US Politics, October 2018: next week will be even longer

The secrecy about the FBI report is just pointlessly evil power for powers sake. It's already a sham, just put it forth. I'm leaning more and more towards McConnell being a complete moron who seemed to succeed because he is to stupid to know what long-term problems even are.

I take it that when sanity is restored there si going to be an investigation into the investigation.
Really hoping that I can take it that sanity may be restored.

Meanwhile people are suggesting getting the people who the FBI should have interviewed to go to Washington and make noise about how bad the investigation is and how willing they were to talk. Can't see that being easy since most of those people are presumably working and they would need to be travelling today and coordinating meeting somewhere conspicuous.

Really hoping that I can take it that sanity may be restored

good luck usa

Requested noon to 2:30 off work. Would getting arrested by very polite (ime) Capitol Police feel therapeutic idk.

The GSE where I'm a contractor has a corporate-sponsored female employee group. There has not been a peep about any of this on the group's internal social page. Like this shit isn't happening a few Metro stops away. I'm torn about posting something myself, I'm not an employee and I would surely be chastised mightily for making waves as a contractor.

good mourning!

Has anyone posted the New Yorker piece yet

we def need an andy borowitz piece to lighten the mood rn, post away simon

FBI, more like FIB amirite, yowza!

(NB, I so assiduously avoid Borowitz that my impression of him is basically just 'write like I'm a dipshit'. Well, more of a dipshit, anyway.)

I love how the WSJ can barely contain its skepticism

According to the Washington Post, FBI agents only spoke to six people as a part of the investigation. Five of them were connected to Dr. Ford and her story of a 1982 sexual assault at the hands of Kavanaugh. Somehow, neither Kavanaugh, nor Ford, were among those interviewed.

how are the #resistance folks taking this pisspoor performance of their beloved fbi

By avoiding facile snark.

(FBI spends several days demonstrably patting at bulging pockets, shrugs at panhandling nation) Sorry, doesn't look like we have anything.

The president and the Senate's limiting the investigative scope was the trouble, not the FBI. Remember Friday was supposed to be the deadline?

how are the #resistance folks taking this pisspoor performance of their beloved fbi

― shrek and han solo kinda dress the same (bizarro gazzara), Thursday, October 4, 2018 5:41 AM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah you guys used to hate comey now you love him

xpost Well, yeah. I mean this was all just a fuckin' kabuki performance whatever way you cut it.

Comey wrote an op ed saying one week was enough to do a good investigation because the FBI are experts. So dumb and pathetic.

The past week has been dominated by Kavanaugh retroactively being caught on lie after lie and people who should've been central to the FBI investigation stating publicly that they hadn't even been contacted. The whole stupid pantomime couldn't be any more transparently useless or fixed.

One thing I heard was that the White house had limited teh investigation initially, then said that those extreme limits had been lifted when the President said taht they had free leeway and the directive to expand had never actually materialised.

Which in short is BS from start to end. Never should have been constrained. the process by which the investigation should never have had to be reached. As far as i understand it, further relevant information coming out tends to almost automatically trigger rechecks of teh background check.
& the protocols of vetoing things are normally not just shat on. So the documents that needed to be read through by both parties and parts of tehm by the general public should never have been vetoed by a totally partisan republican lawyer who had an obvious conflict of interest considering who else he was representing.

Really hoping the whole thing can be looked into over the next few months and any confirmation nullified since protocol ignored.
But somehow I doubt it.

Yeah, you can refrain from holding your breath on that one.

Appold reached out to the Bureau last weekend but did not hear back. Frustrated, he submitted a statement through an F.B.I. Web portal. During his first year at Yale, Appold lived in the basement of Lawrance Hall, one of the university’s freshman dormitories. He was in the same suite of bedrooms as Kavanaugh, sharing a common room. Appold said of Kavanaugh, “We didn’t hang out together, but there was no animosity between us either.” He said he believes that “there were two sides to Brett.” Those who have described the judge as studious and somewhat reserved or shy are correct, he said. He added, “that was true part of the time, but so are the other things that have been said about him. He drank a lot, and when he was drinking he could be aggressive, and belligerent. He wasn’t beating people up, but there was an edge and an obnoxiousness that I could see at the hearings. When I saw clips” of Kavanaugh’s Senate testimony, Appold said, “I remembered it immediately.”

