And Kennedy decides to fuck us all

[wesw]

you know what, I disagree with meade, but meade is as American as it gets. he believes in govt of by and for the people.

do you?

does jim?

idk

[Lord Jim]

Murkowski will not serve another term. she will lose to the right, or to the left, but she will lose.

In 2010, Murkowski was defeated for renomination by a Tea Party nut job and then won re-election by running as an Independent in a write-in campaign, (becoming only the second person in US history...after Strom Thurman in 1954...to win election to the US Senate as a write-in candidate.) She again won re-election in 2016 as a Republican in a race where the nut job who defeated her for the GOP nomination in 2010 ran a strong third party campaign as a Libertarian...

She certainly knows what she needs to do to win state-wide races in Alaska...Winning elections where she's getting hit from both the left and the right is what she does...

You ain't going to be mistaken for Charlie Cook or Larry Sabato any time soon wes...

[ex-khobar Andy]

hey andy, soros is paying for insurrection, does he pay youtoo?

can you vote?
are you American? if not, butt out.

Soros hasn't paid me yet. His cheques (whoops) checks keep bouncing.

Interesting that you bring up Soros. He was a buddy of Karl Popper, whose most appealing philosophical work was about the tolerance of intolerance, the so-called Tolerance Paradox. Although I am generally tolerant of most things, I am intolerant of intolerance. I quote, from The Open Society and its Enemies: (I'll be happy to lend you a copy but you'll have to give me your address.)

If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise.

Luckily for you, wes, I'm with Popper and Soros on that. Thanks for reminding me.

As for your last point, I pay my US taxes which is more than your president does. And I have a nicer butt.

[wesw]

yeah jim, I meant to say Collins, not murkowski.

my mistake.

I don t think Collins will ever run again.

thanks, andy, but you know that trump supporters can t read much past, "see spot run...."

lucky for me, I can read between the lines if the actual words are too much for me.

[wesw]

dammit jim, I just remembered that I once cited a fox poll....

....I hate it when you are right

[Lord Jim]

Apparently you also forgot about the Rasmussen poll you cited wes...

Here, let me help refresh your memory:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=18862&p=260714&hili ... te#p260714

No need to thank me; always glad to lend a hand...

[ex-khobar Andy]

This opinion piece in NYT is worth reading and emphasizes the unrepresentative nature of the SCOTUS. Gorsuch for example, who was confirmed before the Democrats got their act together sufficiently to find a credible woman who was willing to destroy her own life in order to sabotage an honorable man (BTW [/s] for anyone who needs it), won the Senate vote 54 - 45 which is, at least by current standards, a fairly healthy majority. But in their respective senate elections, those 54 'yes' votes received around 54 million votes while the 45 'no' votes received 73 million. Maybe it's time for the 'advise and consent' role to be passed to the House which is intrinsically more democratic (lower case d, note).

[Lord Jim]

I thought this article makes an excellent point...

(The fact that the author is making the same point that I did earlier is sheer coincidence, and played absolutely no role in my determining that his point is excellent...)

Did Michael Avenatti help doom the case against Brett Kavanaugh?


By Aaron Blake
October 5 at 6:22 PM

The idea of Michael Avenatti running for president seemed ridiculous to most observers at the start. Gradually, it has seemed perhaps less so. If Democrats want to fight fire with fire, after all, they could probably do worse than Stormy Daniels’s lawyer. Avenatti did play a major role in eventually getting Michael Cohen to implicate President Trump in a federal crime.

Avenatti’s latest major turn in the political spotlight, though, hasn’t gone so well.

With Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh having just secured the 50th and 51st votes to assure his confirmation, attention has turned to Avenatti’s role in the failed effort. After the media unearthed and vetted accusations by Kavanaugh’s first two accusers, Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez, Avenatti decided to skip the middle man with a third.

After several days of making the cable TV rounds teasing his new client, he released a sworn affidavit from Julie Swetnick that not only included the most serious accusations to date — that Kavanaugh appeared to have participated in gang rapes — but also did so with the least corroboration.

Many media outlets treated the accusation with skepticism, and Swetnick’s past was probed for litigiousness and other issues. Swetnick also appeared to temper some of the claims and implications contained in her affidavit during an interview with NBC News.

By the end of the confirmation battle, the Swetnick allegation became a key GOP talking point — alleged proof positive that, while allegations such as Ford’s could perhaps be taken seriously, this was at least in part a political effort using frivolous and ridiculous charges. That a man with eyes for the 2020 Democratic nomination was behind them made that argument easier to make.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) drove that point home more than anyone Friday, joining her more conservative fellow Republicans in listing Avenatti’s allegation in her floor speech announcing why she would be the pivotal 50th vote for Kavanaugh.

