US Politics, September 2018: having a nervous breakdown

This has been one of the best of those threads though

I’m convinced these are all the same man and one found a time machine pic.twitter.com/zl1hMx93yz

— Emily Molli (@MomesMolli) September 30, 2018

The directions to FBI leaking out re: not talking to Swetnick, not asking about drinking; those are all but orders to the fourth estate to dive right in

Oh, you thought this week was long? Next week will be even longer.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/09/30/cotton-feinstein-ford-leaked-letter-854019

agree with Neanderthal, Tom cotton is such a dirtbag

Fascinating post about a gay former roommate of Kav's:

The social dynamic within the triple was nonexistent to the point that Winter felt uncomfortable. From the start, Winter and Kavanaugh barely acknowledged one another’s existence. He remembers no conversation between them. Kubovy, still in high school at the time, sometimes visited Winter’s dorm room. “It’s weird never saying hello to one of your two roommates,” he says, in retrospect. (Several years later, Dana How lived next door to Kavanaugh, and his recollection is similar. Kavanaugh and his roommates “didn’t talk to anybody,” How remembers. “They were completely antisocial. The door was closed. These guys were completely disconnected.”) In LDO1, Kavanaugh and Roche were also very nearly strangers, according to Roche’s statement; “Brett and I did not socialize beyond the first few days of freshman year.” (Roche moved out in December of that year.) Once in a while Winter and Roche would talk late at night, sitting on the floor in the double, “leaning with our backs against the beds,” Winter remembers. “For the last 35 years, if anybody had said, ‘Tell me about Jamie Roche,’ I would have said, ‘Jamie Roche is the most stand-up guy you would ever hope to meet.’ Jamie stood out as centered, mature — more of a gentleman than the frat boys. He had nice manners.”

Many of the residents of Lawrance Hall that year describe the social life on campus as extremely tribal and isolating, with the elites and legacies hanging with each other, dominating and creating ripples of inarticulate fear, while the outsiders — the nerds and the scholarship kids and the people of color — circled the outskirts seeking friendly alliances. The fraternity brothers at Delta Kappa Epsilon — to which Kavanaugh pledged — could be heard in the streets at night chanting. “There was always more than a strong whiff of sexual violence hanging over the Dekes all the time,” says Garman. Dana How recalls consciously deciding to stay away from one of Kavanaugh’s frat brothers — he can’t now remember the reason why.

Another person, who arrived at Yale from a working-class background, remembers encountering the upper levels of the social hierarchy for the first time and understanding them as “dangerous.” “I remember thinking, ‘Oh, you’ve got to be really careful around these people.’ I saw it through a class lens. I don’t want to be somebody’s little mouse. I don’t want to be somebody who gets eaten. Looking back, I perceived things as dangers rather than, ‘Oh, fuck. This is crazy.’ Back then, it was sort of a game where there had to be some way to play it where you weren’t a victim.”

That is very believable and it sucks and also sounds a lot like the frat scene where I went to undergrad. The frat scene is fucking terrible

sounds like the prep school i went to

I went to UVa. I only went to frat parties if there was a good band that was playing and I used their towels to wipe after pee'ing because they never had toilet paper.

I was part of several friend groups in undergrad. The main one consisted of guys, many of us involved in the school newspaper - we all hung together, drank in each others' rooms, went on trips. This friend group and the other friend groups had something significant in common at the time - we did not want to have anything to do with Greek life. It felt antithetical to us.

But on Friday and Saturday nights there would often come a moment, say around 10 or so, when we'd all look at each other and say "yeah, let's get out of here" and we'd gravitate to whatever fraternity party was happening on campus, and invariably it was like many, many tribes made the same decision at the same moment and so that was the social mingling peak of any given weekend, for an hour or so of additional drinking, before it was time to tap out and go to bed.

It's complicated. There were deeply awful fraternity guys at my college. There were dark whispers of some things that happened - beyond two or three specific cases I didn't know details.

There were frat guys - guys who, to my awareness, were largely just serious partiers - whom I became friendly with as college ended and in the years since.

(The parties I refer to above were never epic or fucked up. People drank, but there was a casualness about them. That said, I'm a tall black man and my perspective may differ from others'.)

there were a few fraternities at my college that seemed essentially evil and one that even had a confederate flag in their baseement. those bros used to wear vineyard vines but chew skoal -- a kind of yuppie redneck thing. they got kicked off campus for hazing and fighting.

i knew someone that was traumatized by hazing at a different fraternity. he dropped out of school, the whole thing.

