The Politics Thread

[Vee]

Grassley hastened to add the vote is just a committee voice, and is just a placeholder date for now.

 

Personally, I think it's a bluff: They didn't have the votes last night, and I don't think they do now.

[WTGH]

It all comes down to Thursday's hearing.

 

Susan Collins is being closely watched. 

[Wendy]

Collins has her lips on Trump's/the GOP's backside. At least a fund is ready for an opponent. If anyone should be watched, it's Murkowski, who is getting a lot of heat. Maybe Flake won't live up to his last name for once and do the right thing since he's out, anyway.

[Wendy]

 

This reminds me of the ACA repeal mess. Too bad there will be no one to give Turtle a big thumbs down at 2:00 a.m. this time. That's my pessimism speaking, anyway.

[DramatistDreamer]

Oops, China did it again.  Bringing the petty.

 

[sivad40]

 

[Khan]

Here's the thing: sometimes, the indiscretions of our youth carry over into our adult years and beyond.  Especially when no one is there to hold us accountable.  Unless he had a true come-to-Jesus moment, I doubt Kavanaugh stopped when he graduated from college or law school.

 

Also, the fact that Kavanaugh did not rape Ford does not (and should not) mitigate that he did, indeed, attack her with the intent of forcing her to have sex with him.  Cramer is a neanderthal for thinking and saying otherwise.

Edited September 26, 2018 by Khan

[marceline]

Avenatti just dropped his bomb.

 

 

[Juliajms]

^ God bless that man, but may he stay far away from the Presidency.  The right wing trolls have been coming pretty hard for him.

[DRW50]

I think he waited several days too long (if it was the client's choice I respect that obviously). We're at the point now where this is going to be pushed through no matter what. 

[Juliajms]

My God.

I think there is a pretty good chance we are going to have a SCOTUS who drugged and gang raped women.

[DramatistDreamer]

Is it just me, or do these allegations sound worse than the previous one?

 

Avenatti has been pressing Charles Grassley to respond.  Apparently Grassley has yet to do so, but I don't think he can avoid this.  Ms. Sweatnick has worked at the U.S. Mint and the State Department.  She has gone through clearance procedures (back when it wasn't just a Trumpian giveaway to relatives).  JMO but she won't be as easy to dismiss as Ramirez.

Edited September 26, 2018 by DramatistDreamer

[DRW50]

 

They will do anything to get Kavanaugh on the court and they know they won't face that much blowback in the Senate races because most of the competitive elections are in hard right states anyway. The media also seems reluctant to go against Kavanaugh. I think they will just keep their heads down and be rewarded for their craven cowardice, as they always are. 

[JaneAusten]

 

 

 

[DRW50]

 

The jig was up when they refused to ask Mark Judge to testify. They don't care and they know most of the public won't either. It makes me sick.

 

From these allegations, to the others, to the drinking, to the debts, this man seems to be way so many dangerous things that will lead America right into a buzzsaw when he is confirmed. And things like this that don't even get a lot of coverage, but are so strange and disturbing. There was such a perversion and depraved tone to how the '90s Clinton scandals were handled by the GOP (which ended up turning viewers against them by the end of the decade), and I have to wonder if he is a big reason why.

 

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/09/26/kavanaugh-confirmation-starr-vince-foster-842530

 

As with the larger controversies Kavanaugh finds himself enmeshed in, the one Feinstein identified is also sexually explicit. It stems from his questioning of grand jury witness Patrick Knowlton, as part of the Starr investigation, about a man Knowlton claimed to have seen in Fort Marcy Park not long before the body of Clinton White House lawyer Vince Foster was found there in an apparent suicide in 1993.

 

After being questioned by Kavanaugh in 1995 in front of a Washington grand jury re-investigating Foster's death, Knowlton complained that the young prosecutor asked him inappropriate questions suggesting Knowlton might have been in the park looking to have sex with another man.

 

"Did the man in the park pass you a note?" Knowlton recalled Kavanaugh asking, later followed by an even more jarring question: "Did the man in the park touch your genitals?"