Live Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing

[Calliecake]

@redwood66 This hasn’t been an easy day for some of us and I know you are aware of it.

This is much more than political for many people.

Dr. Ford felt it was her job as a citizen to step forward. She is 100% certain Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her. Her life has been forever altered. She was asked questions by a prosecutor. He was asked questions by senators. How fair was that?

I think Kavanaugh 45 minute speech was an act. He sure changed while the Republicans were talking to him. He acted like a cocky and entitled when the Democrats were questioning him. He was very rude.

A Yale classmate who knew him well during his college years said a whole group of their friends knew he was a very heavy drinker in college. She said he was lying on his Fox News interview and he kept saying today what a great student he was while not admitting he was also a very heavy drinker who got stumbling drunk. She said who she was and was named. She said many of his classmates said he was blatantly lying today. She also said she is a Republican.

 

[soxfan]

So listen. Kavanaugh testified under threat of purgery that he did NOT watch Ford's testimony. He did. And there are pictures that prove it. WTF???

And his ONLY hope was to come out guns blazing the way he did to please Trump and the GOP. I can't with this bullshit. :roll

 

[redwood66]

Yes, and no. When people call others "dick," they aren't trying to say the person is weak. They're saying the person is rude and/or aggressive. Not exactly like equating a woman's genitalia with weakness.

They are using it to mean those things which are negative. So if it is bad then it is bad in both uses. Or is it fine to use a male term for aggressiveness?

 

[Calliecake]

So listen. Kavanaugh testified under threat of purgery that he did NOT watch Ford's testimony. He did. And there are pictures that prove it. WTF???

And his ONLY hope was to come out guns blazing the way he did to please Trump and the GOP. I can't with this bullshit. :roll

Seriously!!! Are there really pictures of this? That’s perjury!

 

[soxfan]

And they f-3824592460-2946-0293476-209347690inhg ruined this woman too.

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate...ter_impression=true&__twitter_impression=true

 

[Calliecake]

The editors of America Magazine, The Jesuit Review, is calling for Kavanaugh’s nomination to be withdrawn.

WOW

 

[AGBF]

Yep I am all for Harris or Booker running in 2020.

There was no one more improbable to be elected president than Donald Trump. Maybe not 2020, but wait until some of the younger people start to vote. Not to mention more people of color. As the signs said at the women's march, I work for women's rights and I am raising my children to vote for women's rights.

AGBF

 

[redwood66]

There was no one more improbable to be elected president than Donald Trump. Maybe not 2020, but wait until some of the younger people start to vote. Not to mention more people of color. As the signs said at the women's march, I work for women's rights and I am raising my children to vote for women's rights.

AGBF

When elections happen I accept the results because I understand that's how it works. So we shall see how it turns out.

 

[AGBF]

When elections happen I accept the results because I understand that's how it works. So we shall see how it turns out.

We all accept the results intellectually, unless we are psychotic. We need not "accept" the results in the sense that we fail to resist the status quo, however. We can spend our time during the term(s) of the elected officials whom we opposed working for social change. In other words, we need never be passive.

AGBF

 

[Calliecake]

The American Bar Association calls on Judiciary Committee to halt Kavanaugh vote until FBI investigation is done.


@AGBF Do you think this will sway the committee to agree to an investigation?

 

[redwood66]

We all accept the results intellectually, unless we are psychotic. We need not "accept" the results in the sense that we fail to resist the status quo, however. We can spend our time during the term(s) of the elected officials whom we opposed working for social change. In other words, we need never be passive.

AGBF

This administration is far from status quo and you can interpret that how you like.

 

[AGBF]

The American Bar Association calls on Judiciary Committee to halt Kavanaugh vote until FBI investigation is done.

Wow, Calliecake, that is momentous news! I wonder if Brett Kavanaugh will now attack the ABA as he did the Democrats and accuse them of being in a conspiracy with the Clintons!

