Earlier this summer, Christine Blasey Ford wrote a confidential letter to a senior Democratic lawmaker alleging that Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her more than three decades ago, when they were high school students in suburban Maryland. Since Wednesday, she has watched as that bare-bones version of her story became public without her name or her consent, drawing a blanket denial from Kavanaugh and roiling a nomination that just days ago seemed all but certain to succeed.
Now, Ford has decided that if her story is going to be told, she wants to be the one to tell it.
[...]
Ford said she told no one of the incident in any detail until 2012, when she was in couples therapy with her husband. The therapist’s notes, portions of which were provided by Ford and reviewed by The Washington Post, do not mention Kavanaugh’s name but say she reported that she was attacked by students “from an elitist boys’ school” who went on to become “highly respected and high-ranking members of society in Washington.” The notes say four boys were involved, a discrepancy Ford says was an error on the therapist’s part. Ford said there were four boys at the party but only two in the room.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/california-professor-writer-of-confidential-brett-kavanaugh-letter-speaks-out-about-her-allegation-of-sexual-assault/2018/09/16/46982194-b846-11e8-94eb-3bd52dfe917b_story.html?utm_source=reddit.com&utm_term=.1c7412e4f1f0
He's gonna get confirmed though, just like Clarence Thomas before him. The Republicans know their time is just about up, so they'll do everything in their power to ram as much bullshit through as they can while they still have congressional majorities. The real battle is going to be fought after the hopeful blue wave this november, and after Muller hopefully nails Trump.
He's still gonna get confirmed because the Republican party is made up of some of the worst fucking garbage piles on the planet.
The biggest question regarding impeaching Trump's judicial picks is: Is a compromised President who has multiple criminal investigations into him and his businesses appointing judges favorable to him and who believe (in the case of Brett) that the President should be immune to all investigations while in office impeachable?
Because if it is, Republicans with their insane conspiracies about Obama and Hillary will use the same reasoning to impeach a Democrat's judicial picks.
Most currently elected republicans (save for the potus himself) don't believe in those conspiracies though. Only the furthest right of their voting base does. And even if that changes in the future, It's still going to be a lot harder for them to make a case for impeaching Democratic picks when the only "evidence" of a conspiracy would have to be cribbed from Infowars and other bullshit sources.
you're not going to win going forward by removing scotus nominees, but by god they should do everything possible to make the bar for SCOTUS so high that this partisan scum can't get through a nomination. I don't care if the court is empty because the GOP filibusters, the bar should not be so damn low for such an important position.
Even if Kavanaugh does get confirmed, It's still plausible that if the Democrats win in 2018 and 2020, and keep the Presidency and Senate for the next eight years, they will be able to tilt the court back left. But this is entirely dependent on one thing they have no control over: Clarence Thomas kicking the bucket while they are in power.
They only care about rape accusations when they can weaponize them against democrats and even then.
I don't want to victim blame but this kind of highlights the impact and importance of coming forward when something like this happens. Who knows how many other people he might have done this to, now we'll never find out because he wont just be above the law, he'll be the law.
The RNC started funding Roy Moore again after dropping him when it looked like he would lose. To Republicans, victory is life
Jeff Flake just said he won't vote yes on Kavanaugh until he hears more about this, meaning the nomination can't move forward right now as he's a Judiciary Committee member
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/09/16/kavanaugh-allegation-anonymous-republicans-825855
He should have bolted to the Democrats instead of retiring, what with donating to Doug Jones and being the only Republican to care about this
We'll see if he holds steadfast in that decision. I don't have full faith.
Bob Corker (R-TN) joins Flake:
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/406945-corker-says-kavanaugh-accuser-should-be-heard-out-before-committee-votes
Curious how two GOP senators who are retiring after this term are the only ones concerned with this
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/250/498/dd3.png
They don't have to worry about winning, so they can do something other than the optimal win strategy (which typically means refuse to address). Trump and his cult can't hurt them.
It's scumbags all the way down, clearly. this is the same logic people use for saying you shouldn't impeach Trump.
