Daily Check-In 09/21/2018

Daily Check-In

Friday, September 21, 2018

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION

The New York Times article on Friday was a fucking hit piece, designed to give a reason to get rid of Rod Rosenstein, and it might work.  The Fox News crowd has been calling for his firing ever since the story came out, and it looks like Monday will be the day we find out if he’s fired, resigned, or gave everyone a big one finger salute.

They’ve been sitting on this story for a while, and could have dropped it at any time.  Why now?  My guess is to draw attention from the sexual assault accusation against Brett Kavanaugh.

Wait, I have that wrong.  I meant to say ACCUSATIONS.  In the plural tense.  As in more than one.  See the really big section in the middle of this article for details.

This tells us how important Kavanaugh is to Trump’s plans.  Trump could have picked any one of ten other judges from Heritage Foundation petri dish and he would have sailed through confirmation with nary a blink.  Instead, Trump picked the only one that argued that a President is above the law, that refuses to recuse himself from any matters involving Trump, and is compromised more ways than a rickety old bridge.  He needs Kavanaugh, and is willing to nuke his Presidency to do it.

I would like to point out something, though.  This has been wargamed by Mueller’s team.  They didn’t just plan on Rod getting fired someday, they planned FOR it.  Daily Check-In 11/06/2017 was the first mention of the Dead Man’s Switch, but Daily Check-In 04/03/2018 showed that this was in place since the beginning.  If Mueller is fired or if the SCO is disbanded, the Senior Assistant Special Counselor has full authority to bring all charges forward.  And there’s about a half dozen Senior Assistant Special Counselors.

K.T. McFarland, who briefly served as Flynn’s deputy, has now said that he may have been referring to sanctions when they spoke in late December 2016 after Flynn’s calls with Russia’s ambassador to the United States, these people said.

When FBI agents first visited her at her Long Island home in the summer of 2017, McFarland denied ever talking to Flynn about any discussion of sanctions between him and the ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, in December 2016 during the presidential transition.

For a time, investigators saw her answers as “inconsistent,” putting her in legal peril as the FBI tried to determine if she had lied to them.

 

 

COHEN, NEW YORK, AND THE OTHER LAWSUITS

 

WOODWARD AND THE ANONYMOUS OP-ED

 

TRUMP THE RUSSIAN ASSET

 

TRAITOR TOTS

 

FIGHTING BACK

 

IMMIGRATION

 

COLD WAR 2.0

 

#NEVERAGAIN

 

FIXING THE INTERNET

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

 

SCOTUS & #METOO

WASHINGTON—Vehemently defending the Supreme Court nominee against recent allegations of sexual assault, GOP officials declared Wednesday that Brett Kavanaugh shouldn’t be held accountable for something he did as a white teenager. “We’re talking about something that occurred when Mr. Kavanaugh was a mere 17-year-old Caucasian,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), adding that it was ridiculous to allow a single incident that happened when Kavanaugh was in an elite and mostly white high school ruin the career of such an accomplished white person. “I expect most of my colleagues here in the Senate remember what it’s like to be a young white man and make mistakes. The important thing is that we learn from those mistakes and grow up to be responsible white adults. It’s shameful that my Democratic colleagues feel the need to sully Judge Kavanaugh’s reputation when they, too, surely understand that boys of European descent will be boys of European descent.” McConnell went on to state that the assault would hardly even be noteworthy had the victim not been a 15-year-old white girl.

This is all satire, but sadly accurate.  As I said on Daily Check-In 09/18/18, it’s not just about a sexual assault, but race plays a part here, too.  The same old white men that are bending over backwards to defend

Aaaand…. that’s the Republican Party losing women.

Alyssa Milano on Friday announced on Twitter that she was sexually assaulted, but didn’t report it right away, in response to Trump’s dipshit question “Why didn’t she go to the cops if it was so bad?”  On her thread, many women, and some men too, explained why they didn’t report their sexual assaults to the police.  The responses were… sobering.

I read through dozens of them, and they left me both pissed off and sad.  Pissed off this this was so pervasive, and sad that many of the responses included the loved ones of the victims making matters worse.

When people talk about Rape Culture, this is it in a nutshell.