 

[mary poppins]

Keg-parties and assaults: Women from Catholic high schools in Washington area break 'culture of silence'
“So many of us thought we were alone,” said a graduate of an all-girls Catholic school who said she was raped at a party. “But we weren’t.”
by Mary Pflum and Brandy Zadrozny / Sep.27.2018 / 4:01 PM EDT

Christine “Cricket” Keating had a close-knit circle of friends growing up in Montgomery County, Maryland, in the 1980s — but there were some things they never discussed.

Keating and her friends — classmates at Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School and other all-girls Roman Catholic schools in the area — were part of the same privileged set as Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford, though Keating was not friends with them. At that time, alcohol-fueled parties and drunken carousing were the norm, Keating and her schoolmates said.

But it was not until this month — after Ford alleged publicly that Kavanaugh assaulted her at one of those high school parties more than three decades ago, an allegation he vehemently denies — that women who attended the parties as teenagers began sharing their own stories of sexual assault and the shame and fear that kept them quiet afterward. Many are now taking a fresh look at their high school experiences and are grappling with a new understanding of misbehavior that took place decades ago.

“We had a strong friendship network and yet there was a curtain of silence,” said Keating, who graduated from Georgetown Visitation in 1985 and has been horrified recently to read her classmates’ accounts on private social media groups of what they experienced.

Ford, she said, “is breaking that culture of silence.”

A dozen women who attended Catholic and private prep schools in the Montgomery County area in the 1980s spoke to NBC News this week, seven of them on the record. The women — most of whom signed an open letter saying they believed Ford’s allegation, and all but two of whom did not know her or Kavanaugh personally — shared their memories of kegs, bonfires and unsupervised beach houses where heavy drinking fueled sexually inappropriate comments and behavior and attacks that were never spoken of afterward.

The women said they were warned by other girls about the aggression of boys from neighboring Catholic schools, particularly Georgetown Preparatory School, which Kavanaugh attended. Raised from an early age in their moneyed, Catholic community to remain chaste, the women said they believed anything that compromised that chastity was their fault — even if they were forced.

These stories from alumni of Holton-Arms School, where Ford graduated from, as well as Georgetown Visitation, Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart and others, are now emerging in news articles and op-ed articles and on closed Facebook groups like “We believe her too,” which was started by a Stone Ridge alum and has 117 members.

After reading other women’s stories in one of the Facebook groups, one graduate of the all-girls Stone Ridge shared for the first time with some members of the group that she was raped in 1982 at a high school party, two weeks before she was scheduled to leave for college.

“It’s been cathartic,” said the woman, who asked not to be identified out of fear of bringing shame to her family, who still live in the Washington area, and damaging her professional reputation.

“So many of us thought we were alone,” she said. “But we weren’t. When we heard Christine’s story, we knew that story. We’d experienced it.”

‘GEORGETOWN PREP BOYS WERE KINGS’
By 1990, off-campus parties had become such a problem that headmasters from seven of the Washington area’s elite private schools, including Georgetown Prep and Holton-Arms, joined to warn parents about the gatherings. According to a joint letter sent out by the schools, hundreds of unsupervised teenagers were regularly attending the parties.

“It would be hard to devise a better recipe for disaster than a social scene that includes the anonymity provided by an 'open party,' no adult supervision, considerable amounts of alcohol, and teenage hormones which encourage sexual or violent behavior," the letter said, according to The Washington Post.

Julie Swetnick alleged this week that Kavanaugh had spiked punch at house parties in the early 1980s to cause women to become intoxicated so they could be passed from boy to boy and assaulted, an allegation Kavanaugh denied and called “ridiculous and from the twilight zone.” Swetnick’s description did not surprise several women who spoke to NBC News and had attended Montgomery County high school parties in the 1980s.

One woman, who graduated from an all-girls school just south of Georgetown Prep the same year as Kavanaugh graduated, said she was 15 the night she was at one of those parties and lost track of her friends. She was alone with four boys and she was raped, she said, but she didn’t call it that until many years later.

“I don’t think I walked away knowing I’d been raped,” said the woman, who asked not to be identified out of fear that sharing her story could affect her professionally. After the assault, the woman said she sneaked back into her home through the window she had left from hours earlier.

“I walked away being ashamed,” she said. “Why would you tell? Who would have listened?”