I mean it's been a trope forever that you get raped at frat parties and both frats and sororities are full of vain/insecure people. Who thinks Laura Ashley or khakis and polos are aspirational or impressive? It's always been messed up that anyone bought into it.

they're really awful. the sororities were quite bad too -- the hazing was more insidious and psychological. like they made the pledges wear the same giant t-shirt for a week and they weren't allowed to wash it or shower.

i remember as a freshman people wanted to get into these parties, but they needed a good "ratio," so they let you in the door if you "brought girls" with you. definitely a predatory dynamic for a party. not just people hanging out -- you need to "bring girls." there is nothing wrong with wanting to meet an attractive stranger at a dance party but this felt way more objectifying than that.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/30/climate/epa-trump-mercury-rule.html

Trump Administration prepares a major weakening of mercury emission regulations (and there's a Kavanaugh connection)...

The Trump administration has completed a detailed legal proposal to dramatically weaken a major environmental regulation covering mercury, a toxic chemical emitted from coal-burning power plants, according to a person who has seen the document but is not authorized to speak publicly about it...The weakening of the mercury rule — which the E.P.A. considers the most expensive clean air regulation ever put forth in terms of annual cost to industry — would represent a major victory for the coal industry. Mercury is known to damage the nervous systems of children and fetuses...

The details of the rollback about to be proposed would also represent a victory for Mr. Wheeler’s former boss, Robert E. Murray, the chief executive of the Murray Energy Corporation, one of the nation’s largest coal companies. Mr. Murray, who was a major donor to President Trump’s inauguration fund, personally requested the rollback of the mercury rule soon after Mr. Trump took office, in a written “wish list” he handed to Energy Secretary Rick Perry...

The coal industry initially sued to roll back the mercury regulation, and in 2014 its case lost in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. However, Judge Kavanaugh wrote the dissenting opinion in that case, highlighting questions about the rule’s cost to industry.

Should the legal battle over the proposed regulatory rollback go before the Supreme Court, some observers expect that Judge Kavanaugh, if elevated to a seat on the high court, would side with the coal industry.

Kinda wish this wasn't a Ryan Lizza story because fuck that guy, but this is a read for sure:

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a23471864/devin-nunes-family-farm-iowa-california/

xp "i like coal, ok? i like coal. do you like coal, Senator?"

This is an abominably unethical action by a taxpayer-employed prosecutor. She was literally not allowed to question the alleged perpetrator. She is using her title as a weapon against a survivor. Appalling. https://t.co/HjJhs1r1sH

— Jesse Lee (@JesseCharlesLee) October 1, 2018

Yeah, read that earlier. Somehow doesn't pay any attention to lack of an investigation or one sidedness of the hearing.
Or trauma or any of a number of reasons why there may be discrepancies or problems with teh orders of things.

Or that the candidate himself was blatantly lying and avowedly partisan. Or the whole timescale of the hearings being totally askew anyway. Would love it if somebody could just reframe the timeframe and show where things stand in terms of normal protocol like being able to go through all the relevant documents in an existing paper trail. Things hould never have really needed to get to this point as it was.
BUt how obvious does it have to be that one party is trying to ram through a candidate taht at least half of teh population disdain.

Also I was just reading through what had been said about the scope of the FBI investigation and what it excluded
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/white-house-limits-scope-fbi-s-investigation-allegations-against-brett-n915061

I am still rose-tinted spectacly hoping that a thing called justice might out and things be allowed to be conducted by previously existing protocols. All I'm seeing is a corrupt party trying to ram home a totally unfit candidate for a job that he'll keep for decades thereby depriving a great deal of the population of the country from what it should be able to view as understood rights.

Hopefully this will further catalyse grassroots activity and activists in aiding trauma victims and assault survivors.Which will hopefully lead to further legislation helping attack survivors to live with less trauma. & actually see that develop to being the new norm.
Still hoping this is the last screams of a dying age as the extremely conservative are exposed and their fledgling cohorts are viewed as the idiots they are.

Oh yeah, It's Ctober sho olet's see what Madness and shenanigans they can come up with this month. bless 'em.

A quite long summary of where and how Kavanaugh lied in his testimony.

please god someone start a new thread, september 2018 has been an extraordinarily cursed month in us politics

I like NJR but my lord I wish he had an editor

US Politics October 2018: 'I like beer. Do you like beer?'

please no kav quotes for lol thread titles, guarantee it will be triggering for some

and that article is great, thanks alfred. agreed that it's too long but it's good to get all of that shit in one place.

new thread already started:
US Politics, October 2018: next week will be even longer