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I have known men of great character from Georgetown Prep. My son is named after one, another is my daughter’s Godfather. I would trust those men with my life. 1/ @ChuckGrassley@SenFeinstein@JohnCornyn@SenWhitehouse@SenSasse@SenAmyKlobuchar@JeffFlake@SenKamalaHarris

A man either has character or he doesn’t. When one has character, power and wealth cannot diminish that. When one lacks character, power and wealth amplify the damage he leaves in his wake. 2/ @senorrinhatch@SenBooker@SenTedCruz@ChrisCoons@SenThomTillis@SenBlumenthal

I was sexually assaulted in the mid-80’s at the home of one of Kavanaugh’s schoolmates. The host of that party added his name to this letter to the Judiciary Committee attesting to Kavanaugh’s character. https://bit.ly/2MOJ1gH 3/ #metoo@LindseyGrahamSC@SenatorDurbin

This week has been a difficult one for women like me who are forced to relive the spectre of being assaulted by one young man as another watches the door. The pain is compounded by the crucification of Kavanaugh’s accuser in the media, the twittersphere and the U.S. Senate. 4/

Decades ago, when we were sexually assaulted, we didn’t report it. “Date rape” was barely entering the lexicon. We thought rape and assault were things that happened in parking garages or dark alleys. We didn’t know how to quantify these actions by men in our own peer groups. 5/

When we were assaulted, we blamed ourselves for drinking excessively or being in the wrong place or trusting the wrong person. We were humiliated and we saw no examples of recourse. We know better now. We want our sons and daughters to know better. 6/ @MikeCrapo@SenatorLeahy

Here’s the deal about character: if you are not rapey, you don’t sexually assault women. If you are, you might. Can you grow out of being rapey? I hope so. I’d like to believe in redemption. But I do think a rapey past should disqualify you from a seat on the Supreme Court. 7/

I have seen the signatures of my schoolmates saying Kavanaugh never treated them with disrespect. Perhaps they don’t realize that some men in their social circles did not treat the women on the periphery of those circles with the same reverence as the ones in the center. /8

I see myself in Dr. Blasey because of our shared experiences. I don’t know if Kavanaugh disrespected women in his youth. I do know that his documented values suggest he does not respect their agency now. I am clearly biased. 9/ #metoo#ibelieveher

I am biased. The Senate Judiciary Committee is also biased. That is why Blasey and Kavanaugh should be afforded a thorough, nonpartisan investigation, not a rushed political side-show. 10/ @SenMikeLee@maziehirono@SenatorCollins@SenJohnKennedy

To our elected representatives: – rape is non-partisan – sexual assault survivors are watching you – our children are watching you. Are you sure that rape is the hill you want to die on? 11/ #angrywomenvote

To the man who assaulted me in the basement of that house decades ago: I learned this week that there is no statute of limitations for felony sexual assault in Montgomery County, MD. I sincerely hope your nights will be as sleepless as mine as I consider my next steps. /end

 

 

Oh shit.  Byline by Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer.

As Senate Republicans press for a swift vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, Senate Democrats are investigating a new allegation of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh. The claim dates to the 1983-84 academic school year, when Kavanaugh was a freshman at Yale University. The offices of at least four Democratic senators have received information about the allegation, and at least two have begun investigating it. Senior Republican staffers also learned of the allegation last week and, in conversations with The New Yorker, expressed concern about its potential impact on Kavanaugh’s nomination. Soon after, Senate Republicans issued renewed calls to accelerate the timing of a committee vote. The Democratic Senate offices reviewing the allegations believe that they merit further investigation. “This is another serious, credible, and disturbing allegation against Brett Kavanaugh. It should be fully investigated,” Senator Mazie Hirono, of Hawaii, said. An aide in one of the other Senate offices added, “These allegations seem credible, and we’re taking them very seriously. If established, they’re clearly disqualifying.”

The woman at the center of the story, Deborah Ramirez, who is fifty-three, attended Yale with Kavanaugh, where she studied sociology and psychology. Later, she spent years working for an organization that supports victims of domestic violence. The New Yorker contacted Ramirez after learning of her possible involvement in an incident involving Kavanaugh. The allegation was conveyed to Democratic senators by a civil-rights lawyer. For Ramirez, the sudden attention has been unwelcome, and prompted difficult choices. She was at first hesitant to speak publicly, partly because her memories contained gaps because she had been drinking at the time of the alleged incident. In her initial conversations with The New Yorker, she was reluctant to characterize Kavanaugh’s role in the alleged incident with certainty. After six days of carefully assessing her memories and consulting with her attorney, Ramirez said that she felt confident enough of her recollections to say that she remembers Kavanaugh had exposed himself at a drunken dormitory party, thrust his penis in her face, and caused her to touch it without her consent as she pushed him away. Ramirez is now calling for the F.B.I. to investigate Kavanaugh’s role in the incident. “I would think an F.B.I. investigation would be warranted,” she said.

