“For the first time I see myself voting for Trump in 2020. And it has a lot to do with Kavanaugh. He’s not the only reason, but he’s definitely the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
Sunday, October 7, 2018
When you've lost Erick Erickson as a never-Trumper....
Nationally syndicated conservative influencer Erick Erickson told Secrets:
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37 comments:
Funny. declaring victory for a conservative who will vote for trump.....another huge yawn...'
BTW....41% is the number......
"I can't spare this man ---- he fights!!"
A. Lincoln
plyDelete
commieOctober 7, 2018 at 8:52 AM
California has 52 electoral votes Wyoming 3. (the minimum)
Which makes their 2 senate votes disproportionate to the total....Oh well.... Any one run the total of the poplulations of yes vote senators to no???? I have....any one want the number????? It won't bother you because you won bigly.....!!!!! LOL
Reply
KDOctober 7, 2018 at 8:58 AM
Go ahead. I'd like to see them."
Failed to answer. Noted.
Former Yale law school dean: Kavanaugh's confirmation is an 'American tragedy'
Robert Post, the former dean of Yale Law School, minced no words in excoriating Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court in an op-ed published in Politico on Saturday.
Kavanaugh, who graduated from the law school in 1990, had “stoked the fires of partisan rage and male entitlement,” Post wrote of the judge’s behavior following multiple allegations of sexual misconduct. Kavanaugh will “undermine the [Supreme Court’s] claim to legitimacy,” Post said, calling the judge’s confirmation “an American tragedy.”
Kavanaugh was confirmed by the Senate on Saturday afternoon and quickly sworn in as a justice on the nation’s highest court.
“He had apparently concluded that the only way he could rally Republican support was by painting himself as the victim of a political hit job,” Post said of Kavanaugh and the way the judge had attempted to defend himself from the accusations of sexual assault and harassment. “He therefore offered a witches’ brew of vicious unfounded charges, alleging that Democratic members of the Senate Judicial Committee were pursuing a vendetta on behalf of the Clintons. If we expect judges to reach conclusions based solely on reliable evidence, Kavanaugh’s savage and bitter attack demonstrated exactly the opposite sensibility.”
Post, who described Kavanaugh as a “casual acquaintance” whom he’d known for a decade, said he’d been “shell-shocked” by the judge’s behavior. “This was not the Brett Kavanaugh I thought I knew,” he wrote. “Having come so close to confirmation, Kavanaugh apparently cared more about his promotion than about preserving the dignity of the Supreme Court to which he aspired to join.”
Post, a Sterling Professor of Law at Yale Law School who specializes in constitutional law, went on to lambast the senators who voted for Kavanaugh as caring “more about controlling” the court than the institution’s legitimacy.
“There will be hell to pay,” he warned.
Referring to a Wall Street Journal editorial penned last week by Kavanaugh in which the judge admitted to having been, perhaps, “too emotional at times” during his hearing before the Senate Judicial Committee and in which he vowed to be “an independent and impartial” judge, Post stressed that Kavanaugh “cannot have it both ways.”
“He cannot gain confirmation by unleashing partisan fury while simultaneously claiming that he possesses a judicial and impartial temperament,” said Post.
Kavanaugh, Post continued, will therefore “join the court as the black-robed embodiment of raw partisan power inconsistent with any ideal of an impartial judiciary.”
“His very presence will undermine the court’s claim to legitimacy; it will damage the nation’s commitment to the rule of law. It will be an American tragedy,” Post concluded.
Susan Collins slams Trump: He ‘was not respectful’ to Dr. Christine Blasey Ford
Senator Susan Collins called President Trump out for not being respectful to Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who accused Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault when they were in high school.
During CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, host Dana Bash asked Collins about Trump’s public comments regarding Dr. Ford, and the Republican lawmaker from Maine said, “I felt that the president was not respectful to Dr. Ford.”
Collins added: “I have always been respectful toward her. I’m the one who pushed for a hearing where she could, once her identity was compromised, which was a terrible thing and not what she wanted. But once that happened, and she was willing to come forward, I said she should be given a hearing.”
When Bash asked if the issue was Trump’s tone, Collins said, “It was his tone, but also, he’s not involved in the advice and consent a constitutional duty. So I believe he should have said nothing.”
Trump had been criticized for seeming to mock Dr. Ford during a rally in Mississippi.
NBC News described his “one-man reenactment of Ford’s appearance before the Judiciary Committee” as “extended ridicule.”
