I am going to quote this Politico piece on the Republicans’ plan to ram Brett Kavanaugh down our throats at length because I think condensing it would lessen the impact.
Senate Republicans are pressing ahead on confirming Brett Kavanaugh before the midterm elections even after National Archives said Thursday that it can’t meet the GOP’s request for records until the end of October, days before the midterm elections.
The Archives made its timing announcement in a letter to Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, who appeared alongside four fellow Republicans on his committee earlier Thursday to tout the thoroughness of their nascent review of the nominee’s record.
However, the George W. Bush Presidential Library is lending its resources to processing Kavanaugh records in a bid to help expedite the release of the records Grassley and his fellow Republicans have requested.
Without the Bush Library‘s assistance on the GOP’s full request — projected to top 900,000 pages — the party’s plans to confirm Kavanaugh before the midterms could be imperiled.
But Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has no intention of backing down from his vow to get Kavanaugh on the court before voters go to the polls for an election that could tip the Senate to Democrats.
“I can’t envision a scenario where that vote is delayed,” a source close to GOP leadership said Thursday. “I think they will have a good sense of what is out there on Kavanaugh. There’s no chance in hell Mitch McConnell holds this vote after the election.”
Democrats are blasting the Bush Library’s role, saying the screening process could be guided by political concerns given that lawyers operating on the former president’s behalf are leading the review of documents involving his longtime former aide, Kavanaugh.
“Today, the National Archives confirmed our worst fear – that the vast majority of even the small portion of records the American public will see from Brett Kavanaugh’s time in the Bush White House will be pre-screened by a political operative and attorney for George W. Bush, Steve Bannon, Reince Priebus, and Donald McGahn,” Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a statement. “This unprecedented process appears to be designed intentionally by Republicans to deny the Senate and the American people the information they need to evaluate this critically important nomination.”
I don’t have a lot to add to this. Both John Roberts and Elena Kagan worked in the executive branch before being nominated to the Supreme Court but neither of them produced anything close to the number of records Kavanaugh produced during his time with the administration of George W. Bush. Still, if the same standards apply, the Senate should see all of Kavanaugh’s records, just as they saw all of the records for Roberts and Kagan. The Democrats are making a reasonable demand and it shouldn’t be construed as a stalling tactic.
But we learned with the case of Merrick Garland that there is no norm the Republicans won’t violate in their bid to win a durable conservative majority on the Supreme Court.
Getting to the point where it’s easier to line up the similarities with Putin’s Russia than to look at our differences.
And democrats have to be willing to drop the polite focus on process, toss aside the norms and fight this every step of the way with everything legally available to do so.
. . . of any consequence for Dems to toss aside. Mitch and His Banana Republicans [should be a band name!] already took care of that.
Which is good in a way: it leaves the Dems no reason for qualms, scruples, or squeamishness over “violating norms” in waging all-out war against Kavanaugh (and, indeed, any Trump nominee as long as Mueller investigation continues — and beyond if Mueller’s results are as expected), “with everything legally available to do so”, as you so aptly put it.
Infuriating, as usual. With any luck, the backlash will cost some Republican Senators their jobs, and rightly so.
I recently read that the wet-bulb temp (combo of heat and humidity) will make China’s northern plain uninhabitable by ~2070. This is farmland; 400 million people live there. If this is true, I won’t live to see it- still, it’s hard to wrap your mind around the greed and corruption that ignores climate change.
Some people just don’t give a shit about the suffering of others.
Look, it was either admit Al Gore and the hippies were right, or cook the planet.
We had no alternative.
As the pie shrinks and the demands for a piece increase, the fighting is going to be of the Lord of the Flies type, only worse.
. . . of it has barely registered yet (if at all) with a large majority.
European “refugee crisis” of last few years (and its consequence of unleashing the European fascists)?
Tiny potatoes relative to what’s in the pipeline.