“Some of the allegations levied against Judge Kavanaugh illustrate why the presumption of innocence is so important,” Collins said. “I am thinking in particular not of the allegations raised by Professor Ford, but of the allegation that when he was a teenager, Judge Kavanaugh drugged multiple girls and used this weakened state to participate in gang rape. This outlandish allegation was put forward without any supporting evidence and simply parroted in the public statements of others.”

More:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... b01f1c6e9a

[Scooter]

dammit jim, I just remembered that I once cited a fox poll....

....I hate it when you are right

Apparently you also forgot about the Rasmussen poll you cited wes...

Here, let me help refresh your memory:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=18862&p=260714&hili ... te#p260714

No need to thank me; always glad to lend a hand...

He also forgot about touting Ben Carson's alleged approval numbers in Iowa:

carson has over 80% approval rating in iowa. 80 freakin per cent!!!!!

and then again when he claimed that Carson was viewed more favourably than other politicians:

did you leave out Carson on purpose?

he has the best numbers....

This was back when wes wanted Carson to be president, while he was still saying disparaging things about Donald Trump.

Of course it couldn't possible be that wes chooses to believe in polls that reflect his own preferences, and dismisses those that don't.

Nah, that doesn't sound like wes at all, does it?

[rubato]

I'm disappointed that Collins turned out to be so weak. I had thought better of her.


yrs,
rubato

[RayThom]

I have a feeling that Collins was getting ready to retire.

This gives her a great opportunity to go out on top, looking loyal to her constituents and party. I see an ever more lucrative lobbyist job in her future.

[Econoline]

[Scooter]

[Econoline]

I'm a confirmed, solid, lifelong pessimist. But if I were an optimist, this would be a very appealing way to look at this whole boondoggle.

• Game-changer: How Democrats won the Kavanaugh war by losing the battle
  
  Congratulations, Republicans! You’ve gotten Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court! His face will always be associated with your victory. His ragey, hateful, perjuring, conspiratorial face. You’re him now. Today’s vote to confirm Kavanaugh will work in Democrats’ favor, and eventually America’s as well.
  
  We chose this moment in 2016, as the new president would get to appoint probably two Supreme Court Justices. If Hillary Clinton won, it might have been Merrick Garland and perhaps a member of an underrepresented group on the Court. If Donald Trump won, it’d be two highly conservative white guys. Like, say, Neil Gorsuch, who succeeded Scalia, and Brett Kavanaugh, whom Trump nominated to succeed to soon-to-retire Anthony Kennedy.
  
  On Gorsuch, they lacked a majority in the Senate. Which would not ordinarily have been a problem. Simply by being unified, they would have stopped him, because the rule was simple: You needed 60 votes to get confirmation on a nominee. Because no nominee could be confirmed without bipartisan support, most nominees had bipartisan support.That is, until Republicans came up with a game-changer. Two, actually.
  
  In game theory terms, a game-changer is a strategy that disrupts the rules of a game. When the game-changer arrives, the game itself no longer functions as previously envisioned. It’s not cheating, per se. It’s just modifying how the rules are applied, making it look like a different game entirely. Sometimes it’s because someone does something legal that no one else is doing, such as when dunking became the rage in basketball in the 1950s. Sometimes it’s because the rules get changed to allow something someone can take advantage of, such as the embrace of the forward pass in football in 1906.
  
  The first Republican game-changer came in 2016 after President Obama nominated Garland. The GOP refused to allow his nomination to come to committee, a historic act of obstruction that was totally within the rules. The second, more impactful game-changer came in 2017, when Trump nominated Gorsuch. Faced with a unified Democratic opposition, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell invoked the nuclear option, removing the filibuster requiring 60 votes. Now only a simple majority was needed, and Gorsuch sailed through.
  
  Now the Democrats were in a quandary. The game had changed. Justice Kennedy retired. Kavanaugh, the potential doombringer to Roe v. Wade and Obergefell v. Hodges and everything else Democrats held dear, was up for nomination. Without a new strategy, they’d lose the court for a generation. For weeks it looked like they would not generate such a strategy.
  
  The allegations of Christine Blasey Ford against Judge Kavanaugh were not a strategy. Neither was her insistence on an FBI investigation. Neither was airing multiple other allegations. Those aren’t strategies Democrats understand. What the Democrats discovered was that they had in their hands a far bolder strategy: to let Kavanaugh hang the Republicans.
  
  When Kavanaugh was nominated, the Democrats had a massive chance to take the House and almost no chance to take the Senate. That is, they had effort they needed to spend on the Senate that was being spent on a near-sure thing in the House. Heidi Heitkamp was cratering in North Dakota. Beto O’Rourke was a huge longshot in Texas. Bill Nelson was a tossup in Florida. Joe Manchin is basically a Republican anyway. At best, the Senate Democrats were looking at a 1-in-3 chance, but it felt much less likely.
  
  When facing only a minuscule chance of success, you need a game-changer. You need to get everyone to see you work. But politics is a funny thing: If your people see you succeed too much, they stay home. Enthusiasm is based on what you want to happen, not what you have made happen.
  