__________________
WOMEN'S REVENGE WILL COME
McConnell Fact-Checked on Merrick Garland
Must-watch: John Dickerson fact-checks Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Fact the Nation on his claim of a historical precedent for blocking Merrick Garland’s appointment to the Supreme Court during the 2016 presidential election.
McConnell got very angry when Dickerson pointed out that President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican, named William Brennan to the court in 1956 by recess appointment just before that year’s presidential election. Brennan began serving immediately, and was formally nominated and confirmed the next year.
__________________
Quote of the Day
“These things always blow over.”
— Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), quoted by Time, on how women will view the Republican Party after the Senate’s controversial confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
________________
This one may blow him over.
If we expect judges to reach conclusions based solely on reliable evidence,
And there’s rub. Stupid old man he wasn’t a judge at that show trial he was the accused based on no reliable evidence
Ficking idiot
Jane is the voice of socialist woman.
Roger, how are your Broncos doing today?
HOW A ONCE HALF WAY DECENTLY PRINCIPLED SENATOR WENT ON TO BECOME A TRUMPIAN LAP DOG
Lindsey Graham Is the Saddest Story in Washington
His fight for Brett Kavanaugh completed his transformation into Donald Trump’s slobbering manservant.
Frank Bruni
The battle over Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court was an especially ugly episode of a reality-show presidency that degrades almost everyone swept up in it, and many characters stagger away from it looking worse than ever.
That’s Senator Lindsey Graham you see at the head of the pack. That’s Graham you hear talking and talking and talking some more, in committee rooms and on stages and before the television cameras that he rushes to the way a toddler chases soap bubbles. His words are whichever ones guarantee a major role and a powerful patron, which means that these days he sounds like a more articulate echo of his golfing buddy: Donald Trump.
That wouldn’t, by itself, be cause to dwell on him. Washington is lousy with lackeys, and not even the maddest of kings thins their ranks.
But Graham is special. He really is. I can’t think of another Republican whose journey from anti-Trump outrage to pro-Trump obsequiousness was quite so illogical or half as sad, and his conduct during the war over Kavanaugh completed it. For the president he fought overtime, he fought nasty and he fought without nuance.
In so doing, he distilled our rotten politics — its transactional nature, its tribal fury, its hysterical pitch — as neatly as anybody in the current Congress does.
Has a diva at La Scala ever delivered an aria as overwrought as the one that Graham performed on the day when both Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee? I doubt it.
“Boy, you all want power,” Graham, who serves on the committee, railed at his Democratic colleagues, accusing them of ginning up accusations against Kavanaugh. “God, I hope you never get it.”
Because Graham and his fellow Republicans exercise it so much more responsibly?
Because they’re so principled themselves?
I guess that’s why they
minimize Russian interference in our elections;
indulge Trump’s bromances with Vladimir Putin,
\Rodrigo Duterte
and Kim Jong-un;
and smile upon his
mendacity,
misogyny,
racism
and unchecked greed.
They’re modeling integrity in government.
“You want this seat?” Graham said to them. “I hope you never get it.” No, Senator Graham, you do more than hope. You cheat. Let me introduce you to Merrick Garland, a figure far less partisan than Kavanaugh and thus much more deserving of a seat on the highest court in the land. You and your Republican colleagues in the Senate, every bit as desirous of power as Democrats are, crushed him, and the fact that it didn’t involve an attack on his reputation doesn’t diminish its ruthlessness.
“This is not a job interview,” Graham told Kavanaugh, soothing him. “This is hell.”
Interesting word choice. I remember when Graham used “hell” in a different context. This was back in December 2015. He was campaigning vainly for the Republican presidential nomination, saw Trump clearly and didn’t suck up to him.
“You know how you make America great again?” Graham said then.
“Tell Donald Trump to go to hell.”
“If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed,” he tweeted, apparently referring to the Republican Party’s prospects in 2016. “And we will deserve it.”
He called Trump the “world’s biggest jackass.”
He said that choosing between Trump and Senator Ted Cruz, who survived much deeper into the party’s 2016 presidential primary than Graham did, was like deciding whether to be shot or poisoned.
Trump returned these kindnesses by publicly divulging Graham’s mobile phone number and forcing him to get a new one. [A CHILDISH TRUMPISM]
[THE ARTICLE CONTINUES WITH MORE DISGUSTING FACTS]
Trump has provided the Republican Party a much needed spine.
