They are playing the long game here. I see them knowingly falling in their swords and losing in the midterms because at least they will ensure a conservative majority that will dismantle Roe, Obergefell, affirmative action, etc. Some in Congress have been waiting decades for this moment.
5 Likes
Wow, the look on his wife’s face:
15 Likes
I can well understand why someone who had been sexually assaulted would want to remain anonymous, even without the political aspect to make things even more toxic and dangerous for the victim. Still, an anonymous allegation that basically amounts to “He did the Bad Thing, we all saw it, but we aren’t willing to be identified” can’t carry any real weight. It might be true. It might be invented by someone on the left. It might even be invented by someone on the right who wants to bury the original, credible allegations under a torrent of obvious bullshit so that they can then pretend that all the allegations were lies. Without any way to tell, the safest course seems to be to ignore it.
I confess that I even have some slight misgivings about the claims made by Avenatti’s client Julie Swetnick. Yes, she is standing behind her claims, publicly, in full knowledge of everything she has to lose by taking a stand. Everything she says may indeed be true. But it just seems to be of such a different order to the original allegation. Claiming that Kavanaugh was an asshole teen who got all rapey when he was shitfaced is one thing. I’ve met enough teenage boys from expensive private schools that that doesn’t strike me as in the least implausible. But claiming that he was a regular and active participant at multiple premeditated gang rapes is something else again. It moves him from “particularly toxic bro” territory all the way to “pulp novel super-villain”.
I’m not saying it couldn’t have happened. I’m just saying that the alleged behavior is so calculatedly criminal, so luridly evil, that I think we should be careful about accepting it too unquestioningly. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof, and until that proof is forthcoming, I’ll stay on the fence about this one.
Two things, however, are indisputable. One is that Kavanaugh has not been honest when he was asked about his teenage behavior. He has tried to present himself as a model of virtue; multiple, credible witnesses report that he was a frequent, mean and sloppy drunk. And this transparent lack of integrity ought to be enough to disqualify him for the seat on the Supreme Court that he so desperately wants.
The second is that the GOP has made it abundantly clear that they are quite prepared to defend an alleged would-be rapist if it serves their ends, and, indeed, to seat him in the highest court in the land. They’re utterly uninterested in knowing whether there’s any truth to the accusations. Their only concern has been to try to accelerate the process in the hope of getting him seated before anything truly incriminating comes out.
Moral bankruptcy on the part of politicians, especially Republicans, doesn’t come as a surprise, but this is a new low.
5 Likes
I’m seriously concerned for her if he has to withdraw. Evidence says the man is a mean drunk.
1 Like
I admire your optimism, even after the last couple of years.
1 Like
It might be be lurid, but it’s not that far-fetched inasmuch that it fits with shit that has already been reported about the prep school party scene of the time. Two days ago in Slate there was an article by a woman who went to Holton-Arms in the 80s. She describes how groups of boys would take advantage of drunk girls:
“I distinctly remember being at a Beach Week party with my then-boyfriend when it dawned on us that there was a drunk girl in a room down the hall, and boys were ‘lining up’ to go in there and, presumably, have their way with her. We didn’t know for sure, but my boyfriend and my friend’s boyfriend went to interrupt it and sent her on her way down the stairs. All I remember about her is that she was in the class above us and had dark hair. My friend has told me she remembers boys saying, ‘I’m next,’ which was why our boyfriends went to stop it. That was the only time I can clearly remember a situation that was so obviously a ‘lineup,’ as it was referred to by some at school. My friend remembers witnessing another, and though there weren’t lineups of this nature at every party, they happened often enough that we had a term. We didn’t call it rape.”
Then in the big article in The New Yorker we have a woman describe how boys would deliberately get girls drunk on “jungle juice” and then try to have sex with them. We also have a former girlfriend of Mark Judge, Elizabeth Rasor, who “recalled that Judge had told her ashamedly of an incident that involved him and other boys taking turns having sex with a drunk woman.”
11 Likes
At the risk of offending, there is the slight mitigating factor of football.
I think that there is something to the old mackerel about stacking privilege.
I didn’t even know those guys in school but I can’t see a teen drama that doesn’t involve extra leniency for jocks.
