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

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

susan collins blows (and i still have to figure out what to do with susancollins2020.com, which i registered that week), but she only stands out because she publicly waffled on it for a day or so. almost all of the other 49 were gung ho for the golden boy from day one

xp none of that is going to matter at this point

just fucking AMAZING to think about the FBI not interviewing ANY of the 25 supplemental witnesses she provided, though. granted, iirc, time was very short since grassley allowed a few more days for an investigation to take place (due to protesters forcing jeff flake to play a version of a person with a conscience in an elevator). i don't remember when Ramirez's story entered the equation, and of course i don't know when the list of 25 was provided to the FBI and how short their window was. but holy shit, if nothing else at least just CALL one of the 25 fucking people during the short window provided, even if that window was only 2 hours or whatever. what an abdication of duty as a civil servant, you stupid fucking bastards.

Do the people who love Clarence Thomas still, decades later, claim to believe Anita Hill was a crazy liar, or do they now take the tack of "Oh well sure he did those things but why do feminists have to overreact to a man being a man sometimes?" I mean I think now that Kavanaugh is safely confirmed for life there will be a lot of folks who seamlessly switch from "it's sick that someone would invent such terrible tales to bring a good man down" to "who among us has not presented their dong to an unwilling party guest"

at least some of the republicans had already progressed to that stage of the Kübler-Ross-esque bullshit model for how to support a sexual assaulter for supreme court, even during the nomination process. i think that's the stage right after "we believe christine blasey ford. we just don't believe that the golden boy did it."

*remembrance bubble* oh wait, THAT'S why susan collins is reprehensible, even among a crew of 50 immensely powerful people who knowingly voted for a sexual assaulter

Make a serious candidate page featuring her actual platform. It'll be hilarious enough on its own

Xposts

I don't think a Republican senate would have rejected Kavanaugh if the Ramirez incident had been captured on video and played for them.

It's not going to matter regardless of who furrows their brow, because the only course of removal is impeachment, which has been tried for a SCOTUS justice precisely once (1905) and he was acquitted by the Senate.

And obv the FBI won't get in any trouble

lindsey graham is very very upset at you for bumping this thread and might just blow up some iranian oil to show you what's what

50 immensely powerful people who knowingly voted for a sexual assaulter

And serial perjurer.

I mean a Ron Paul voter once told me, after being presented with evidence that he was probably racist and actually agreeing with said evidence, replied "Well it's too bad a slightly racist Representative is the only man who can fix our country's problems. I still gotta vote for him".

So no doubt they'd be cursing the Democrats for "forcing them to elevate a rapist to the court to save America"

Man! Y'all should post a trigger warning for reviving this thread.

written by a man, I presume?

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

a fellow traveler I guess