The only way to remedy this is to pack the Court with two additional seats to counter the ones nominated by an illegitimate President. And to tell the Repubs to stick it where the sun doesn’t shine if they complain.
McConnell is one evil, democracy-destroying monster IMO. I despise him, completely and utterly.
Yes. We need to pack the court. Maximalist approach.
https://newrepublic.com/article/148358/democrats-prepare-pack-supreme-court
. . . response was “no, bad idea”.
Following it, seeing Lemieux wrote it, reading his argument, and realizing the situation he posed as a hypothetical is now our Reality changed my mind.
Here it is as an actual link (highly recommended read):
Democrats: Prepare to Pack the Supreme Court
This was tried before. FDR almost got un-elected because of it.
Bad Idea.
1940 Presidential election:
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Democratic: 449 EV
Wendell L. Willkie, Republican: 82 EV
Almost…
. . . read the linked article. My reflexive response was like yours. It changed my mind.
But the SCOTUS is a separate branch of government and they can simply tell the Congress to take a hike and since it is a GOP majority Court they will do so. I agree Trump’s appointees are illegitimate but I think we’re stuck for a long time.
. . . either?
One either impeaches Der Trumper’s two “conservative” activists masquerading as “justices” (Gorsuch and Kavanaugh) or packs the court.
Impeachment requires a House majority and 66 senate votes to convict; court packing requires the trifecta, and either 60 senate votes or the abolition of the legislative filibuster.
Which is an easier political “sell”? I’m inclined to say impeachment, under the argument that Der Trumper was a democratically illegitimate prez, who obtained office through foreign collusion and illegal FBI malfeasance.
What are norms, functionally speaking? Just excuses that powerful people use when they want to avoid taking certain actions?
Question:
Say Kavanaugh (or another one of the other groomed Heritage Foundation hacks) is seated which effectively pre-neuters any Federal liberal/progressive legislation that could be passed in the foreseeable future.
Do the portions of the Republican donor class NOT beholden to or named Putin decide it’s time to try and put their monster back in the box and give the ok for Congressional Republicans to turn on Trump?
. . . Society] hacks . . . “
The Republican donor class cares primarily about tax cuts and staying in power. I wouldn’t expect any “turning on” Trump until and unless one of those priorities are threatened.
Need an asterisk by that “threatened” part. Trump upending the global world trade system would certainly not be in their interests. Now I’m not saying that’s going to come to pass, but it’s a distinct possibility greater than 0. Just look at Brexit, idiots are purposefully going to starve themselves if they have “no deal”. One would think rich elites wouldn’t want to gamble world order like that, but here The are doing it. To a certain extent they’ve lost control just as much as the GOP leadership has.
I started a reply to seabe’s comment above.
It grew.
Now a standalone post:
The Idiocrats Are Winning!!!
Please comment there.
Thank you…
AG
P.S. I hate meta, but…two of the neocentrist Gang of Four on this site (oaguabonita and marduk) tried to zero out my link to a previous post that…like the one above…started out as a reply. I put a great deal of time and effort into many of my posts, and it seems a waste of that time and effort if they languish within a long list of replies to a given article, so I usually post the longer ones as standalones. However…I also wish to inform the people to whom I am replying that I had something to say about what they wrote. I don’t mind not double-posting…it’s actually less complicated for me to do that…but I do want to be able to link to that reply. The aforementioned Gang of Four simply want to banish all who disagree with their positions, and they are increasingly using zeroing out as their main weapon of disapproval. If you see a comment/reply of mine and you do not want to support the neo-McCarthyites here, please uprate it. It only takes one uprating to make zeroing-out impossible.
Freedom of speech and freedom of dissent are still alive in the U.S. Please help to keepthem alive!!!
Thank you…
AG
I told you you’d get zeroed for this spam and I told you why. Post in the diaries or post in the thread. Don’t spam your diary shit here.
This is a war that you are eventually going to lose, marduk. You will either lose it by finally getting censured by Booman or you will lose it by winning and turning Booman Tribune into dKos Jr.
