I'm glad at least a good contingent of Dems are taking this kicking and screaming all the way.
Feinstein has improved, but it's ridiculous that right up until today (fwict) she was consistently acting like it was possible to have an open mind on Kavanaugh and not be a sucker. This gives cover to the rightmost Dems to be even more positive.
Yah. Discuss: I've heard a number of invited commentators on NPR lately speak of limiting or abolishing what they call "the administrative state." This reminds me of Steve Bannon, of course. But I do believe they're talking about eliminating so-called Chevron Deference. Kavanaugh is, I believe, a supporter of doing so.
Um, I'm not going to link to explanations of Chevron -- we've discussed it before on this blog -- but for my money, this is the largest thing at stake in the Kavanaugh confirmation.
Ok, one link on the Federalist Society (notably Kavanaugh's love child) view of Chevron.
More extended, scholarly, outline of Kavanaugh and Chevron.
Former Arizona senator John Kyl has apparently been retained as a lobbyist to cause the confirmation of Judge Kavanaugh. He's been compensated for this (Even if it was pro bono, he's getting paid by Covington). Now he's going to be appointed to McCain's seat, and will vote on the confirmation. Can't a senator go to jail for accepting money to cause an outcome on a particular scheduled vote, and then voting in favor of that outcome?
i assume he'll just have to give back all the money, except for any bills he's licked.
No. I assume that if you give a Republican elected official some cash or a check, they lick it so you won't be likely to ask for it back. That's why Dinesh D'Souza wrote just one big check for the donations of several people, so spare Republican tongues.
That was a typo. "to spare Republican tongues."
Friends, Republicans, countrymen -- spare me your tongues.
Anyway, we're all screwed, but maybe if it is bad enough, voter turnout will rise enough to offset the undoing of the Voting Rights Act and the Senate will stay decent for the 20 or so years it will take to fix this.
It's not "depriving a State of its equal Suffrage in the Senate" if the entire Senate's power is reduced to advice and delay. [head-tap.gif]
Yeah, I really think Kyl ought to recuse himself for the vote.
the Senate will stay decent for the 20 or so years it will take to fix this.
Dude its not getting fixed.
no, dude, the senators are going to get fixers! they can meet with them in strip clubs and stuff so it's all legitimate.
Badness. Unfortunately I suspect a 51-49 confirmation is the "best" result that is within the realm of possibility.
Guy's a stone cold intellectually dishonest, racist fuckhole about to join a few others of his ilk.
Until the Federalist Society is viewed as an intellectually-gussied up incantation of the KKK we are in trouble on the jusdicial front (and for years beyond that).
Universities harboring the absolute worst among us. Rancid little dicks mentored by rancid big dicks. Exactly what you would expect from an Ed Meese/Robert Bork joint.
The whole thing is the legal world incantation of Lee Atwood's "nigger, nigger, nigger" riff.
Not sure if a direct assault on those lines would be effective I will admit.
And with that I am off on vacation.
If you need a job when you get back, I recommend either Walmart greeter or utility regulation.
A squarer angle on this same moment was circulating a lot on Twitter yesterday, but this other photo is quite something.
22 A lot more important stuff is happening in this hearing but that moment really gives the lie to the "he's a decent, civil, kind man" bullshit we were hearing from people who should have known better. The decent, civil, kind thing to have done is to shake the man's hand, look him in the eye, and say, "sorry for your loss." Then you can turn around and leave. It should be instinctual, you shouldn't even have to think about it.
I'm curious, has "I can't answer hypothetical questions" ever had any justification other than Republican weaselry? I can see why you wouldn't want to commit to a specific ruling unconditionally, since circumstances vary, but that could be handled by some caveating preface before explaining your principles.
24: It's weaselry, but in the interest of fairness, I'm pretty sure the recent judges nominated by Obama did the same kind of thing.