None of the women who spoke of their assaults to NBC News said they had reported them to authorities.

Allyson Redpath, who graduated from Stone Ridge in 1982, said she heard from other girls from an early age that she should be wary of the boys from Georgetown Prep, which she and several other women who spoke to NBC News said had the worst reputation for misbehavior of the boys’ Catholic schools in the area. Georgetown Prep was considered a brother school to Stone Ridge.

“The assumption was, if something happened to you, that it was your own fault because you should have known it was going to happen to you,” Redpath said. “And nobody was going to do anything to protect you. The only thing that would happen is you would be shamed. So there was really no point in saying anything or in telling anybody.”

Redpath added that back then, “Georgetown Prep boys were kings.”

“There was a sense of entitlement,” Redpath said. “It was ‘boys will be boys.’”

Asked for comment, Georgetown Prep officials referred to a statement the school released this week saying that sexual assault and alcohol and drug abuse are problems at many high schools, both public and private, and that Jesuit schools, including Georgetown Prep, have worked together for decades to address the issues.

“It is demonstrably false that such behavior or culture is tolerated, still less encouraged, at Georgetown Prep,” the school statement said. “In fact, our curriculum is designed to guide students away from these malignant influences, and to guide them through reflection away from selfishness and towards a life of service for and with others.”

“Certain individuals have recently presented themselves as representing the culture of Georgetown Prep authoritatively. They do not,” the statement continued. “The views they present may well represent their experience, but they do not represent our institutional or pedagogical goals, nor our efforts to implement those goals on behalf and out of a deep and abiding care for our students and their families, and for the larger culture in which they will work and live and raise their families.”

WOMEN BEGIN SPEAKING OUT
When Ford broke her silence on Kavanaugh — accusing him of sexually assaulting her at a party and covering her mouth when she screamed for help — she spurred other graduates of Montgomery County Catholic high schools to begin sharing their #MeToo stories.

One of those women is Grace, who attended Stone Ridge in the 1980s and said she was assaulted on a beach during Beach Week, an annual tradition in which students at Montgomery County Catholic high schools rented beach houses in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, and Ocean City, Maryland, and threw blow-out parties during the first week of summer.

Grace, who asked not to be identified because she never told her family about what happened, said a boy got "overly physically aggressive" with her at the beach. “And then the boy that pretended to comfort me tried to assault me," she said.

She told no one, she said.

“My reputation would have been ruined,” she said. “It would have been, ‘What would you do to provoke that?’ or, ‘Were you coming on to him?’ We never would have spoken about any of that.”

Grace said that, like many of her classmates, she had come to accept the behavior of boys at some of the parties as “normal,” but that reading other women’s stories on social media over the past week helped her realize that the behavior she had accepted as a teenager was unacceptable.

Melissa Meers, who graduated from Stone Ridge in 1982, said date rape was never spoken about when she was a teenager. And neither was the heavy drinking.

“It’s all about appearances in the Georgetown area,” she said. “It does not matter if you are a complete drunk — all that matters is if you look good and are making the family look good.”

Meers said she started drinking heavily with her Catholic school friends at age 13. By 18, she was attending her first Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

“I live in Las Vegas now and I’ve never seen people drink as much as people drank at those high school parties,” Meers, a mother of two teenagers, said. “That should tell you something about those parties.”

‘WE TOOK PRIDE IN HEAVY DRINKING’
Two men who attended Georgetown Prep in the 1980s also described parties with heavy drinking and no parental supervision.

“The entire school was beer-driven,” said William Barbot, who was a freshman at Georgetown Prep when Kavanaugh was a senior. “We took pride in heavy drinking. The central vibe was, ‘Where am I going to get drunk?’”

Barbot and William Fishburne, 53, who graduated from Georgetown Prep with Kavanaugh in 1983, both said they’ve faced pressure within alumni circles to stay quiet regarding their memories of the school’s culture, after they both said publicly that they believe Ford. Fishburne said he’s received calls from pro-Kavanaugh Georgetown Prep alumni he hasn’t spoken to in decades.

