Tag: Senate

If I tend to believe her over him, is that partisan?

judge shall actSure, Brett Kavanaugh would not be the Supreme Court justice I would prefer on policy. But I sincerely believe my current antipathy towards him stems from two issues:

1. I tend to believe Christine Blasey Ford’s sexual assault allegation regarding him. We still live in a legal system that fails to identify, prevent and redress the widespread sexual assault and mistreatment of women. “We must account for that failure in parsing these events and allegations. For decades, these systemic inequities have barred people from reporting assault and receiving justice.”

Blasey Ford’s well-documented records were generated long before Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. Her compelling testimony of sexual assault reopened old wounds for other victims Her description of how memory works matches what I’ve experienced.

Prior to testifying, she received death threats. She wouldn’t put herself and her children in peril over a fabricated story about a sexual assault which would prevent only this particular conservative judge from being put on the Supreme Court.

The fact that some Democrats are surely “being political” about this does not negate her truth.

2. Brett Kavanaugh is a recognizable type. Greg Hatcher wrote Watching the Douchebro Death Spiral: I Was That Guy. Fillyjonk had an epiphany, as quoted by Dustbury: “Party culture”? Totally a thing.

Like his sponsor, Brett Kavanaugh seems to lie about almost everything, including stupid stuff, traceable stuff. Kavanaugh lied about getting into Yale only on merit. His grandfather was an alum..

Politifact fact-checked his Senate confirmation hearings and found him veracity lacking.

His 1982 calendar does NOT exonerate him, but rather, points to the fact that Brett is Mark Judge’s boozy friend Bart, a belligerent and aggressive drunk.

That woman on CNN who said, “Tell me what boy hasn’t done this in high school?” rather broke my heart. BTW, not me, for one. The passage of time doesn’t erase youthful mistakes in the criminal justice system, for most people of a different race or class.

I’m happy the Senate forced the extension of the FBI probe of Kavanaugh. If we’ve made any progress since the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas debacle, it as that the character assassination foisted upon Hill does not seem to be sticking as much to Blasey Ford. Meager progress in 27 years, but it’s something.
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Brett Kavanaugh: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Dr. Christine Blasey Ford Testifies Against Brett Kavanaugh | The Daily Show with Trevor Noah – Nah, I don’t believe his response to the Blood Alcohol Chart question either.

NY Times opinion piece: An Injudicious Man, Unfit for the Supreme Court. “This was a job interview, not a criminal trial. Kavanaugh, in his fury and pathos, failed the test.”

M is for Senator Lisa Murkowski

“Good news: her name will appear on a list of potential write-in candidates. Bad news: there are about 100 people on the list.”

There were three Republican Senators who voted against the so-called ““skinny repeal” of the Affordable Care Act, a/k/a Obamacare in July 2017. One was John McCain of Arizona, who made a dramatic return to DC that week after a diagnosis of brain cancer. The other two were women who had been bucking their party all that week, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. All, it could be argued, put principle before party.

The female senators were on receiving end of insults from male officials. “They were told that they… deserve a physical reprimand for their decisions not to support Republican health-care proposals.”

Senator Murkowski is particularly interesting to me because she has won three full terms to the Senate, yet has never won a majority of the vote. “Murkowski was appointed to the U.S. Senate by her father, Frank Murkowski, who resigned his seat in December 2002 to become the Governor of Alaska. She completed her father’s unexpired term, which ended in January 2005. She ran for and won a full term in 2004,” with 48.5% of the vote.

“She ran for a second term in 2010. She lost the Republican Party nomination to Tea Party candidate Joe Miller. She then ran as a write-in candidate and defeated both Miller and Democrat Scott McAdams in the General Election,” with 39.5% of the vote, “making her the first U.S. Senator to be elected by write-in vote since Strom Thurmond [of South Carolina] in 1954.”

In fact, I predicted that victory in this very blog on 2 November 2010:
“But I will go out on a limb to say that I think Lisa Murkowski will barely retain her Senate seat in Alaska. Three-way polling is much less reliable than that done for a two person race.