23: A decent, civil, kind man would be happy to endorse a version of the Constitution that doesn't require that this guy's daughter be dead, so ...
22: Photography isn't as objective as folks sometimes believe, and I think that photo is actually pretty unfair. I really love it. I wonder if there's a lens filter or something that can routinely produce that effect when used to capture pictures of Republicans.
There was also the woman in back of him - Zina Bash, former assistant I guess? - dropping the white power "ok" symbol.
I thought her deniability about it was plausible until I saw this video, which has her sitting normally, then checking her phone, smirking, and then showing the symbol. She totally did it on purpose.
Photography isn't as objective as folks sometimes believe, and I think that photo is actually pretty unfair.
Also I'm afraid that the general pattern of "victim of violent crime becomes political activist, confronts judge whose leniency he blames for said crime" is normally going to involve an extremely right-wing victim and so-called bleeding-heart liberal judge, so we need to welcome when that happens as well.
The genesis of the "ok symbol" seems like a microcosm of alt-right ouroboros. Online trolls come up with a gesture to spread the word that it's neo-nazi, to "trigger the libs" with false positives, but because they are themselves racist activists, they start using it as a signal among themselves, so it becomes in reality what they were trying to put out as a misconception.
30: Sort of like when would-be druggie teens started trying to smoke banana peels.
4: Who wrote 2 and 3?
Oh, I'm so sorry, I didn't realize. 'twas me.
Has everybody seen this latest chapter in the madness?
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/opinion/trump-white-house-anonymous-resistance.html
If anyone needs me, I'll be in the Chiquita aisle.
Who had September 5 down for "literal coup announced in the pages of the NY Times"?
That isn't a literal coup. It's further confirmation of the dysfunction which was evident from day one.
WOW. Is it obvious to everyone but me who wrote it? Kelly?
I've never seen anything from a US military person written that smoothly, but I don't know how much the Times edited. It could be any of dozens of people.
Dick Nixon thinks it's someone in the Pence camp (though probably not Pence himself).
Taken from twitter --
@jodikantor
1h1 hour ago
So basically: Times reporters now must try to unearth the identity of an author that our colleagues in Opinion have sworn to protect with anonymity?
Timothy Noah
Verified account
@TimothyNoah1
1h1 hour ago
You didn't hear it from me, but James Bennet is really ticklish. You know what to do.
0 replies 1 retweet 41 likes
Reply Retweet 1 Like 41
https://twitter.com/jodikantor/status/1037429850682867714
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I have an election primary dilemma (which is coming up tomorrow). The Democratic senate primary features a centrist, pro-business incumbent (Tom Carper) and a left-wing activist/community organizer (Evelyn Harris). On the one hand, I absolutely prefer Harris's platform, and share her concerns about a number of Carper's previous votes. On the other hand, I went to one of Harris's events, and I was really underwhelmed. It's not just that she spoke in cliches, but they didn't even seem to be well organized or crafted cliches. I left concerned about whether she would actually be able to do a good job at the work of being a being a senator. Yet then I wonder if this is my subconscious racism/sexism/elitism showing (she's a black lesbian veteran who hadn't finished college). I also worry that she wouldn't be able to win the general, and the Dems cannot afford to lose a senate seat. We're a blue state, but not by much.
It seems insane to vote against the candidate who shares my beliefs, but I'm torn nonetheless. What do you guys think?
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Is it obvious to everyone but me who wrote it? Kelly?
No, it doesn't do Kelly any favors. I'm sure he agrees 100% with it but he's also the one that's going to have to contain the fallout for this shit. He's rather keep it quiet.
I'm thinking its Nikki Haley, laying down a marker for her run in 2024.
Alternately, its Jeff Sessions who's just doing it to fuck with Trump.
Is it just me or did "I am part of the resistance from inside the Trump administration" headline remind anyone else of the classic Onion headline "Why do all these homosexuals keep sucking my cock?"?