How could he ever forget the time he used a broomstick to chase an enraged Kavanaugh away from an overturned garbage can and back into the woods from whence he came?

The only way I've been able to live with the existence of Trump appointees is by remembering that their rein is on the wane. We're going to be saddled with this fuck until he or we finally kick the bucket.

https://storage.googleapis.com/afs-prod/media/media:1f9039a61ead491699518e380aeb9a20/800.jpeg

The FBI investigation was always going to be a sham - and not only because of politics, but also because most investigations into rape and sexual assault are worthless, period - and while it's still enraging, it's not surprising, and I don't think the idea was that Kavanaugh would be felled by an FBI report. The principle is that the FBI should at least investigate, and as the GOP knew and feared, the time it takes them has been plenty of time for journalists to do a broader investigation, and for critical groups like the NCC or hundreds of law professors to come out against the nomination. I don't know whether he will be confirmed or not - I seriously thought McConnell was smart enough to withdraw him, but I think I overestimated the idiot - but the sense of shell shock is over, and there's enough material to prepare impeachment proceedings and to argue that since he has wrecked any credibility as a non-partisan, he either recuses himself from every political case, or the next incoming Dem administration will simply refuse to recognize partisan decisions from the Supreme Court in the future. That's the path forward imdo.

"Comey wrote an op ed saying one week was enough to do a good investigation because the FBI are experts. So dumb and pathetic."

one week may have been but it wasn't even a full week.

otm

how's the softball schedule looking this fall

An actual investigation that wasn't hamstrung could have been done is a weeks time probably

Looking forward to hearing every Republican Senator's variation on "The FBI investigation showed no evidence whatsoever of any wrongdoing"

They probably made the right decision to cut the investigation short as it probably would've been increasingly difficult for them to ignore the calls of uninterviewed witnesses and victims for an entire week. It was probably already really, really annoying.

quick update on the person getting the harshest sentence for Russian collusion

Reality Winner was spirited away from her GA jail in the middle of the night, taken to FL, put in isolation, taken out of isolation, bussed to Oklahoma. Now she's in a filth-ridden warehouse in withdrawal from prescription meds they won't give her. She shared one document. https://t.co/jFGUn02ebd

— Kerry Howley (@KerryHowley) October 3, 2018

how's the softball schedule looking this fall

increasingly attractive imo

Would be something if the finishing the investigation early was a sign that the FBI wasn't playing along with the farce to quite the degree the Republican party would have liked. But felt it was too constrained to actually say it. Not sure what that something would be though.

but the dems spent most of their Kav questioning asking for an FBI investigation so everybody should be happy now

i read somewhere Judge was questioned over two days . not sure what the means but i guess it's possible he had some damning info.

he passed out during first interview

what's with this 'only one copy' of the fbi report? i mean.. why?

to prevent any leaks

sure sends the message that kavanaugh has nothing to hide

Because even this engineered result is the thinnest of tissues, that wouldn’t withstand the slightest scrutiny.

The information in the report is supposed to stay secret? a) that's dumb, b) so not gonna happen.

xp lol

Not only is there only one copy of the report but it was printed in a tiny bound edition that can only be read under a magnifying glass and using tweezers to leaf through. And there's only one word per page. And you have to answer these riddles three before you can enter the Chamber of the Report (which is a thirty-foot long duct one must slither down on one's belly). And while you peruse its contents you are transported by dazzling lights and blaring music.

Senators are speed readers with photographic memories, right?

I also heard that the room where they read the report is illuminated by candlelight. "As the Founding Fathers intended"

that's because the report was written using the invisible ink lemon juice trick

since there's only one copy does that make it a unicum?

not to downplay anything but reality winner's treatment is kinda standard. the prison system is fucked.