One of the Best parts of the Trump Tax cuts has yet to realized.
The massive Standard Deduction Upgrade.
Trump - more WINNING
Poll of the week: A new Fox News poll gives Republican Rep. Kevin Cramer a 53% to 41% lead over Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp in the North Dakota Senate race.
This poll is in-line with another recent poll from the race that also found Cramer with a double-digit advantage."
"Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz leads Democrat challenger Beto O’Rourke 50 to 44 in a CBS YouGov poll conducted October 2-5." Ok
The Trump/Kavanaugh Bounce.
Failed to answer. Noted.
Put answer on other thread and noted you failed to read it.....oh we'll
The massive Standard Deduction Upgrade.
And those losing massive mortgage deductions in high price states....
Dopie now worried about the wealthy.
Most noteworthy thing about the kavanaugh confirmation is that he was carried across the finish line by moderates. Graham, Collins, Manchin.Grassley.
Dems lost a whole lot of moderates with their historically had behavior.
“First they came for the Socialist, and I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist.Then they came for the Trade Unionist and I did not speak out because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I Did not speak out for because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.”
Martin Niemoller spoke out during the early postwar period of Nazi Germany.
They’re still coming for our Black and Brown people. Systemic Racism impacts us all. But if you are of the privileged few who are not directly impacted by it so you don’t “get it” you are part of the problem as well. They’re still coming for the LGBTQ community! They’re still coming for those of us who live in poverty and with limited resources in public education. They’re still after us, women; especially women of color. Wake up! Your children are watching. You can’t afford to hide anymore.
Then they came for Kavanaugh, but they were defeated.
Major hysteria drama queent alert!!
I kid you not. A couple of acdemics took Mien Kamph, translate it to English and everywhere the term Jew to Judisim appeared it was substituted with "white privalage" and they turned it into a grevience-study acdemic journal.
They published it..
So t
Are the people coming for the black and brown the same ones getting them all those manufacturing jobs?
Tom Nichols
Tom Nichols is a professor at the U.S. Naval War College
Unlike Senator Susan Collins, who took pages upon pages of text on national television to tell us something we already knew, I will cut right to the chase: I am out of the Republican Party.
I will also acknowledge right away what I assume will be the reaction of most of the remaining members of the GOP, ranging from “Good riddance” to “You were never a real Republican,” along with a smattering of “Who are you, anyway?”
Those Republicans will have a point. I am not a prominent Republican nor do I play a major role in Republican politics. What I write here are my views alone. I joined the party in the twilight of Jimmy Carter’s administration, cut my teeth in politics as an aide to a working class, Catholic Democrat in the Massachusetts House, and later served for a year on the personal staff of a senior Republican U.S. senator. Not exactly the profile of a conservative warrior.
I even quit the party once before, briefly, during what I thought was the bottom for the GOP: the 2012 primaries. I didn’t want to be associated with a party that took Newt Gingrich seriously as presidential timber, or with people whose callousness managed to shock even Ron Paul. It was an estrangement, not a break, and I came back when the danger of a Trump victory loomed. I was too late, but as a moderate conservative (among the few left), the pre-2016 GOP was the only party I could call home.
Small things sometimes matter, and Collins is among the smallest of things in the political world. And yet, she helped me finally to accept what I had been denying. Her speech on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh convinced me that the Republican Party now exists for one reason, and one reason only: for the exercise of raw political power, and not even for ends I would otherwise applaud or even support.
I have written on social media and elsewhere how I feel about Kavanaugh’s nomination. I initially viewed his nomination positively, as a standard GOP judicial appointment; then grew concerned about whether he should continue on as a nominee with the accusations against him; and finally, was appalled by his behavior in front of the Senate.
It was Collins, however, who made me realize that there would be no moderates to lead conservatives out of the rubble of the Trump era. Senator Jeff Flake is retiring and took a pass, and with all due respect to Senator Lisa Murkowski—who at least admitted that her “no” vote on cloture meant “no” rather than drag out the drama—she will not be the focus of a rejuvenated party.
When Collins spoke, she took the floor of the Senate to calm an anxious and divided nation by giving us all an extended soliloquy on… the severability of a clause.
The severability of a clause? Seriously?
It took almost half an hour before Collins got to the accusations against Kavanaugh, but the rest of what she said was irrelevant. She had clearly made up her mind weeks earlier, and she completely ignored Kavanaugh’s volcanic and bizarre performance in front of the Senate.