Great, they're going to remove Trump a couple weeks before the election. That's how they'll manage to not lost 50 seats in the House.
44: Vote for the candidate who shares your beliefs. If the other guy wins, he should know what portion of his base is far to the left of him. If she somehow won, she'll have plenty of coaches and advisors to help her navigate the general and being in office. That's my two cents, anyway.
I'm thinking its Nikki Haley, laying down a marker for her run in 2024.
I bet Trump would be literally incapable of thinking of the possibility that a woman wrote it. Crafty, hiding in plain sight!
44: Carper has the demonstrated ability to win the general; only the general matters.
44, 49: And if she wins, she's a better candidate than you think.
I don't want to be dismissive of the general dilemma, which I think is real. But Democratic primaries are the place to decide what the Democratic Party is going to be. The Tea Party idiots lost some general elections, but they took control of the party in the long run.
Admittedly, democracy really has its back against a wall this time, and it's not unreasonable to worry that this is the last chance the Democrats get. But the crucial battle is in the House. We're not going to see a situation where the House goes R and the Senate goes Dem in any case.
Of all the "insurgents" this year the ones who have had chances to win a primary have been poised and professional. K Harris is the one who strikes me as maybe enough of an amateur to blow it in the general, like her Republican state-mate Christine O'Donnell (does that state only have a couple dozen elected officials, or what? shallow bench). But I don't think that'll happen. Maybe if Delaware still had a popular Republican governor it could happen.
44: In these head-to-head polls (PDF), both Harris and Carper were ahead of both frontrunners for the Republican nomination. It doesn't seem a major consideration. Lots of "uncertains" in all matchups.
What 49 and 52 said, plus, in the primary poll Harris only had 19% support vs. Carper's 51%, so that would be quite a groundswell if she won, big enough to affect the general-election electability calculus.
OT: I don't know whether to put OT or pause/play for this. It's way OT but I also would like an answer if anyone has it (Neb are you there?)
If I'm making a list, and it goes Definitions: item, item, item, item. _________, claim/proposition claim claim claim
is the word I'm looking for there "inferences"?
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Someone googled the White House site for "lodestar" since it was an unusual word, and apparently it's used fairly often by Pence (or his speechwriter). Or maybe that's what the real opes writer wants you to think!
Oh man. It'd be awesome if it were Pence.
56: So, this is obviously not conclusive, but: that's a lot of lodestar.
Really. A lot of lodestar. (Some overlap with above, but some of that is from presumably extemporaneous interviews.)
Of course, it's an uncommon enough word that it's not unimaginable that someone who works with him regularly might notice it's a peculiarity of his idiolect.
It's probably Perry. He's from the Lodestar State.
Interestingly, Pence is the only "senior administration official" that Trump cannot legally fire.
Anybody with some basic knowledge of American politics and who has followed Trump on Twitter probably could have written it, so I think the only way to find who wrote it is to figure who benefited most. That's got to be either Pence or the Vatican.
Someone observed the person is described as a "senior administration official", but not as someone who works in the White House. What's the lowest rank someone can have and still be so described by the NYT? Would a cabinet undersecretary count?
If it's Pence, I think his goal is Ned's 48.
One argument for Pence is that while written with NYT buzzwords, it's also highly compatible with the latest evangelical apologia "he's a horrible sinner but God sent him as an unwitting vessel for us to rule through".
48, 63 -- In normal times it might work, so you'd think they'd try it but the MAGA cult isn't going to turn on a dime. Any Republican who looks complicit will go down.
I am trying and not coming up with a scenario where anything good comes of the NYT publishing this thing. The only schadenfreude I can find in it is that gaslighting Trump on an epic scale might, under some circumstances, be pretty entertaining. But that's a far more abstract pleasure than producing Moby's beloved pee tape would be.
I agree that this is, if not Pence, some avatar of the Koch wing reasserting itself. It's presumably also someone who wants the Kavanaugh hearing pushed down below the fold -- again, Pence-and-friends is a reasonable guess there.