This is a common piece of reactionary rhetoric and the Rhetoric of Reaction has a pretty catchy name for it, 'Perversion'
Playing a little fast and loose with it, in this context it's a direct attack on you, the reader and, and this is the important bit, potential voter, it subtly undermines faith in the system and encourages people to simply throw up their hands because they're all no good crooks and you can't win! And that's the most potent political weapon there is. An apathetic voter doesn't just not vote, they don't encourage anyone else to vote
It also seeks to undermine your faith in your overall goals by introducing clear paths to horrible failures, which is where the name Perversion comes from. All your goals will inevitably be perverted away from their original aim and be something even worse than what you set out to fix. You lose no matter what, and the end goal is to burden you with a learned helplessness. You might fail, so why try?
It's an apathy seeding tool. Never ever try, because all your goals will be perverted, or else they're entirely futile, or else they're even more dangerous than the thing before
I find that in addressing this kind of rhetoric, you simply remind yourself and others what your goals actually are, then reevaluate them just enough to account for this newly introduced danger and press on anyway, aware of the extra risk and willing to chance it anyway, because while you might fail, you also might succeed. Especially now that you've been given this valuable new piece of information!
Corker and Murkowski have joined Flake, Kavanaugh is looking kinda fucked at this point
https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/16/politics/jeff-flake-bob-corker-brett-kavanaugh/index.html
Honestly, I was surprised that Trump picked someone who was as moderate as Kennedy. I wouldn't mind Barrett; I'm just questioning the rationale of Dems because the validity of this 11th hour accusation is a bit skimp. Especially, given that there are no witnesses, this is the only incident claimed thus far, and it happened 35 years ago. And, there have been petitions of former female classmates claiming that Kavanaugh was a stand up guy. I am completely with the accusers of Roy Moore and the #MeToo campaign, but in this case, the motives seem more politically motivated rather than virtuous.
1: The accuser spoke to her therapist and husband about this in 2012. She didn't use names, but it lines up pretty clearly.
2: How did Republicans get such a long list of women so quickly? They had it ready. They knew about this. Isn't that a little sketch?
Neither Kavanugh nor Barrett are moderate. Both come from a wishlist made by the Heritage Foundation. The Republicans are still massive hypocrites for delaying Garland's appointment then loading the court with conservatives.
Not bringing this to light would have been politically motivated. We should be so lucky that the Democrats aren't nearly as accepting of sexual assault as the Republicans.
And I'm fine with Barrett not being a moderate although Kavanaugh is clearly has a very similar judicial philosophy as Kennedy.
And you're completely ignoring the fact that this accusation was mentioned in 2012 but jammed in right before being confirmed. He most certainly could be guilty and he would be deservedly ostracised. It's just incredibly suspicious that the accusation is done at the 11th you done and with very little evidence to substantiate it. It is obvious that accusations should be brought to light but we should not be shooting first and asking questions later.
Also, come off it with the Democrats are morally superior to Republicans stiche. Dems have only just started to denounce prominant figures and celebrities through the #MeToo movement. Despicable people should be punished. There are disgusting people on both sides and there should be justice.
We're so lucky to have all of "feminist" Hollywood abusing women for decades, the Kennedys being serial womanizers, and Bill Clinton, a credibly accused rapist along with everyone surrounding them to keep quiet until it was convenient.
I don't think I've seen someone dismantle that argument so flawlessly. Good fuckin job m8
She came forward months ago and took a polygraph test when she did. Feinstein respected her desire to remain anonymous. Other politicians did not. They leaked her information and she was getting harassed by Buzzfeed reporters. If the timeline seems rushed, that's because they've been rushing Kavanaugh through. Kennedy announced his retirement in June, and Kavanaugh was announced as the nominee on July 9th, Ford took action in early July.
No one is buying your bullshit mate.
In a better world Brett gets Bork'd, Dems get a majority in November, and the only person Trump can nominate to get bipartisan support is Merrick Garland.
Unfortunately, I believe the new Dem members wouldn't be seated until January. Even in that case, Repubs are going to do whatever it takes to push someone through between Nov and Jan.
Kavanaugh is far more conservative than Kennedy and more conservative than all of the other justices except Thomas.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/scotus-pick-reax-KAVANAUGH.png?w=575
It shouldn't matter when the accusation is as long as it is credible... which it is.