“A lot of people are saying that I am being brave for sticking my neck out,” said Barbot, whose high school girlfriend was Ford’s classmate. “What’s being brave is Dr. Ford stepping forward.”

The women who spoke to NBC News said they, too, were heartened by Ford’s decision to step forward, but, even as Ford testified before a Senate committee on Thursday, they worried that it won’t make any difference.

“I fear what will happen now is what happened back then,” Redpath said. “And that’s that nobody will do anything, which is why nobody said anything in the first place. Your life becomes hell — and they get away with it.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-new...ic-high-schools-washington-area-break-n914196

 

[soxfan]

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=293374614601923

 

[Jambalaya]

All these stories of women being raped by boys and very young men are just horrifying. Maybe sons of privilege feel more entitled than the average person. I went to a non-moneyed public school full of average Joes. We had lots of unsupervised parties while parents were away and there was lots of alcohol. None of the boys were remotely threatening or aggressive. There was a large number of girls, the ratio being probably 60:40, so perhaps that's the key. Casting my mind back to the parties I attended age 15-18, everyone was so nice and normal and wouldn't have dreamed of doing anything like this. That's why I'm horrified.

 

[mary poppins]

Looks like a real investigation should have included hearing from Timmy, Judge, Tom, PJ, Bernie, Squi to investigate timeline, house location and house design. Would certainly shed some light on things.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...ged-kavanaugh-assault/?utm_term=.761859760ef9

 

[AGBF]

Looks like a real investigation should have included hearing from Timmy, Judge, Tom, PJ, Bernie, Squi to investigate timeline, house location and house design. Would certainly shed some light on things.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/09/27/mark-judges-book-validates-christine-fords-timeline-alleged-kavanaugh-assault/?utm_term=.761859760ef9

My computer (in Virginia) is not working well today. What happened after the ABA recommended an investigation? I cannot read the article in "The Washington Post", at least not at the moment. Who is investigating? Who ordered an investigation? I get one channel that sometimes has news (yesterday I had the Judiciary Committee hearings) on the television.

Deb, news deprived

 

[Tekate]

Maybe to you Red and it just goes along with your political views, but to me it's truth, Graham went waaay overboard, it words, actions and performance were disgusting to me and when I feel a man has zero interest in fairness and I see a funny on Facebook, here we are. Graham is a miserable excuse for a human being. He's running for attorney general in my opinion and that sh-- show yesterday was just for the benefit of Trump and the base. That Kavanaugh would invoke Clinton is beyond belief. So it was tongue in cheek but both men are appalling.

This is Disgusting.

 

[mary poppins]

My computer (in Virginia) is not working well today. What happened after the ABA recommended an investigation? I cannot read the article in "The Washington Post", at least not at the moment. Who is investigating? Who ordered an investigation? I get one channel that sometimes has news (yesterday I had the Judiciary Committee hearings) on the television.

Deb, news deprived

I said, "Looks like a real investigation should have included hearing from Timmy, Judge, Tom, PJ, Bernie, Squi to investigate timeline, house location and house design. Would certainly shed some light on things." If a WaPo writer could connect the dots, the FBI certainly could to and do a bang up job of getting details. Here's the article (text bolded in article) that I didn't copy and paste the first time because it's worth clicking on to see Kavanaugh's handy calendar and Judge quotes are indented for easier reading.

Mark Judge’s book validates Christine Blasey Ford’s timeline of the alleged Kavanaugh assault
By Philip Bump
September 27 at 12:51 PM

During her testimony Thursday morning, Christine Blasey Ford offered one piece of information that she felt could narrow down the time frame of the alleged incident in which she says she was assaulted by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh at a gathering at a house in Maryland when they were in high school.

She described having seen Kavanaugh’s classmate Mark Judge — who she alleges was in the room when the attack occurred — shortly after the alleged incident.

“I did see Mark Judge once at the Potomac Village Safeway after the time of the attack,” she said, “and it would be helpful with anyone’s resources if — to figure out when he worked there if people are wanting more details from me about when the attack occurred. If we could find out when he worked there, then I could provide a more detailed timeline about when the attack occurred.”