That said, obviously "lodestar" is the code name of that OK hand signal (4000-word explanation with screencaps upon request) and they're all in on it.
But that's a far more abstract pleasure than producing Moby's beloved pee tape would be.
Fine. I'll go back to Spielberg.
But, yes, I don't think anything good is going to come of this aside from enjoying Trump's limp rage.
Maybe Gwyneth Paltrow organized it to bury the news about her having to pay a settlement about the medical evidence for putting eggs in your vagina.
If the NYT thinks this is going to allow them to avoid being first against the wall if there's a Trumporitarian seizure of power, they might be right. First to go will be the op-ed author, then the NYT. In an anti-Trump conservative seizure of power, the NYT will go a bit later*, probably not long after conservatives who say they love freedom and democratic institutions are reminded they love the exercise of power even more.
*If I'm being serious, I doubt the NYT would go at all. Instead, it will be taken over ideologically and the new regime will trade on its residual prestige to push a right wing agenda.**
**Please, no one say: "didn't that already happen?" I don't think it's there yet.
Anyway, maybe someone analyzed Pence's writing style and mimicked it in order to set him up. Time might be running out for the pretexts required to establish authoritarian rule.
30: The origins of the "nazi ok" recapitulate those of 4chan nazism. It was n----- this, f____ that but like, ironically, for years (I used to be on the board 4chan got kicked out from).
It's weird how willing the media is to think that people are covering things up just for fun. I don't know what's in those Kavanaugh documents, but Mitch McConnell does and he thought it was bad enough to say they shouldn't nominate him. So whatever it is, it's probably really bad!
Things he wrote while working for the government during the Bush administration.
65 is correct. This isn't the work of a politician -- at least, not an ambitious one. Literally every national politician understands that direct opposition to Trump is fatal to political ambition. (And everyone, including the author, understands that the author isn't going to remain anonymous in the long run.)
66.1, 68: Chaos is never a good thing, and this adds to the chaos. But if the United States is going to be a viable democracy, the Republican Party must be discredited in the eyes of many of its own supporters. Absent an economic downturn, it's hard to know how this can happen. But this sort of thing -- open revolt by the president's own appointees -- is one way that it might.
I think it could still be someone ambitious like Pence, and I think that the calculation is that the author really thinks Trump is about to go out in public naked except for a tinfoil hat, smearing feces on himself.
If the author believes that, grounded or not, then it follows that in that event, the inner circle would be blamed for a massive cover-up of his deterioration, and so the author is trying to make hay preemptively.
It's possible, even likely, that the author is a stupid shit.
Well, that doesn't eliminate anyone.
This is the pinnacle of the Republican effort to increase support for small government by being just fucking unable to govern.
Pinnacle point in the other direction. Also, things can get vastly worse than this.
I think heebie g is on the right track. Here's how I work it out:
1. It's someone currently employed as a senior official in the administration.
2. The author is sufficiently senior that the NYT is, in effect, vouching for his or her credibility and access.
3. It's someone with access to the thinking of the Cabinet from the early days of the administration. So probably someone in the administration from the beginning. This leaves us with a limited number of Cabinet members and top advisors.
4. It's a bureaucrat who is worried about covering his or her ass when the inevitable disaster strikes, and someone who can count on wingnut welfare when that happens. This means it's likely someone who is identified with Trump policy in a way that, say, Nikki Haley and Dan Coats are not.
5. It's someone with some sense of shame, so not one of the public flaks like Conway or Huckabee Sanders.
5. The author seems pretty neocon-oriented, praising McCain by name and taking particular offense at the denigration of NATO and the coziness with the Russians.
So it has to be someone from the military/intelligence/foreign policy side, and not one of the social policy types. Mattis and Kelly are the obvious choices. Pompeo is in the mix, but he has been lying low.