I did know a guy who played football in high school and spent a lot of time doing “stuff” “with” girl students and he didn’t even like women (I mean, at all).
1 Like
If someone showed up with a photograph, Republicans would dismiss it because (a) the photographer is a Democrat (even if he wasn’t), (b) the guy in the photo doesn’t look like Kavanaugh, ( c) the rapist is Brett Kavanaugh’s evil identical twin (who’s a Democrat), (d) it isn’t rape because the girl isn’t resisting, (e) the fact that she’s too drugged up to resist means that she is a druggie and therefore unreliable (and also a Democrat), (e) photographs are not as reliable as evidence as Kavanaugh’s own testimony, and (f) but the emails!
11 Likes
Vanity Fair has more corroborating reporting to that effect:
15 Likes
This is turning into such a firehose it’s getting hard to catch everything. Thanks for the link.
1 Like
Say what you want about the GOP, they can consistently be counted on to dive deeper and harder than anyone else for new moral lows in their search for the most debased of their base. Kavanaugh is a splendid example of who they are.
6 Likes
Huh. Cool! Rules of the senate judiciary committee…
- Seven Members of the Committee, actually present, shall constitute a quorum for the purpose of discussing business. Nine Members of the Committee, including at least two Members of the minority, shall constitute a quorum for the purpose of transacting business. No bill, matter, or nomination shall be ordered reported from the Committee, however, unless a majority of the Committee is actually present at the time such action is taken and a majority of those present support the action taken.
12 Likes
Certainly. Firehose is a very good word for it.
In still more news, the doppelgänger theory went over so well the first time that now they’ve got men lining up to confess to felony sexual assault in order to save this disaster of a nomination. (I’d post this in the Whelan thread but it’s closed, despite me being certain that that news only broke, like, 2 days ago. Guh.)
7 Likes
Psst… someone should tell these guys that Big-Bucket rarely pays anyone.
1 Like
Except that, according to Mike Mark Judge’s ex-girlfriend, he admitted to exactly that (and she’s willing to testify to that fact). Of course, he saw a group of boys having “sex” with a drunk girl as “consensual.” This shit happens all over, to this day, and it almost never gets prosecuted, so I have absolutely no doubt it was going on there, too. This is pretty much the epitome of “toxic bro behavior.”
Swetnick isn’t just “standing” by her claims, either - she signed a sworn affidavit; if it’s not true, she perjured herself and there’s criminal liability involved.
16 Likes
It would have been better if this 4th allegation was not anonymous, but I totally understand why one would not want to be exposed to this.
1 Like
I really think he’s been done since Ramirez came forward, certainly since Swetnick went public.
Before Ford the confirmation was a slam-dunk, but since then it’s been a series of hard deadlines they keep pushing back, Friday will be another one.
Senators are like everyone else, they don’t like to go out on a limb and they take a while to come to terms when circumstances change. Right now there’s a little game where the moderate GOP senators are looking around, expressing doubts, and slowly becoming resigned to the idea that Kavanaugh is guilty and shouldn’t be confirmed.
The GOP leadership wants to push through the vote before they decide to vote no, but they don’t want an embarrassment like the failed ACA repeal, or to have the confirmation go through and then a whole bunch of other witnesses come forward. They’ve taken enough flack for Thomas over the years, they don’t want to push the nomination through and then find out they put an actual rapist on the bench.
At this point they might just be stalling until Kavanaugh withdrawals.
Same here, though now she’s come forward he claims seem pretty solid.
Except that’s not how he would have framed it. It was probably “if we get these girls drunk enough they’ll want to have sex with us!!”, that’s pretty much the standard date-rape defence.
I think Avenatti actually played his hand well on that part, he first went around calling it gang-rape before sharing the actual story. So when the story came out everyone just accepted it as alleged gang rapes rather than claiming the women consented.
The sketchy details actually make me more credulous than I would normally be of this one. They get countless letters from anonymous people, the fact they’re taking this one seriously suggests 1) they have some idea of who the girlfriend was, and 2) they have non-public reasons to think the incident might be true.
7 Likes
whatever you do don’t just link to foxnews.com
i mean at least point out a specific article or something
4 Likes
But for heaven’s sake, get the pages out of the room first.‘’
9 Likes
