The Imperial Senate

found online by Raymond

 
From nojo at Stinque:

We didn’t watch. We couldn’t.

There was nothing to be gained from watching. What we could know, we already did — not only about the witnesses, but the circumstances. It was yet another setup, yet another event engineered to provide the appearance of legitimacy without the substance. We couldn’t watch, because we couldn’t participate in yet another sham ritual. We’re done with that.

We couldn’t watch, but we did follow. We followed the responses, followed the reaction, followed the news coverage that accepted the sham as legitimate, which is why we’re done with news coverage, at least political news. We’re too old for this. We know too much.

Here’s what we know: The Senate majority represents 18 percent of Americans.

That is a sham of legitimacy as well.

That number is not expected to improve over the next twenty years, the next generation. An illegitimate Senate approves nominations from an illegitimate President to stack an illegitimate Supreme Court for decades. The consequences will, have been, and are, real.

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Democrats Commit the Mortal Sin Again

found online by Raymond

 
From Green Eagle:

Will they ever learn?

And what is that mortal sin? Despite decades now of painful lessons to the contrary, they still insist on pretending that there is one God damned thing the Republicans ever do that is done honorably or out of a sense of right and wrong.

The case in point today? The one week FBI “investigation” the Republicans announced yesterday. Democrats (and the mainstream press, of course) fell hook line and sinker for the preposterous notion that there is one Republican on the face of the earth who cares about decency; in this case, Senator Jeff Flake, who “negotiated” this one week halt in the process of putting a lying right wing hack with a rage control problem so great that he can’t help display it on national television, on the Supreme Court.

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About Justice #GangBang’s Oath…

found online by Raymond

 
From tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors:

There seems to be a consensus forming that Brett ‘Caveman’ Kavanaugh’s eff’ing relationship with the truth seems to be more of his White Male Privilege and less Friends With Benefits, but you know, FAKE NEWS!1!!

Anyway, we’ve gathered some assorted media blurbs that indicate more than not, he might have perjured himself under oath.

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Trump ‘Personally’ Involved In Stormy Restraining Order This Year

found online by Raymond

 
From Frances Langum:

Good thing Donald Trump has all that Executive Time carved into his schedule. He apparently used some of it THIS YEAR to make sure his fixer, convicted felon Michael Cohen, and his son, Eric Trump (not the one schtupping Kimberly Guilfoyle while his divorce goes through) worked on getting a restraining order on the porn star HE schtupped while his wife was recovering from childbirth.

By the way, did you know Stormy’s book is out today?

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How Do They Sleep at Night?

found online by Raymond

 
From Helen Philpot at Margaret and Helen:

For the love of God, Republicans just elected a man who was videotaped bragging about assault. Are we really surprised they think a calendar showing exercise workouts during the 80’s is proof enough of innocence? If you are a Republican woman, I hope you are paying attention. It doesn’t matter how accomplished, how intelligent or how credible you are. You will be ignored, dismissed and even smeared if you stand between a Republican man and his path to power… regardless of what evidence you have or don’t have. If it happens in their teens, it’s boys will be boys, and if it happens as adults, it’s just locker room talk. Evidently Republicans are just fine electing men who sexually harass and assault women.

Honestly, how do Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins sleep at night?

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Rage Against the Truth!

found online by Raymond

 
From Max’s Dad:

Christine Blasey Ford had lived for 35 years with an incident occurring at age 15 that involved a couple of prep school bullies named Judge and Kavanaugh. How appropriate. We all know what allegedly happened that night in that room. We heard a woman describe it in great detail. We heard Dr Ford be polite and deferring and insistent without raising her voice. Now we all know had Dr Ford shown an inner anger or began weeping over a justifiable reason to do just those things, her demeanor would have called “hysterical” and most old white men would have dismissed her…..Oh wait thats exactly what they did anyway.

Within minutes of coming back from a break, Christine Blasey Ford was dismissed from the memories of 11 white males intent on getting a man onto the Supreme Court who would protect their cult leader forever. Intent on putting into power a man who would own the libs forever. A man who would vote to overturn civil rights laws, keep gerrymandering legal, protect traitors, keep the iron fist of maleness upon womans health and bodies, and with no consequences, accept gifts from his handlers.

The woman was no longer relevant.

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To Trump Supporters, Decency is Divisive

found online by Raymond

 
From North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz:

The prevailing party line to any resistance, is that the people opposing Donald Trump are the problem.
We’re the ones sowing discord and creating division.
We’re fracturing community.
We’re disrupting things.
We’re the dividers.

That this is your spurious charge against me isn’t surprising.

The only problem with your theory—is your President. He’s the loudest argument opposing you.

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Your Optics Aren’t True From Every Angle

found online by Raymond

 
From Strangely Blogged:

I don’t do politics on Facebook. I’m on the verge of deleting my profile for all the bullshit. But I do have this blog–and for what it is worth, I know the exact white women who might even have a #MeToo story to tell, and are not even privileged, and never will be, and still and all sympathize, not with Dr. Ford, but with the poor, put-upon, beleaguered, President of these United States and the Majority Leader in the Senate and of course, this pro-life dude, with a family and going to church and all that.

It is difficult for me to actually see what they see when they look at Brett Kavanaugh. I see a dude who came off during his response to Dr. Ford’s testimony like a guy who had a bad reaction to being named second runner-up in a Bill O’Reilly look-alike contest. He was partisan, and aggressively so. He doubled down on the persona that brought his privileged ass to the very hearing he was at–the anti-left wing culture warrior who tried it with the Clintons. He called the Clintons out by name in his opening statement as if and because it was effective partisan rhetoric, but it in fact had not one thing to do with who he was before Clinton was elected. And his response suggested to me the state of mind he had when he was a jackass teenage son: it was still who he was today–only now bigger and meaner.

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Politics, Not Evidence, Will Determine Kavanaugh Vote

found online by Raymond

 
From Jonathan Bernstein:

None of this is likely to change the eventual outcome. Four senators remain undecided — Republicans Murkowski and Susan Collins of Maine, and Democrats Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota – and political incentives, not the investigation, are likely to guide their choices. Every other senator has announced they will vote along party lines in the chamber, which has 51 Republicans and 49 Democrats.

It’s worth noting that if Kavanaugh goes down there is still plenty of time for a replacement to be named and confirmed before the end of this Congress. There is no scenario in which Republicans wind up losing control over this Supreme Court seat. The open question is whether it’s Kavanaugh or some other very conservative Republican who winds up getting confirmed.

Eventually, the four undecided senators will have to choose, and it’s not impossible that a few extra days could matter.

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Trump Says He and Kim Jong Un ‘Fell in Love’

found online by Raymond

 
From Tommy Christopher:

Trump’s admiration for murderous dictators is well-known — but he took that to a shocking new level Saturday night when he told a rally crowd that he and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un “fell in love” with each other.

At a so-called “Make America Great Again” rally in Wheeling, West Virginia, Trump devoted a portion of his speech to bragging about his diplomacy with North Korea.

Trump claimed that his casual threats of starting a nuclear war, and the dangerously escalating rhetoric between Trump and Kim that led up to their disastrous summit, were just examples of the two men being “tough.”

“And then we fell in love, okay?” Trump told the crowd. “No, really. He wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”

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