…

Ramirez said that, when both she and Kavanaugh were freshmen at Yale, she was invited by a friend on the women’s soccer team to a dorm-room party. She recalled that the party took place in a suite at Lawrance Hall, in the part of Yale known as Old Campus, and that a small group of students decided to play a drinking game together. “We were sitting in a circle,” she said. “People would pick who drank.” Ramirez was chosen repeatedly, she said, and quickly became inebriated. At one point, she said, a male student pointed a gag plastic penis in her direction. Later, she said, she was on the floor, foggy and slurring her words, as that male student and another stood nearby. (Ramirez identified the two male onlookers, but, at her request, The New Yorker is not naming them.)

A third male student then exposed himself to her. “I remember a penis being in front of my face,” she said. “I knew that’s not what I wanted, even in that state of mind.” She recalled remarking, “That’s not a real penis,” and the other students laughing at her confusion and taunting her, one encouraging her to “kiss it.” She said that she pushed the person away, touching it in the process. Ramirez, who was raised a devout Catholic in Connecticut, said that she was shaken. “I wasn’t going to touch a penis until I was married,” she said. “I was embarrassed and ashamed and humiliated.” She remembers Kavanaugh standing to her right and laughing, pulling up his pants. “Brett was laughing,” she said. “I can still see his face, and his hips coming forward, like when you pull up your pants.” She recalled another male student shouting about the incident. “Somebody yelled down the hall, ‘Brett Kavanaugh just put his penis in Debbie’s face,’ ” she said. “It was his full name. I don’t think it was just ‘Brett.’ And I remember hearing and being mortified that this was out there.”

 

Oh, and this came in around the same time…

Want to know why the Senate Republicans have such a hard-on for getting this confirmation through?  It’s the same reason that they have a letter with 65 women supporting Kavanaugh ready to release minutes after Dr. Ford’s accusations came out.  It’s also the same reason why everyone in the Republican Party told Trump it was a bad idea to pick Brett Kavanaugh: Dr. Ford wasn’t the only one.  Far from the only one.

And this one took place when Kavanaugh was an adult, in college.  Remember when Senator Hirono from Hawaii asked him if he was ever accused of sexual harassment or assault as an adult, and he said no while under oath?  Yeah, this makes that statement Perjury.  Or lying to the Senate under oath.  Both of those are felonies.

This week coming up is going to be nuts.

 

TRADE WAR AND ECONOMY

 

GOP: THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

 

ENVIRONMENT & SCIENCE

 

ELECTION 2018

 

IN OTHER NEWS…

 

RUMOR MILL

I’m not gonna name names because I’m not a complete asshole, but let me just say: I’ve looked into some of the women who signed the “Kavanaugh didn’t assault US” letter and I found I don’t quite trust their judgement on what a man of integrity really is like. Why not? Well…

One’s husband is a known adulterer-a news article about his infidelity said his dalliances *while he was an elected official* would “make Anthony Weiner blush.” That same dude owns a rehab facility that was put under serious review by the state it’s in for assaulting CHILDREN in their care with needles. They profit off the opioid crisis, just FYI. One belongs to a family with a major commercial interest in “conservative” propaganda, aka for-profit “news.” Another has a sibling directly linked to AMI, as in:  John Schindler link about AMI, owners of National Enquirer

So, darling provokunts and traitortwats, just want you to know…I’m still working my way through the list. And I’m REAAAALLY REAAAALLY GOOD AT THIS STUFF. And you, quite clearly, suck at anticipating the research skills of housewives you offend with your blatant misogyny.

P.S. more on AMI from Mob Oracle

Link to Lincoln’s Bible thread on AMI being funded by Mob Money

 

That’s it for the weekend.  Prepare for the shitstorm.  Get your marching boots ready, it’s about to go down.

This is one of my longer posts, but dammit, too many things happened, and as much as I’d like to say “screw it, I need a night off,” I can’t be that selfish.  I feel like we are entering into a historic time in the world, and we need to know years from now what happened this week.

Rumors floated around for a long time that something major was going to break in late September.  I know, I hate those vague warnings too.  They sound like half-assed prophets claiming that the world will end next Thursday, then on Friday will either rejoice at the world being saved, or make a new prediction for a few days later.  But late September has been pretty consistent.  I’m not sure what’s going to happen, but I can’t shake this feeling that something big is going to happen, but the shape is still nebulous.

I’d say screw it and let’s get drunk, but this is one of those times I want to remember what’s going on.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

Published by noneofthisisnormal

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2 thoughts on “Daily Check-In 09/21/2018”

  1. Pingback: Daily Check-In 09/24/2018 – None of this is Normal
  2. Pingback: Daily Check-In 11/13/2018 – None of this is Normal

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