As an aside, let me say that I have no love for the Democratic Party, which is torn between totalitarian instincts on one side and complete political malpractice on the other. As a newly minted independent, I will vote for Democrats and Republicans I think are decent and well-meaning people; if I move back home to Massachusetts, I could cast a ballot for Republican Governor Charlie Baker and Democratic Representative Joe Kennedy and not think twice about it.
But during the Kavanaugh dumpster fire, the performance of the Democratic Party—with some honorable exceptions like Senators Chris Coons, Sheldon Whitehouse, and Amy Klobuchar—was execrable. From the moment they leaked the Ford letter, they were a Keystone Kops operation, with Hawaii’s Senator Mazie Hirono willing to wave away the Constitution and get right to a presumption of guilt, and Senator Dianne Feinstein looking incompetent and outflanked instead of like the ranking member of one of the most important committees in America.
The Republicans, however, have now eclipsed the Democrats as a threat to the rule of law and to the constitutional norms of American society. They have become all about winning. Winning means not losing, and so instead of acting like a co-equal branch of government responsible for advice and consent, congressional Republicans now act like a parliamentary party facing the constant threat of a vote of no-confidence.
And most important, on the rule of law, congressional Republicans have utterly collapsed. They have sold their souls, purely at Trump’s behest, living in fear of the dreaded primary challenges that would take them away from the Forbidden City and send them back home to the provinces. Yes, an anti-constitutional senator like Hirono is unnerving, but she’s a piker next to her Republican colleagues, who have completely reversed themselves on everything from the limits of executive power to the independence of the judiciary, all to serve their leader in a way that would make the most devoted cult follower of Kim Jong Un blush.
Maybe it’s me. I’m not a Republican anymore, but am I still a conservative? Limited government: check. Strong national defense: check. Respect for tradition and deep distrust of sudden, dramatic change: check. Belief that people spend their money more wisely than government? That America is an exceptional nation with a global mission? That we are, in fact, a shining city on a hill and an example to others? Check, check, check.
But I can’t deny that I’ve strayed from the party. I believe abortion should remain legal. I am against the death penalty in all its forms outside of killing in war. I don’t think what’s good for massive corporations is always good for America. In foreign affairs, I am an institutionalist, a supporter of working through international bodies and agreements. I think our defense budget is too big, too centered on expensive toys, and that we are still too entranced by nuclear weapons.
I believe in the importance of diversity and toleration. I would like a shorter tax code. I would also like people to exhibit some public decorum and keep their shoes on in public.
Does this make me a liberal? No. I do not believe that human nature is malleable clay to be reshaped by wise government policy. Many of my views, which flow from that basic conservative idea, are not welcome in a Democratic tribe in the grip of the madness of identity politics.
But whatever my concerns about liberals, the true authoritarian muscle is now being flexed by the GOP, in a kind of buzzy, steroidal McCarthyism that lacks even anti-communism as a central organizing principle. The Republican Party, which controls all three branches of government and yet is addicted to whining about its own victimhood, is now the party of situational ethics and moral relativism in the name of winning at all costs.
So, I’m out. The Trumpers and the hucksters and the consultants and the hangers-on, like a colony of bees who exist only to sting and die, have swarmed together in a dangerous but suicidal cloud, and when that mindless hive finally extinguishes itself in a blaze of venom, there will be nothing left.
I’m a divorced man who is remarried. But love, in some ways, is easier than politics. I spent nearly 40 years as a Republican, a relationship that began when I joined a revitalized GOP that saw itself not as a victim, but as the vehicle for lifting America out of the wreckage of the 1970s, defeating the Soviet Union, and extending human freedom at home and abroad. I stayed during the turbulence of the Tea Party tomfoolery. I moved out briefly during the abusive 2012 primaries. But now I’m filing for divorce, and I am taking nothing with me when I go.
I used to think that Trump would cause Scott to step away from the Republican party given his libertarian views on many issues.
But he bought in and jumped on the Trump bandwagon.
Yeah, he would be happier as a Democrat.
It's a mystery why he joined the GOP in the first place. It's pretty clear he has absolute contempt for the rank and file GOP voter.
Here is another Republican who dares to differ with the President.
WORLD
COLIN POWELL SAYS DONALD TRUMP HAS TURNED AMERICA FROM 'WE THE PEOPLE' TO 'ME THE PRESIDENT'
Colin Powell
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said he doubts President Donald Trump can ever be a "moral leader" and has turned "We the People" into "Me the President."
PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES | OLIVIER DOULIERY / STRINGER
Former U.S. Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Madeleine Albright both questioned the dramatic negative effects the Trump administration has had on the United States and its people Sunday.
Speaking with CNN's Fareed Zakaria Sunday, Powell criticized Trump's attacks on the news media, close U.S. allies and even its own citizens. Powell lamented his three favorite words in the U.S. Constitution have long been "we the people," but Trump's short time in office has morphed the famous Founding Fathers line into "me the President."
“You see things that should not be happening,” Powell told CNN's Zakaria. “How can a president of the United States get up and say that the media is the enemy of Americans? Hasn’t he read the First Amendment? You are not supposed to like everything the press says, or what anyone says…that’s why we have a First Amendment, to protect that kind of speech.”
Powell reitarated why he became a voice against a Trump presidency during the 2016 campaigns.
“I hope the president can come to the realization that he should really stop insulting people,” Powell continued. “I used this two years ago when I said I could not vote for him in the 2016 election. Why? He insulted everybody. He insulted African-Americans, he insulted women, he insulted immigrants. He insulted our best friends around the world -- all of his fellow candidates up on the stage during the debates. I don’t think that’s what should be coming out of a president of the United States. But I don’t see anything that’s changed in the last two years.”
Powell asked Americans and Congress to "take a hard look at yourself" to realize what "you're doing to keep these forces in check." He ridiculed not just what the Trump administration is doing, but instead what others "are not doing as the United States of America. What are we doing? We’re walking away from agreements, we’re walking away from alliances,” Powell continued.
“The world is watching,” Powell added. “They cannot believe we’re doing things like separating mothers and children who are trying to get across the border from south of our border. They can’t believe we’re making such an effort to cease immigration coming into the country. It’s what’s kept us alive!”
rrb thinks that we have too many beaners.
I have absolute contempt for the rank and file GOP voters like you.
Yeah, I'm shocked and disappointed.
Powell and Albright say world is changing in disturbing ways
Colin Powell told Fareed Zakaria: "I hope the president can come to the realization that he should really stop insulting people." | Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Capital Concerts
By DAVID COHEN | 10/07/2018 10:41 AM EDT | Updated: 10/07/2018 11:41 AM EDT
The emergence of social media and the rhetoric of President Donald Trump have upended the old world order in dangerous ways, two former secretaries of state told Fareed Zakaria in an interview that aired Sunday.
Madeleine Albright, who served under President Bill Clinton, and Colin Powell, who served under President George W. Bush, both expressed concern on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” about disturbing disruptions in the international order.
“I do think we are in a very different era,” Albright said, “where, in fact, voices have been disaggregated so that people are getting their information through their social media. They see things from the perspective of what they already agree with.”
She added: “People want to know what their identities are. So, all of a sudden, there’s — we’re going to have great pride in identity, but if my identity hates your identity, then it’s not patriotism, it’s hypernationalism and it’s very dangerous.”
Powell seconded her concerns.
“We used to be the leader of the world that wanted to be free,” the former general said, adding: “In recent years, the pressures and the forces that Madeleine talked about has come into play. They’ve come into play. And what are we doing? We’re walking away from agreements; we’re walking away from the alliances, frankly, that we used to have.”
Powell put some of the blame on President Donald Trump’s behavior on the international stage.
“President goes to Europe to a NATO meeting, but he starts out by insulting some of the other participants, our allies,” Powell said. “And so, America has to take a hard look at itself, and especially the Congress. Take a hard look at yourself, and see what we are doing to try to keep these forces in check and put America back in the middle of all this.”
Powell also told Zakaria he doubted Trump could be “a moral leader” for the world.
“I hope the president can come to the realization that he should really stop insulting people,” Powell said, adding, “We somehow have got to get back on track.”
Discussing Trump’s presidency and what she said was “a tumultuous time where there is just hatred,“ Albright added: “I really am appalled.”
Unfortunately Trump has turned the Republican party into the me party.
Two shitty secs of state. They may as well include a quote from warren Christopher.
Colin Powell is a decorated soldier and secretary of state for George W Bush, that you drink his bathwater.
He was manipulated into lying to United Nations by Bush and Cheney. He had the honesty to admit that he had lied.
Men who assault and shame women have really small dicks. It’s science.
We can ask Monica if that's true.
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