Trump's Card

[ursus arctos]

No

[Gerontophile]

Avenatti for 2020?

[ursus arctos]

This is very good, and goes to the heart of why he shouldn’t be anywhere near the Court (though he’s going to be confirmed)

https://twitter.com/slate/status/1044932993306030080?s=21

https://twitter.com/slate/status/104...306030080?s=21

[Incandenza]

Avenatti has a statement from a woman who says that not only did she see Kavanaugh (and Mark Judge) at parties in the early 80s were he was drunk and trying to force himself on women, but also that Kavanaugh and other men forcibly had sex with her while she was incapacitated.

This week's free episode of Chapo Trap House is on Kavanaugh and is really good, mostly them just marveling at how bad the right have messed up this appointment and also wondering why Mark Kavanaugh is the hill that many of them are ready to die on.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Republican Senate elections ground game focusses on.. abortion.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/...ms-base-841999

Republicans desperate to juice base turnout in a brutal election cycle are weaponizing abortion against incumbent Democratic senators in more than a half-dozen races that could determine control of the chamber.

The issue is getting a fraction of the attention of President Donald Trump, health care and immigration. But Republican and anti-abortion groups have made it a major part of their ground game: Organizers for Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion group, ran a series of events in red states in August and early September and have had more than 500 canvassers knock on doors at more than 1.6 million homes in Ohio, Florida, Missouri, Indiana, West Virginia and North Dakota.

Have they given up on Montana? . If they're going to give one up, West Virginia would be better. Or Ohio. And are they assuming Tennessee is safe? They'll probably win it, but wouldn't say it was safe.

More about Kevin Cramer here.

Earlier this month, Rep. Kevin Cramer, Heitkamp’s opponent, released an ad featuring his two daughters, one of whom is pregnant, criticizing Heitkamp for her vote against the 20-week abortion ban.

How does that work? "Heidi would kidnap my daughter and force an abortion on her!"

[ursus arctos]

You are trying to impose a rational framework on the GOP base. That isn’t wise.

What they are trying to do is to ensure that their people turn out (in part, they are worried that the real MAGAbots will believe their hero’s insistence that a “red wave” is on the cards). Just mentioning abortion has always been a very potent tool in doing that.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Yeah, but that Kramer guy doesn't seem very bright. North Dakota (while obviously highly marginal) isn't the most evangelical/ anti-abortion state, per Pew. I think he might need to do better.

http://www.pewforum.org/religious-la...tion/by/state/

That might explain why they aren't bothering with Montana. Surprisingly high support for abortion. Tennessee would be much more receptive, but they must be very confident they have the votes.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

That Slate Twitter thing showing Kavanagh in his student days could be translated into Klingon without losing much in the way of comprehensibility to those who haven't been in the US university system (well, to me at least anyway). All I get from it is he played (?) American football and was involved in a few events with "whack" in the title, which doesn't sound great of course, but would mean nothing to me, even in the most general terms, without the "cruelty of male bonding" comment by Slate, from which I'm guessing that the word "whack" implies some kind of physical abuse, but that's all I'm in position to guess.

[ursus arctos]

Did you read the article?

[The-Reverend]

Avenatti has a statement from a woman who says that not only did she see Kavanaugh (and Mark Judge) at parties in the early 80s were he was drunk and trying to force himself on women, but also that Kavanaugh and other men forcibly had sex with her while she was incapacitated.

It's a rather descriptive statement.





Legally, is her submitting that the same as swearing under oath? or is it just the same as in the UK when you can say whatever you wish on a statement with no penalty?

I ask, as given her Sy Clearance(s) that would appear to be a biggy in relation of personal risk in coming forward.

[Ginger Yellow]

It's relatively rare for perjury type charges to result but I wouldn't say there's no penalty for deliberate falsehoods in a submission accompanied by a statement of truth. I'm covering a case at the moment where someone was referred for prosecution.

[ursus arctos]

It's under oath and subject to charges of perjury (as it says in the last paragraph).

Can a witness really just submit anything to a court in England and Wales?