Eiher way…a loss.
Just like all wars.
You people have already cheapened this site to the point that many dissenting voices have simply stopped coming here.
But I am not leaving, and neither will I kowtow to your power plays.
AG
P.S. I am posting this…plus more…as a standalone as well.
The Sad Meta War Continues: An Answer To A Marduk Threat
Your name is on it.
You own this war, marduk.
Deal wid it.
It’s not a “war” you silly little man. Moderation is a tool to reduce toxic behavior. If you would rather continue your toxic behavior, you know the consequences.
And the truth is there are very few means available to moderate or flag inappropriate content* or users who are abusing the site’s features. Regrettably there are few easy answers. The old adage “don’t feed the trolls” seems reasonable on the surface, but in environments where moderation is largely absent, such advice fails miserably (Twitter comes to mind). Those subject to abuse continue to get harassed regardless and there are inevitably some enablers. We can witness that fairly readily – who uprates an abuser’s posts, and who recs diaries containing what we might think of as self-plagiarized content and call-out meta content intended to bully, belittle, and dissemble? As such behavior continues, how does that affect site visits, and commenting/diary behavior by other users? That, too is measurable data to which I am sure the site’s owner has ready access. There is nothing inherently wrong with dissent. What has happened here crossed the line from dissent to something more toxic long ago. I can only observe a fraction of what a site own can, but I have noticed that diaries seem to be more sporadic, and authored by far fewer users. There seem to be fewer comments in general and fewer commenters in general. It now takes just one rec to get on the rec list for a diary. It was not always like that. If I were a website owner noticing this, I’d take the hint. But that’s not my call. I can only at this point make a few observations and leave it at that.
*Inappropriate content is that which involves name-calling, and other abusive behaviors. Whatever means for moderation do exist are there to address what appears to be some form of abuse, as opposed to merely a disagreement. Dissent – with sufficient evidence to back it up – is not considered inappropriate, just so we are clear. I always thought it was clear from the guidelines published back when this site was established. Perhaps that is not the case.
Without getting into everything else, one reason why diaries are probably so sporadic and their authorship limited to a handful of individuals is because they’re damned hard to post. I wanted to write one a month or two back and quickly discovered that it takes a considerable amount of HTML proficiency to get it to work. I read up the site FAQs, and from thence to some very helpful and exhaustive diaries on the subject, but after burning 2 hours on the subject–about 1.5 hours longer than I’d set aside for the project–real life re-intruded and I had to abandon the project to deal with other pressing matters.
I can see a definite plus side to having such a user-unfriendly site: it keeps frivolous posting to a minimum. The downside is that it does so by keeping all posting limited to those with a fair amount of HTML expertise or leisure time to acquire it.
That’s something I had honestly not considered. What you are saying makes a lot of sense. I sort of take my basic (and it is quite basic) html code knowledge for granted. I taught myself in grad school so that I could build a personal site (partially to show off all the cute things my newborn was doing at the time) and later a professional site to upload syllabi and resumes and whatnot. Even those who were of my age cohort and proficient end users were not often adept at html, and with the advent of microblogs (e.g., Tumblr), social media sites, and pre-packaged website and blog templates, that knowledge is receding. I’ve shown html to my kids and they wonder why anyone would want to know that. They aren’t wrong.
When Booman’s intention was to migrate this blog over to Progress Pond, I had the feeling that diaries would have been much more user-friendly. I am guessing we will never know if that would have happened and what would have been shared in the process. What sucks is that there are people who have something to say who get shut out in the process. A real shame. No telling what we miss out on.
Indeed. Coding links, for example — no matter how many times I’ve been shown how to do it so it sits under a bit of text, I have a horrible time trying to get it to work, and usually just say the hell with it and leave the naked link on its own pathetic line. Indented quote I can do, but try to embed a video* or an image (when we could do that; that’s no longer available, right?) and I keep getting error messages till I give up in despair.