Even then, there is a reasonable argument to be made about speaking out only now. Perhaps the accuser has seen how dire circumstances are that her own abuser is reaching the highest levels of government where he may very well be making decisions on Womens' rights issues, and that has given her courage to speak out.
Fuck off with this whataboutism bullshit. Nobody here is going to defend the behavior of decades past. If Republicans want to avoid seeming like they're morally inferior, then maybe they should hold their own accountable (Roy Moore, Rob Porter, etc).
The intention is not to dismantle, that's just a side effect. The intention is to warn and educate
Political apathy is one of the biggest problems facing the United States today, bad faith actors are constantly seeking to undermine your faith in the system. At minimum, they want you to not vote. More than that, they want you to discourage any others from voting
Voting is the big thing at stake here. No matter how much the Republican Party tries to break it (And by now it should be obvious who I mean when I say The Party), the United States still has, at least broadly, a functioning political political process through which you can affect change to the system
But only if you vote, and only if you convince others to vote
This might seem a little off topic from this thread, but it isn't. It's all strongly linked together. Kavanaugh is an example of why these bad faith actors don't want you voting or encouraging others to vote. Ideally, they want you to discourage others from voting, too. That's why perversion, futility, and jeopardy are such potent tools, because they can also be used to turn people against each other in subtle ways
This post hasn't aged as good as some of my others, but I think the conversation it's part of stands as a sort of showcase for how this sort of rhetoric is used to poison the well
I call particular attention to this bit, because it was written well before I read the Rhetoric of Reaction, which has helped crystallize a lot of the views that really started to blossom here
I'm worried about the ways things can go wrong and what problems might come up, no question. But I'm not nearly as worried about those things as I am the things that are wrong and the problems that have come up right god damn now
But none of these problems can be fixed if people don't believe they can be fixed, and telling people all the ways things might go wrong and all the problems that could come up as a result of so much as trying to fix them is unbearably discouraging. It does the polar opposite of what those galvanizing political forces did so well to inspire such a great voter turnout
It's a form of voter suppression just as much as voter ID laws and gerrymandering are. Maybe it seems like a bit of a roundabout way of doing it, but the end goal and result is exactly the same. You, the reader, the voter, cease to have a voice in the system
Language can be a potent weapon. It shapes how we think. One of the reasons this sort of rhetoric is so dangerous is that it isn't just limited to the Republican party or ever bad faith actors. Sometimes it winds up getting used just because it's what people know, reactionary rhetoric just like it has been a cultural staple in the United States for a long time. Think about how it's considered almost axiomatic that all politicians are corrupt, and that no matter how good a politician seeems, they're just another huckster cruising for a cushy pension
At the bare minimum, everyone engaging in any kind of political debate in the current climate should be watching this video series and actively spamming it to everyone they know to literally anyone with even the most vague interest in political debate. Don't even wait for a reason, invent your own, shoehorn it in to as many conversations as you can
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xGawJIseNY&list=PLJA_jUddXvY7v0VkYRbANnTnzkA_HMFtQ
Politics is a dirty word. A four letter word. It shouldn't be, though. It's a fundamental piece of being an adult living in a free country. Being able to understand and freely and openly engage in political discourse is one of the greatest freedoms you have, and the best way to preserve that freedom isn't to just understand the issues, it's to understand how people talk about them in the first place
Humans aren't inherently bad, but they're also far from flawless. You and everyone you know are susceptible to a lot of cheap psychological tricks. At the end of the day, we're a bunch of naive apes
But we're naive apes with some seriously powerful brains, humans can pack away an absolutely absurd amount of knowledge, and you can use knowledge and education to inoculate yourself against a lot of these tricks. For starters, just by learning to recognize the forms they take. Read books, watch videos, study arguments, and test and refine what you've learned by doing shit like this
You really think I'm doing a good job? Don't tell me that, tell other people about it, people this post can't reach, propagate these ideas, propagate this information
Become the most terrifying political weapon there is:
An informed voter who wants things to change and is going to vote, and encourage others to vote to make that change happen
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