Handmaid's Tale files

In case you missed it, here’s a video of Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee laughing and congratulating themselves for taking a bold stance against a sexual assault victim during Thursday’s hellish hearing:


https://theslot.jezebel.com/republicans-on-the-senate-judiciary-committee-had-a-gre-1829387120


Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham had a big laugh, at Dr. Ford's expense.


Lindsey Graham was proud of his derailing technique, and Ted Cruz congratulated him, on a hatchet job, well done.

Jennifer Hayden
✔
@Scout_Finch
The good ol' boys are about to wrap it up. Laughing it up during a hearing on serious sexual assault allegations.

6:06 PM - Sep 27, 2018

Immediately after the hearing, the Republican members of the committee, as a mass, moved into a private conference room.

Closed venue, private event.


Hot mic picks up confusion between Grassley, Feinstein after hearing abruptly adjourns


September 28, 2018

US Senate Judiciary Committee chair Chuck Grassley (L) (R-IA) speaks with Democratic US Senator Dianne Feinstein


A hot mic picked up a notable exchange between Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley and ranking member Dianne Feinstein following the abrupt adjournment of the committee's Friday morning hearing.

After leaving the chamber for an extended period of time, Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake voted to advance Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination to the Senate floor, but called a delay of the Senate floor vote to allow the FBI to conduct an investigation into the claims of sexual misconduct Kavanaugh faces.



Flake stated that he was not ready to support Kavanaugh until an investigation is completed.

Once Flake was done speaking, Grassley adjourned the hearing due to the "two-hour rule," much to the surprise of both Flake and Feinstein.


The Arizona senator could be seen with a confused expression after the sudden adjournment, and a hot mic picked up Sen. Feinstein asking, "what?"

"The two-hour rule," Grassley explains.

"Huh, no vote?" Feinstein asks.

"When did we come in? At noon?" Grassley asks as the two debate the timing of the hearing.

"Is Flake's argument done?" she asks. "Or did you cut off a vote?"


Later in the exchange, Grassley says, "this is all a gentlemen and women's agreement," much to the surprise of Feinstein.

"Gentlemen and women's agreement?" She asked. "Let him say what he's committed to."



https://www.sfgate.com/politics/art...ake-kavanaugh-microphone-hearing-13266437.php

One Thursday, Republicans were celebrating. Not so much, on Friday.


"Mr. Chairman,” Whitehouse told Grassley, “given what’s happening in the anteroom, I think if some more time is needed I think you’d get a unanimous consent to push the vote back pretty easily. If you need a few more minutes.”

Grassley, though, was determined to hold the committee vote at 1:30 p.m. and declined to delay it.

Soon, more Republicans were in the room and conferring with one another.


Grassley allowed Flake to have the mic — and the senator announced his decision.

He was going to vote to approve Kavanaugh out of committee — but on one big condition: He would only vote on the full Senate floor if the FBI took a week to investigate the allegations against the judge.


This country is being ripped apart here, and we’ve got to ensure we do our due diligence,” Flake said.

Grassley suddenly shut the whole thing down citing “the two-hour rule.”

“What?!” Feinstein said to laughs.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/davidmack/jeff-flake-senate-brett-kavanaugh-vote-fbi

Betsy DeVos is trying to sweep rape back under the rug

September 6, 2018


If implemented, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s drafted rule would deprive the thousands of survivors of sexual assault like me of the right to use the Title IX process to seek justice and healing. At best, DeVos’s drafted rule would discourage students from reporting sexual violence; at worst, it would deny student survivors their civil rights. This would be especially harmful to survivors from currently and historically underserved communities, making the Title IX process even more inaccessible to marginalized students.


Among the changes included in the proposal is a narrower definition of sexual harassment: “unwelcome conduct on the basis of sex that is so severe, pervasive and objectively offensive that it denies a person access to the school’s education program or activity.” In other words, survivors may have to endure repeated and escalating harassment before they can file a Title IX complaint obliging their school to act, since their trauma would have to be so severe that they no longer have access to their education.