I also don’t post diaries unless I have something worthwhile to say at length that can’t just as well go in a comment on one of Booman’s posts or the comments thereunder.
* Huh. Just looked in the cafe and lounge diary, and most of the posts have no video embedded following their intro, or even a link, but a few are there. What’s up with that? Could of course be the settings on this computer; have to check it on the laptop later.
I’ve tried to post a couple diaries lately, and any link I add causes a site firewall warning, not allowing the diary. This did not exist a few months ago.
I’m sure there is a go around, it’s just, why bother?
.
When posting diaries, I have had different experiences depending on web browser. Any diary requiring video content cannot be posted using Google Chrome, but I seem to have no trouble with Firefox. Of course I have to use some html code that I would never have thought of w/o Frank Schnittger’s help a while back. I am not sure about how strict those Sucuri settings are. Posting diaries is a bit quirky.
I am finding it best to post my content in a Notepad document and then hope for the best when I transfer the content here, and prepping myself to try multiple web browsers until something sticks. That’s probably more effort than most would want to commit to. I don’t know any quick fixes to the tech side of the equation.
. . . after the episode when the site was largely unavailable for a couple days or so, and he said that was due to a concerted cyberattack.
Since then, the html code that previously worked for embeds no longer does. E.g., you used to be able to just right-click a menu icon on a youtube video, click “copy embed code”, then paste it here; likewise, Twitter had a way to copy and paste an embed code to embed a tweet here. Either sucuri itself or (seems more likely to me, but whadoiknow?) some setting in sucuri for this site evidently killed those options.
A few cognoscenti figured out workarounds and have posted them in comments here, but I’m like whoever in this thread said “why bother” with the greater complexity required to get it to work.
Balloon Juice does it right (buttons that automatically insert the appropriate html code to both turn on and then turn off formatting when you click them). That would be a welcome improvement in functionality here, imo.
atrios’ place (Eschatonblog) automatically embeds if you just paste the url of the youtube, tweet, etc., but then you redundantly end up with both the url and the embed showing.
Yes, this is also my experience.
It’s not just the coding proficiency that’s needed, it’s also a certain determination to overcome the roadblocks.
And the trolls are very determined.
.
At the time oui’s diaries all got flushed (I presume by booman), he was posting on the order of 3 diaries for every one by anyone else. The Diaries pane suddenly looked starkly different after that. (From my perspective, it really spruced up the place. YMMV.)
That all by itself was a drastic reduction in number and frequency of diaries, even though it only reduced the number of “authors” by one. You may be referring to trends over a longer time frame, but that single event accounts for essentially all the change of the sort you describe in the recent short term.
. . . giving oui a back-channel headsup whenever ag’s about to double-spam like this, so that oui can get that prophylactic, ratings-system-abusing (which abuse, notably, ag just incited others to as well), tribal-solidarity uprate in immediately?
My guess? Pretty damn high!
Wrong.
I answer oui’s occasional emails but I have never ever…until today…asked for any help in this fight.
Why?
Because if y’all ever manage to so totally pollute this place that people like oui and me no longer want to pay the dues to be here, then that’s the time that I will be sure it is dead as a doornail.
Dkos Jr.
Later…
AG
. . . this one could maybe even by some freakish coincidence be true! Doesn’t matter. Your record of lying (extensively — though by no means exhaustively — factually documented right here in these pages) renders it worthless.
that “want to pay the dues to be here” remark was something to behold. One might be led to believe that AG & Oui are the site’s primary financial support based on that comment, or at least a significant source and that their threat then is to pull the plug and watch the site disappear. Funny thing is, there are no formal dues, although chipping in some centavos periodically is a nice thing to do. If by paying dues, AG means posting, that’s what we all do – in which case what AG is rambling about is merely an empty threat. It’s likely an empty threat even if one of threatening to withhold financial support.