I think the timing of the piece is interesting. It comes out just as Mattis and Kelly put out ludicrous statements with transparently false denials about what they told Woodward. They both have strong motives to craft a narrative in which they behaved embarrassingly in public because they were held hostage by their sense of duty.
I'm going to go with Kelly, because I think this is a pretty dumb move by almost any measure, and I think Mattis is smarter than Kelly. And Kelly is at a stage where he pretty clearly wouldn't mind being fired.
So, in short, heebie is right. (See 39.)
77: CHAOS IS A LADDER!
Popeo hasn't been there fro the beginning, IIRC.
75: Thanks. That's actually very alarming.
Pompeo hasn't been there from the beginning, IIRC.
Depends how you define "there". He was Trump's pick for DCI in January 2017. That would give him a fair amount of access from the start.
CHAOS IS A LADDER!
"Chaos" was also Gen Mattis' personal radio callsign.
Now he was to find that powerlessness had as many grades as power; that defeat could become as vertiginous as victory, and that its depths were bottomless.
I'm going to go on assuming that this is entertaining but won't matter until and unless Trump is actually impeached, removed by the 25th Amendment, or "resigns." The latest White House news (two days ago, it was Woodward's book; yesterday, it was the anonymous editorial) might affect history's judgement on the actors involved and their career prospects (but let's be honest here, they're probably going to continue to have a desk job and a comfortable retirement no matter what) but probably not much else. Republicans are getting what they want from him and will suffer politically if they oppose him, so they'll support him as long as that stuff is true. I can imagine lots of things that would change that calculus, but most of them are very unlikely to happen before next year and even then they're contingent on the election.
I might have enjoyed a discussion similar to this, but the importance of this one seems overestimated, not necessarily here but elsewhere online and IRL. Sorry to be a downer. Frustrating day.
In this context you are smallest of possible downers.
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Timothy Dalton is really fucking good.
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Still rooting for Murder on the Orient Express-style group authorship.
Now that I think about it, in the Jofferey Baratheon administration, if someone on the small council had leaked this letter to the Oldtown Times, certainly that person would have been Littlefinger.
Leaks from the WH are sexy, but Kavanaugh is the one who would let the fauxsisters kill a lot more people.
I'm impressed at what Harris, Booker et al have done so far - the "precedent" email, especially, but also the spying on the Senate committee. Maybe they'll actually take away Collins/Murkowski's plausible deniability?
Yes, but this looks more serious
https://twitter.com/SenatorLeahy/status/1037753416037031937
My primary reaction to both the Woodward blurbs and the op-ed piece has been that they tell us little we didn't already know and I would just as soon not hear any more of these stories, EXCEPT then I imagine how much more miserable they must make Trump to be around, and I think about how much the people who choose to work with him deserve that misery, and then I enjoy the warm feeling these thoughts bring.
This seems to be what 97 is talking about. I think I heard about it IRL before here, which is rare. The office is unusually interested in politics this week. Can't imagine why.
99: I think I have the basics of that from context: Kavanaugh said certain things under oath recently, and Leahy released documents that basically show he was lying, which a Republican-controlled Senate committee had tried to keep under wraps. Sound right? ("Released documents" is it considered leaking if he's doing it openly?) Makes sense but I'm curious about details. It looks like the lies were about whether Kavanaugh knew some important intra-Democratic Party stuff that he wasn't supposed to stuff in the early Bush years, right? If so, then how did he get that back then, and why are we just finding out now?
I'm not following what happened in 99. Do I have to read the tiny font?
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Chloe Zhao's The Rider is a great film. See it if you can.
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On the NYT anonymous op-ed, it's interesting to me that the NPR show On Point this morning really pressed the notion that the revelation that some within the executive branch are actively undermining the president amounts to a "soft coup," which is undemocratic (because Trump was duly elected by the American people, etc.), and it should alarm us.
Huh.