[Tubby Isaacs]

If any person lawfully sworn as a witness or as an interpreter in a judicial proceeding wilfully makes a statement material in that proceeding, which he knows to be false or does not believe to be true, he shall be guilty of perjury

Where a statement made for the purposes of a judicial proceeding is not made before the tribunal itself, but is made on oath before a person authorised by law to administer an oath to the person who makes the statement, and to record or authenticate the statement, it shall, for the purposes of this section, be treated as having been made in a judicial proceeding

Looks like a no.

[The-Reverend]

Well I have learned something today, cheers Yellow.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Did you read the article?

Ah, no, sorry, ursus, I hadn't realised that link was to an article so I hadn't clicked through. I'm not familiar with how Twitter works really, I only see Twitter things when they're posted in another medium, e.g this one.

[Incandenza]

https://twitter.com/calebecarma/stat...29337316159489

https://twitter.com/calebecarma/status/1045029337316159489

We're really fucked as a country

[ursus arctos]

No worries, EEG. I thought that was the case and will try to be clearer in the future. In any event, links in Tweets that appear here are active, one just needs to click through.

As to the entry from Kavanaugh's Yearbook, a) it was from his last year of High School (we don't do really do them for uni) and b) they are designed to be largely impenetrable to outsiders and sprinkled of inside "jokes". It appears that Georgetown Prep was particularly lenient in what they allowed students to get away with.

This one is rather more typical of the genre as a whole (though no one would do home addresses any longer).

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Fucking hell.

Then again I'm not sure why I assumed that Ruth Bader Ginsberg came into the world aged 82.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

That curl is doing funny things to my insides

[anton pulisov]

Palestine-Israel is like a real estate deal

[anton pulisov]

The people criticising Kavanaugh "are some very evil people."

[Incandenza]

#4

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/sup...anaugh-n913581

The Senate Judiciary Committee is inquiring about at least one additional allegation of misconduct against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, according to a letter obtained by NBC News and multiple people familiar with the process.

Republican Senate investigators asked Kavanaugh about the new complaint, NBC News has learned, during a phone call on Tuesday between Kavanaugh and committee staff. Sources told NBC News that Kavanaugh denied the allegation in the letter during the call and a spokesman for the committee declined to comment.

A Republican aide on the committee said the conversation took place shortly after noon. While Republican staff posed questions to Kavanaugh, their Democratic counterparts were also on the call but did not ask any questions.

According to an anonymous complaint sent to Republican Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado, Kavanaugh physically assaulted a woman he socialized with in the Washington, D.C., area in 1998 while he was inebriated.

The sender of the complaint described an evening involving her own daughter, Kavanaugh and several friends in 1998.

“When they left the bar (under the influence of alcohol) they were all shocked when Brett Kavanaugh, shoved her friend up against the wall very aggressively and sexually.”

“There were at least four witnesses including my daughter.” The writer of the letter provided no names but said the alleged victim was still traumatized and had decided to remain anonymous herself.

A Democratic source said the minority wasn’t satisfied by the Republicans’ questions about the incident during the call, calling them cursory, and believed it should be investigated more deeply.

Note the year. All signs are pointing to how he's a serial assaulter.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

TBH this all seems a bit tamer than I would have expected. I heard that phrase Car-pool dad so often, I found myself wondering if he was living the US version of Cromwell street.

[Satchmo Distel]

What's the latest on Murkowski, Collins and Flake, who I assume still seem to be the best chance of ending this?

[ursus arctos]

They are being very, very quiet, though Collins said that she was "close" to voting yes last night.

I think that Grassley believes that he has to get it through the committee (primarily to minimise the chance of being the target of wrathful tweets), even if it never gets to the floor.

We are now at the point where an impeachment proceeding is a virtual certainty if the Democrats take hold of the House, and I believe that will happen even if he is "only" a Circuit Court Judge next year. It isn't just the assault(s) and bald-faced lies, it is also what will come out of the White House documents that the GOP refused to produce once they become public under the Presidential Records Act in 2019 and 2020.

While we are here, it may be worth noting that there still hasn't been any kind of rational answer as to how he ran up close to a quarter of a million dollars in debt buying baseball tickets.