We are all Slave now.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

BK was McGahn's pick.

And the 1904 World's Fair was in St. Louis, but I was talking about the more recent decision by Republican Senators to vote to confirm him *after* it became clear that he was a liar with an injudicious temperament and a history of treating women poorly. I've only said this about three times. If you don't have a response, you don't have to respond.

The Senate was trying to create two broader issues:

If Republican Senators -- not the Senate, but Republican Senators -- try to distract you by saying something dumb, you are under no "obligation," to use your word, to go along with it.

Nonsense. The Democrats sprung a surprise challenge on a nominee and happily engaged in questioning him about his HS drinking. If they'd actually given a shit about Ford's real allegation, they'd have crossed BK relentlessly on what happened in that room, and that only. Instead, they were asking him about Devil's Triangle and how much he drank. The Democrats tried to convict by circumstantial evidence and make BK look like an entitled drunk because they suspected they would not be able to sway the GOP on Ford's testimony alone. This was a huge error, as everybody found her credible, and no one found any of the circumstantial crap elicited from Whitehouse, Klobuchar, and Booker convincing of anything. The only thing positive one can say of any of the Democratic cross examination was it was better than Lindsey Graham's ludicrous and pathetic performance.

This is such horseshit. You said, "it's not a crime to be a douchebag." To which I said, the issue is not whether Kavanaugh committed a crime, but whether he should be on the Court. To which your response is, no, the real issue is how the Democratic Senators used their five-minutes to question him? Jesus Christ on a shingle.

You think the GOP did that? They're not smart enough to have done so. That was all the media, and the media is in a permanent feedback loop with the Democratic party. Except for Fox, which is in a permanent feedback loop with the GOP.

The use of the passive tense was all your own.

At the idea that the media is a permanent feedback loop with the Democratic Party, after more than two years in which Trump has utterly dominated coverage, to the point that media just runs his appearances live -- something that, you might not have noticed, doesn't happen for members of the Democratic Party -- that has to rank among the blithest, most ignorant things you have said here in a long time. Congratulations -- it's a very high bar, but you hit it!

Yes, it was absolutely the Democratic Party which wanted to take the focus off of the narrow questions of whether Kavanaugh tried to rape Dr. Blasey Ford and lied about it repeatedly and whether that should have disqualified him from the Court. That makes total and complete sense. The media wouldn't have reported on other issues *at all* but were powerless to resist Chuck Schumer's directives. Brilliant.

You've added croutons. I'm still grasping what point is buried beneath the arugula.

Grasping is a fair choice of words.

Schumer learned of the letter weeks ago and brought it to no one's attention.

Yes, respecting Dr. Blasey Ford's wishes not to have her life ruined.

He orchestrated its later release. Of course no one will ever know how. That's how these things work. (You can tell me my source sucks, but this is what I heard.)

"That's how these things work." So worldly and ignorant all at once. Someone connected with Senate Democrats learned about it via Feinstein and leaked it, and someone told you is was Schumer. Whatever.

Suppose that you're right. So what? It's a pointless bit of power worship, calling Schumer out for misplaying a hand that he *never* could have won. Because at the end of the day, Susan Collins and Jeff Flake and every other Republican Senator besides Lisa Murkowski heard a credible witness credibly explain that Kavanaugh tried to rape her, heard Kavanaugh lie about it indignantly, and decided that were OK with that. That was their choice -- not Schumer's and not Harry Reid's. Democrats did not have the votes to stop the Republicans from doing something that they wanted to do, and in this case they wanted to put a lying jackass with a history of sexual abuse on the Supreme Court.