Responding to questions from Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), she gave more details about that alleged encounter.

“I was going to the Potomac Village Safeway, this is the one on the corner of Falls and River Road,” she said. “And I was with my mother and I was a teenager, so I wanted her to go in one door and me the other. I chose the wrong door because the door I chose was the one where Mark Judge — it looked like he was working there and arranging the shopping carts.”

“I said hello to him, and his face was white and very uncomfortable saying hello back,” she continued. “And we had previously been friendly at the times that we saw each other over the previous two years. . . . I wouldn’t characterize him as not friendly, he was just nervous and not really wanting to speak with me. He looked a little bit ill.”

“How long did this occur after the incident?” Durbin asked.

“I would estimate six to eight weeks,” she replied.

To Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Ford offered some ways in which the time frame of Judge’s employment might be ascertained by the committee: perhaps “through employment records or the IRS or anything,” she said.

There’s a better source, as it turns out: Judge’s book, “Wasted: Tales of a Gen X Drunk,” published in 1997.

In one passage, beginning on Page 92, Judge describes his time working at a grocery store in the context of his drinking problem. Emphasis added.

It was the summer before senior year, and by now, even though I wasn’t drinking every day, I was completely hooked. Going a week without getting drunk was unthinkable. I was spending between four and seven nights with the gang, either at a party or at O’Rourke’s.

Elsewhere in the book, Judge describes one of his acquaintances at the time, someone named “Bart O’Kavanaugh,” who vomited in a car after a party.

Judge continues. Emphasis again added.

Of course, alcoholics also get into all kinds of trouble because of their drinking. When they supersede their own tolerance, they suffer catastrophic hangovers. These can make getting through the day an Olympic event. This was never more evident to me than when, to raise money for football camp, I spent a few weeks working as a bag boy at the local supermarket.

My job was simple. People would leave their grocery baskets against a rail in front of the store, then pull their cars around. I would then sling their groceries in the car, sometimes get a small tip, and then wait for the next car.

It was a nightmare. Invariably I would be hungover — or still drunk — when I got to work at seven in the morning, and I spent most of the first hour just trying to hold myself together.

Judge graduated from high school in 1983. The summer before his senior year, then, would be the summer of 1982.

We know when that football camp occurred because Kavanaugh, in an effort to demonstrate that he hadn’t been at any such party as described by Ford, released his personal calendar from that summer.

Here’s the entry for August.

Football camp started Aug. 22, 1982. Judge worked for a grocery store for several weeks before that camp, meaning that he probably worked there for a period in late July to mid-August.

Ford said she saw him working at a store between six and eight weeks after the alleged incident. The end of that period — obviously just an estimated window — could overlap with any point of Judge’s tenure at the store. The alleged incident could have been six weeks before Aug. 22, for example, or it could have been eight weeks before the end of July.

That window, it’s worth noting, could include July 1, a day on which Kavanaugh’s calendar lists, “Go to Timmy’s for Skis w/ Judge, Tom, PJ, Bernie, Squi.” What “skis” refers to isn’t clear, but it might be a reference to “brewskis,” a then-popular slang term for beer. “Judge” refers to Mark Judge; “PJ” to Patrick Smyth, who Ford on Thursday again indicated was also at the gathering where she alleges she was assaulted.

The precise date is still murky. Judge’s book not only suggests that the summer of 1982 was probably the period during which the alleged incident occurred but also makes the likelihood that he was heavily intoxicated — as Ford has claimed — greater.

Judge’s book also might help explain why he looked ill the morning she says she saw him.

 

[Tekate]

What should the democrats have done red? How should it have played out according to a conservative? The democrats could not just sit there and say they were not going to vet Kavanaugh, yeah I know if one looks at it linearly then tough sh-- on the dems when the right REFUSED to even interview a very well respected jurist Dr Garland? All I have read has no mention of any Clinton involvement, any Clinton retribution, and money paid by the DNC, so what should the democrats have done?

Well we can agree that both parties need insults hurled at them. Reps for being such pussies when it comes to letting Dems get away with the crap they do and Dems for being the skeevy slick disgusting group that they showed themselves to be in this circus.