  So the Democrats had only one strategy that might work: to turn Kavanaugh’s nomination into a battle for the heart and soul of America’s women. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony showed that Kavanaugh was a monster; Kavanaugh’s testimony showed that he was the worst kind of monster. He was the second coming of Trump: an entitled, angry, sexually predacious white man. Senate Democrats aimed to stand up against that kind of monster, and show who was on the side of justice. And then they expected him to get on the court anyway.
  
  Wait, what? Wasn’t the goal to make sure he wasn’t on the court? Well, sure, they’d take it if it worked. There was a chance—a small chance—that if they caused a couple Republican defections and voted Kavanaugh down in any of the three votes, the GOP could not get a new nominee in time for the midterms, and there was a chance—a smaller chance—they could win the Senate and then try to hold the seat open for two years.
  
  Then Trump would nominate Amy Coney Barrett, who’s just as bad ideologically but scandal-free and a woman to boot. Who knows, we might have liked her. Then it’d be a fight over litmus tests, and they could lose everything that’s in play in November. We get the same result, but now it’s a woman on the court overturning Roe. That’s no good at all. The fight is against Donald Trump and people like him.
  
  On many levels, it mattered if the gambit kept Kavanaugh off the high court. On a raw political level, it didn’t matter if it worked. The Democrats didn’t lose the votes on Kavanaugh because as the minority they never had the votes on Kavanaugh. There were no bad outcomes to letting Kavanaugh show us what he’s made of. One by one, Senate Democrats—Feinstein, Harris, Klobuchar, Booker, Durbin, Whitehouse—exposed Senate Republicans as defenders of sexual violence. It’s up to women to decide if they want to be represented by men who silence women. True, the record on this is mixed. White women voted 53% in favor of a sexual predator to be president. They might do it again, because this election is about voting for Trump again. They might not.
  
  By unsuccessfully putting everything into stopping Kavanaugh, the Democrats didn’t lose the Senate in 2018—because they never had the Senate in 2018. They were barely in it to get a razor-thin majority; they were never in it to get an impeachment majority. You can’t lose what you don’t have. You can only lose what you do have. What the Democrats had to lose was the House and the soul of America. Now, backed by oceans of rage, Democrats are likely to wave-crush the House Republicans, as satisfied Republicans kick back and relax, pleased as punch with their short-term victory.
  
  The strategy of painting the Republicans as champions of rage against women was a bold one; the GOP was more than happy to death-clutch the mantle. Now Mitch McConnell is done. Lindsey Graham is done. Portrait-of-enabling Susan Collins is for-reals done; her 2020 opponent has raised $3 million already and doesn’t even exist yet. They’re all done.
  
  When Democrats take the House in 2018 and the Senate and presidency in 2020, then the battle for the court will actually begin. We’ll have a president who seriously considers the possibility of court-packing. Kavanaugh might be impeached. The retirements of Ginsburg and Breyer will reshape the court. We will win because we didn’t get Amy Coney Barrett or someone more capable on the court. We will win because the Senate put Donald Trump on it.
  
  Now, that is a game-changer.

[Lord Jim]

The second, more impactful game-changer came in 2017, when Trump nominated Gorsuch. Faced with a unified Democratic opposition, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell invoked the nuclear option, removing the filibuster requiring 60 votes. Now only a simple majority was needed, and Gorsuch sailed through.

I'm always struck by how modest the Democrats are in never seeming to want to give their own Harry Reid (and the Democratic members of the Senate who supported him) the proper credit they deserves for their pivotal role in this...

You'd think that nobody ever thought to end the filibuster for judicial appointments until that fiendish Mitch McConnell came along...

[BoSoxGal]

Advance snippets of Melanoma Trump’s upcoming interview have just released; apparently she defends men and says women need to have ‘hard evidence’ before making accusations of sexual misconduct.

Never mind that the vast majority of sexual assault and molestation cases are constituted solely of the victim’s testimony and circumstantial evidence, and if she bothered reading a single book by a single reputable source about sexual offense prosecutions, she’d know that.

But hey, she’s only the First Lady, what does she care about the message she sends to all the young and adult women and men in this country? All that the stupid undereducated cunt cares about is protecting her sexual predator husband and her designer clothing budget.

She’s a fucking piece of shit Eastern European mail order bride raised in a backward Neanderthal patriarchy who fully embraces her role as doormat and cum receptacle for a fat piece of shit who is RICH and that is ALL she cares about. She’s the most vile disgusting excuse for a First Lady this country has ever suffered.

Yeah, I fucking swore. She’s a CUNT. It can’t be helped.

[Big RR]

cum receptacle for a fat piece of shit

Somehow I doubt "little penis man" can even ejaculate, so this may be an exaggeration.

[Joe Guy]

I don't think BSG likes anybody...

[RayThom]

I don't think BSG likes anybody...

... /s ???

[Joe Guy]

.../observation