written by some white guy, but in fact, it was written by one of the women who wrote on Suits, which I’ve heard is similarly intolerable.

Anyway, fuck this play and fuck Kavanaugh apologists.

Oh, the other thing that’s vomit-inducing is how the protagonist’s love interest who eventually accepts him and absolves him of his sins and gives him meaning is peak manic pixie dream girl.

Her: “You’re funny.”
Him: “what? No one has ever told me that before.”
Her: “Weird is good. I have a screwy sense of humor.”

Jesus fucking Christ, do better.

written by a man, I presume?

As I mentioned above, I thought so too. In fact, it wasn’t.

a fellow traveler I guess