 

[soxfan]

I hope someone remembered to bring a fainting couch and some smelling salts for Lindsay Graham today.

 

[soxfan]

Also this:

The Bar knows political theater when they see it. What was all Kavanaugh’s rage about? To out-victim the victim... reverse places. His apparent strategy is called DARVO, short for “Deny. Attack. Reverse victim and offender.” The term was coined by Jennifer Freyd, a psychologist at the University of Oregon. Political theater scripted and directed by consultants. Ugh. He’s dangerous.

 

[Tekate]

Yes but you are a republican that I think could work across that middle line between me a democrat and you a republican, you know, I understand the war machine, I would always support more money for defense where needed, and I bet you would too, but how much may make us farther apart, so then you and I would work together to try and find a 'gve' that could work. THAT IS AMERICA, or used to be.. the far left and the far right are negative, we all learned when kids actually went on recess to give and take in play. I appreciate your honesty, btw I am a supporter of the death penalty too, I don't like it but many do and while it serves no purpose, it may to some and I believe that there should be penalties in life..thanks for voicing your opinion. Your thoughts made me again think about how we can meet together. peace.

I feel very sad watching the entire inquiry today, and I have lost faith in democracy which US Proudly stands for. The accused danced around and avoided key questions. When being confronted or backed into a corner with key questions, he kept repeating the same lines, which were irrelevant to the questions. Towards the end, the inquiry turned into a shouting match among politicians, and the accused happily kept his mouth shut, avoiding more questions.
Dr. Ford came across genuine and convincing. She has earned my respect. The accused, on the other hand, impressed me as someone not forthcoming and sly. I am so very sad, because I am Republican myself.

 

[Tekate]

@redwood66 unfortunately our fearless and feckless leader has pushed pu--y into the limelight. I wouldn't use either word interchangeably actually.

They are using it to mean those things which are negative. So if it is bad then it is bad in both uses. Or is it fine to use a male term for aggressiveness?

 

[House Cat]

They are using it to mean those things which are negative. So if it is bad then it is bad in both uses. Or is it fine to use a male term for aggressiveness?

I never thought the term “dick” was used for aggressiveness. I always exchanged it for the word “stupid.”

Huh...

Penises are stupid, but I don’t want to be sexist.


Hey Red, why do you feel this huge need to stand up for men but not such a strong need to stand up for women?

 

[redwood66]

What should the democrats have done red? How should it have played out according to a conservative? The democrats could not just sit there and say they were not going to vet Kavanaugh, yeah I know if one looks at it linearly then tough sh-- on the dems when the right REFUSED to even interview a very well respected jurist Dr Garland? All I have read has no mention of any Clinton involvement, any Clinton retribution, and money paid by the DNC, so what should the democrats have done?

They should have brought the allegations to the committee in a confidential setting when they got them so it could all be handled protecting both the accuser and the accused. This is partisan bullshit at the extreme to hold it until after the hearings were over. Because what they wanted was this spectacle. I thought we want the identities of women to be protected in situations like this so they feel comfortable in coming forward? Maybe so unless it is politically expedient to do otherwise. They don't give a damn about Ford.

 

[redwood66]

I never thought the term “dick” was used for aggressiveness. I always exchanged it for the word “stupid.”

Huh...

Penises are stupid, but I don’t want to be sexist.


Hey Red, why do you feel this huge need to stand up for men but not such a strong need to stand up for women?

I stand up for individuals. Not genitals.

 

[Ellen]

I never thought the term “dick” was used for aggressiveness. I always exchanged it for the word “stupid.”

Huh...

Penises are stupid, but I don’t want to be sexist.

This is interesting to see what the same word means to different people. I always imagined the word in question to mean "jerk" more less. Now, what exactly that means is probably up for debate too. lol I think of it as meaning, crass, arrogant, ruthless, etc.

 

[mary poppins]

I just learned of the term "himpathy" today.

https://www.google.com/search?q=him...0j69i57j0l4.2801j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

 

[House Cat]

I stand up for individuals. Not genitals.

Oh Red...