. . . (whether he actually believes it is a separate question) that ag’s and oui’s . . . erm . . . “contributions” here are valuable resources whose withdrawal would be negative, degrading, crippling, perhaps even fatal(!) to BT!
Which tells you all there is to know about how delusional, toxic, and dishonest ag is, given that Reality is the diametric opposite of that.
The renewal above of incitement to consciously and deliberately abuse the ratings system is noteworthy evidence of that.
But the kicker for me was the new low in chutzpah of ag falsely accusing me (this thread) of
Now note that that is the first time ever (else I think I would have noticed!) that ag has so much as acknowledged that his serial falsehoods that I factually refuted were even “mistakes”!
But of course we all know what any decent, honest person does when confronted with documented, irrefutable, factual evidence refuting a “mistake” we’ve made in good faith, right?
What we don’t do:
And of course, it’s doing all the above when confronted by factual refutation of a “mistake” that renders euphemistically referring to it as merely a “mistake” inoperative, and “lie/liar” the only acceptably accurate descriptors.
You’ve pretty well made the case. The notion that the absence of any of our contributions would be fatal to BT is laughable. And there is a good deal of difference between making a couple mistakes and consistently behaving in ways that are abusive. A person having a bad day I get – we all have them. Most of the time, someone might write something intemperate and the most I’ll make of it is “wow, that’s a bit out of character.” Sort of is what it is. With AG, the pattern you have observed since you started posting here is the one any of us who have been around any length of time have observed. I’ve got eight-plus years of history with this screen name of interactions and observation, and we’ll just say that I am well aware of AG’s interactions here prior to that. What you are putting together is exactly what anyone with a lick of sense would experience, and you put it together so succinctly.
. . . Guess that’s what you get for thinking you could pull the wool over the eyes of an observer as astute and rational as voice!
Silly blogger!
. . . goes without saying, given that you wrote it):
I’d explain, but there’s simple arithmetic involved, so what would be the point?
P.S. Like hell you hate “meta”. You wallow in meta like a pig in mud.
Long ago and far away there was no “mud” in his blog, oaguuabonita. I am simply trying to escape the relatively recent mudslide without leaving the blog.
And…please explain to my obviously oh so simple mind compared to your towering intelligence how the zeroing thing does
work. I have only observed its workings.
Here are my own observations:
The first rating does not count on the overall rating of a given comment or reply until a second rating appears.
The second one does count, and it makes the first rating count as well. If the second one is also a zero, that comment or reply is hidden from all but “trusted users.” If it is not…even if the rating is a 1…the overall rating for that comment can never descend to the level of zero, thus that comment or reply will never be hidden.
Too many zeroes and you lose your place as a trusted user. Thus people who live by the zero have the ratings hand over those who do not.
That’s how it seems to work.
You know better…as you always do, apparently.
Lay it on me.
AG
P.S. As far as I am concerned, repeatedly calling someone a “liar” on the basis of…of what, a couple of mistakes and your own feverish hatreds?…would be well over the edge for banning. On my old site, you would simply be banished to what I called “The Alley”…a place where anyone foolish enough to want to slop around in your paranoid mud would be welcome to deal with you in any digital manner imaginable or necessary.
Booman has communicated to me that he is no longer really interested in policing this site. He has other, better things to do. I understand completely.
I myself have the luxury of making my living ny playing a musical instrument…a very physically demanding instrument…and I need to practice it a lot to be at full capacity. That practice takes the form of maybe 5 or 10 minutes of practice and then several minutes of rest. During those rest periods I deal with my other interests. Booman Tribune is one of those interests, so I am trying to de-pollute its waters as well as I am able. In my opinion, you are one of the major polluters. I favor open discussion…spirited at times, but open. You favor snide snark and insults. It’s too bad…you obviously have a very high IQ, but you use it like a weapon. So it goes…actually first said by Moses when his servant lost the fish.
So it goes.