“Good news: her name will appear on a list of potential write-in candidates. Bad news: there are about 100 people on the list. Good news: she has great name recognition in the state. Bad news: she’s been around a long time, and her father before her. Good news: it is established that a vote for a write-in candidate must be counted, if the intent is clear.”

So someone drawing the three pictures on this page could be seen as voting for Murkowski, like so:

“The French word for sea is MER + COW + SKI = Murkowski.”

In 2016, she won again, with 44% of the vote. The political threats have not fazed her, maybe because she doesn’t have to run for office again until 2022.

For ABC Wednesday

The torture report

Antonin Scalia believes in the ‘24’ Effect to rationalize torture.

From Tom Tomorrow
From Tom Tomorrow

While I’ve had the intention of writing about the disturbing report that the Senate Democrats recently released about the United States and torture, circumstances have not allowed that. So here’s a bunch of links, with brief observations:

From The Implications of the Torture Report by Mike Lofgren, Truthout:

The present writer will take as a given the veracity of its three main findings: that the United States engaged in practices both legally and commonly definable as torture; that the actionable intelligence these practices produced was negligible; and that the practices tainted the moral prestige of the United States government in a manner that damaged its foreign policy. These assertions may be taken as true both because of the abundant evidence presented in the report itself and because of the flailing and hysterical reaction by our country’s national security elites…

[Secretary of State] Kerry: “Lots of things going on in the world; not a good time for disclosure.” But when is there ever not a lot of things going on in the world?

That would be my general view as well.

Another fair representation of my position: 5 Things to Understand About the Torture Report from the Weekly Sift.

I’m particularly intrigued by the Truth and reconciliation section, which almost certainly will not happen because America is AWESOME! and we’re a “let’s move on” people.

The Rank, Reeking Horror of Torturing Some Folks from Truthout:

“In my name. In your name. In our names.” The narrative was that, in the days after 9/11, the “American people” wanted the government to do “anything” to prevent of another one. Instead, the torture and imprisonment have eventually led to the hate-filled ISIS. That may be true, since a majority of Americans say the CIA tactics were justified, which makes me all sorts of sad.

CIA Lied About Torture, Senate Report Suggests from Newsmax:

All sorts of discomforting items therein.

What torture sounds like from BoingBoing.
ventura
Karl Rove Says Bush Knew About CIA Interrogation Program, Defends Rectal Feeding from the Huffington Post:

“Appearing on ‘Fox News Sunday,’ [former GW Bush adviser] Rove claimed the brutal forced rectal feedings — which the report said were not medically necessary — were used out of medical necessity.”

Physicians: “Anal feeding” of prisoners is sexual assault, has no medical use, from BoingBoing:

“What a sad world we live in, when a coalition of medical professionals has to issue a press release announcing this most obvious of obvious observations…”

Dick Cheney: ‘I Haven’t Read’ CIA Torture Report but It’s ‘Full of Crap’ from Mediaite:

He doth describe himself instead, and rather well.

Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Antonin Scalia’s spirited defense of torture from MSNBC:

“We have never held that that’s contrary to the Constitution. And I don’t know what provision of the Constitution that would, that would contravene.

“Listen, I think it is very facile for people to say, ‘Oh, torture is terrible.’ You posit the situation where a person that you know for sure knows the location of a nuclear bomb that has been planted in Los Angeles and will kill millions of people. You think it’s an easy question? You think it’s clear that you cannot use extreme measures to get that information out of that person? I don’t think that’s so clear at all.”

OMG, OMG. (Facepalm) Scalia believes in The ‘24’ Effect: Did the TV drama convince us that torture really worked? from Matt Bai at Yahoo! News. I stopped watching this show regularly after the first episode of the second season because I decided it was torture porn.

But sometimes, you just need a cartoon to break it down for you:
Tortured logic, from Tom Tomorrow in the Daily Kos
An Illustrated A to Z of Torture from Vice.com

Or satire:
Cheney calls for ban on publishing torture reports from the New Yorker

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