I mean, I saw their argument, of course, but they seemed to be eliding the sorts of things people have been stopping Trump from doing (at least according to the Woodward book). But the argument was that we should let Trump do these nutball things, and if any of them should prove utterly destructive, then we impeach him.
Again, huh.
Then there's Rachel Maddow, who points out that the op-ed could be a hoax, a sting operation by right-wringers to discredit the NYT. Possible!
This gives some background. Leahy has proof that Kavanaugh lied under oath about whether he saw stolen emails.
106: Those people at the NYT might be stupid, but I hope they have a little more sense than that.
But the argument was that we should let Trump do these nutball things, and if any of them should prove utterly destructive, then we impeach him.
Not that specific NPR show, but I thought the thrust of these critiques was if they had further hard evidence he was unfit, they should say so under their own name and make everything public to push for removal or 25th amendment - not wait for him to launch nukes as a sign of his unfitness.
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NMM to Burt Reynolds. Laydeez.
Think I'll go watch Gator
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Yeah, so now the Republicans in the Senate, every single one of them, has to decide between adhering to even the most basic requirement of living in a constitutional Republic, or giving the mad king's cultists what they want. And this isn't a bait and switch, like the health care thing: everyone on the R side actually wants Kavanaugh.
It's a no brainer, imo.
109: Right, that's the general idea.
push for removal or 25th amendment
Apparently 25th amendment removal is virtually impossible - requires 2/3 majority in both House and Senate. The burden for impeachment is, I think (?) actually lesser.
At any rate, the current legislature is not going to do that. The remainder of the On Point show was dedicated to pointing out that Republicans are apparently willing to put up with a dysfunctional president in order to press their agenda through, and, um, isn't that sad. Or something.
-temporarily
Yes, I've been drinking. And I'm a bit broken up...
Barry, I will reveal: in my freshman year at college, during my dorm's Secret Santa exchange, my gift was an issue of Playgirl that featured that centerfold. I somehow didn't feel very responsive to it!
I'll leave the rest unsaid. Uh, those dorm mates weren't really on my wavelength.
104: that does seem to criticize the heart of what the the op-ed was so self-congratulatory about, and seems to be the main thrust of criticism against it, from what I've seen.
If Trump's administration was openly resisting him, I'd be thrilled, and a lot more optimistic about our democracy and willing to extend goodwill to Republicans. If it and the whole Republican Party was packed with true believers, it would be even more scary but scary for different reasons, and I'd have to admit that our democracy was expressing the will of the people as intended. (With a proviso about the whole Electoral College, "lost the popular vote" thing...) But as it is, a minority of Republicans are insane, and a majority of them find it convenient and profitable to use the nutcases, despite the harm to the democratic process, because it's better for them personally or for their party. Covert resistance within the administration is good in some ways, but is bad for democracy and rule of law.
This isn't exactly news to people here, of course, but it's surprising to see a NYT editorial by someone saying, "Yeah, I know it sounds bad, but really, this time the ends really do justify these means, I swear, trust me."
"I know it sounds bad but somebody will stop things before anybody well-off and white gets hurt "
I met him a couple of years ago, and he seemed in really bad shape. It was sad.
116 Not into the chest hair?
121 He was at the Metrograph in NYC a couple of months ago for Q&A after a screening of Deliverance. I saw some pics and he didn't look well. Really wish I could have been there.
And where's Halford these days? I feel like only he could adequately eulogize Reynolds.
I saw Smokey and the Bandit when I was very young and it massively blew my mind. Haven't seen it since, and I'm afraid it'll be tawdry crap if I do.
I'm pretty sure I brought this up here before, but that was a long time ago. And even further back in the misty past, my roommate in college fell for this hoax.
https://www.upi.com/Archives/1981/09/26/A-false-rumor-that-movie-idol-Burt-Reynolds-was/3315370324800/
If you aren't sending armed fanatics into a restaurant threatening to kill, is it even a hoax?