Later…
AG
P.S. Plus…do not bother downrate or zero out this post. I will simply reprint the entire thread as a standalone.
P.P.S. Part of your sig goes:
Opinions are like assholes: everyone has one.
This is very true.
But…some assholes…and some opinions as well…are very well cared for and relatively clean. Others? Not so much. I don’t know know about your asshole..nor do I ever aim to find out…but your opinions (and particularly the way you express them) stink to high hell.
Have a lovely night.
. . . gosh, your “old site” sounds like such a paradise (by your “lights”, i.e., lying with impunity perfectly acceptable) that one can only wonder why you’d opt to be here instead of there! [No, that was rhetorical! Not actually requesting a trillion words of blather in “explanation”! I actually don’t care!]
It had a radically different subject matter, for one. And also, larger sites dedicated to essentially the same subject matter made it easier for me to post there rather than to continue that site. Also…they were b]very well run and well policed. Someone like you would have been banned..after being warned…at about the second unfounded personal attack.
Have a nice day…
AG
. . . “a second unfounded personal attack” by me on anyone. Because it hasn’t happened.
LOL!!!
Thank you, arguebeneathme.
You made my afternoon.
AG
Any criticism of his behavior or disagreement with his opinions is a personal attack, by definition. It also proves you’re stupid, evil, and probably part of some sadowy conspiracy to suppress his genius.
You ask him to provide evidence of an unfounded personal attack? You might as well be asking a goldfish to build a campfire.
. . . “asking” (since I knew he couldn’t) as making the point that that “unfounded personal attack” accusation was yet another ag lie. With that point now further underlined by ag helpfully confirming that indeed he could not back it up.
. . . ag committing an actual “unfounded personal attack” by falsely accusing me of “unfounded personal attacks”, which of course, he can’t back up when challenged to put up or shut up, cuz it’s false. Yet he lacks the sense to just shut up in this situation (and — obviously! — the decency to retract/correct/apologize).
. . . of conscious, deliberate abuse of the ratings system.
So do they win in the short term but lose in the long term by creating a court that’s so out of touch with most Americans that it loses all influence and credibility? People aren’t going to sit quietly and watch their rights gutted.
Well people have sat quietly while watching their incomes being gutted why would rights be any different?
Disagree. You’re already seeing confrontations with public officials. They’re going to turn violent soon.
There was a point made on one of the MSNBC talkshows last night (may have been Last Word) that journalists covering political events and whatever the hell one wants to call those Trump rallies are doing their work without any tangible protection. It is only a matter of time, and that should be of concern to any of us.
. . . for
(Wish I could claim credit for first noting that parallel, but I stole it from [I forget, or I’d credit].)
Only in Murica’s failed “democracy” could the Supreme Court nominee of a majority (Dem) prez not even receive a senate hearing, but the next two nominees (and counting!) of the following democratically illegitimate (Repub) prez be quickly confirmed. That this is seen as “legal” and “legitimate” by our people and useless media demonstrates that the rot is total. That this is all permissible under the constitution shows the complete failure of that document—with a massive assist from the corrupt Repub party and nation’s CEOs and plutocrats, of course.
The Court is now completely illegitimate, as is the rest of the government. The Rule of Law is an empty, dry slogan, to be ritually mouthed by the most reactionary elements of the society. One may talk of theoretically “packing” the Court (adding justices) by amending the statute setting forth the size of the Court, but this would require enacting federal legislation, and as we all know this impossible absent the abolition of the legislative filibuster. It would also require a Dem electoral trifecta, and given the rigging of the election system and its certain defense by Roberts’ (Reinforced) Repubs, this is hard to envision.
Nevertheless, the Dems must go down fighting, however lost the cause. One would hope that they might at the very least cause some Repub heartburn by turning up the heat on their rhetoric, but this would not be commensurate with the crucial Keepin’ the Powder Dry(tm). Look away, Phillyland…..