If we allow this policy to go forward, our entire society will be worse off for the entirely preventable loss of these survivors’ fullest contributions — dissertations left unwritten, championships not won, degrees left unfinished, careers sidetracked or completely derailed. That shame, that loss and that failure to uphold civil rights will be on this Education Department.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...ory.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.9f49aff6b1fa

Jim Carrey
@JimCarrey
·
Sep 24
Colleges care more about donors than the victims of on-campus rape. That's why women don't report it and why ENTITLED LITTLE SHITS like Injustice Kavanaugh get to party and pillage their way to the Supreme Court.I'd like to suggest a new uniform for the highest court in the land

11:54 AM · Sep 24, 2018

*balaclava hood/ ski mask to be added to Supreme Court Justice wardrobe, to hide Brett Kavanaugh's identity from his victims

"The Republicans held fast to their mendacious dodge:

"The poor dear meant well. She was just confused — and the true perps were the Democrats who were using her."


"Remember when Donald Trump said during the campaign that women who had abortions should be punished, before the anti-abortion movement hastily reminded him that he’d gone off message? Abortion is murder, the antis contend, but women aren’t the killers. They’ve just been duped by a libertine culture and unscrupulous butchers."



The notion that women are intemperate or perplexed by what it means to terminate a pregnancy also undergirds state laws that force abortion patients to wait days to get the procedure, or requires them to get an ultrasound — as if what being pregnant means is going to come as some kind of surprise.


This kind of “reasoning” should sound familiar to Kavanaugh too. He himself thought a seventeen-year-old undocumented minor seeking an abortion still didn’t know what she was doing even after she’d been dragged to a crisis pregnancy center, undergone mandatory counseling, and made her case before a judge.

The insult to injury of this position is that it elides its cruelty with infantilizing faux-compassion: It’s okay, little lady, you just don’t know your own mind. Brett knows best.



https://www.thecut.com/2018/09/brett-kavanaughs-familiar-logic.html

Another look at the Republican's version of Aunt Lydia, who fought for a job, eager to do the bidding of The Commanders-


Rachel Mitchell devotes no space whatsoever to analyzing her brief questioning of Kavanaugh, which was cut off part way through by Senate Republicans. That choice is so telling. Christine Blasey Ford was exceedingly polite, was put through hell, and still attempted to answer every question asked of her. Her every word is being parsed obsessively, and even the most minor inconsistencies are being held up as proof that she is not to be trusted. Kavanaugh had a meltdown, ducked and dodged question after question, and told a series of blatant lies. His words, however, are deemed to be not even worth looking into, let alone analyzed. It’s all such a nasty farce.

https://splinternews.com/rachel-mitchell-just-fully-exposed-herself-as-a-partisa-1829434198

October 1, 2018

On Sunday night, multiple news outlets were sent a copy of a five-page memo Mitchell had prepared for Senate Republicans, outlining all the reasons why she thought Ford’s story lacked credibility. To call it a shoddy hatchet job is to insult shoddy hatchet jobs.


The memo essentially takes Mitchell’s lines of questioning of Ford to their logical conclusion, making it clear that, even though she is supposedly a prosecutor, she was intent on undermining Ford’s story in the hearing.

Ah, there we have it.

A certain faction of the political spectrum has proudly announced their decision to demote women, to the status of second class citizens.

Their declaration-

Wealthy Republican men are too valuable to be held accountable for rape.


Women will be punished for the fact of their female birth.


Message to women ?


Wealthy Republican men will lie about you, if you choose to report the rape that you survived. If you interfere with the plans of future Commanders, you will be punished. They are working towards the birth of the Handmaids Tale, in America. Nothing will stand in their way.


OCTOBER 3, 2018


Trump stood before his fans in a closed, private event, and mocked a woman, and lied about her testimony during a hearing.

The remarks, which triggered laughter and applause from his supporters, made it clear that the president no longer cared to play along with Republican claims that they were empathetic to sexual assault survivors and were dedicated to providing Ford a fair hearing on her allegations.

Now, it appears that the rest of the party is falling in line with the president. On Wednesday, Sen. Mitch McConnell defiantly proclaimed that he and his Republican colleagues would not be deterred by sexual assault survivors who have confronted Republican lawmakers, including the Senate Majority Leader, in public this week to vote against Kavanaugh’s nomination. “I want to make it clear to these people who are chasing my members around the hall her here, or harassing them at the airports, or going to their homes,” McConnell said. “We won’t be intimidated by these people. There is no chance in the world they’re going to scare us out of doing our duty."

(Other Republican Senators declared their determined stance to elect a serial rapist to a lifetime position on the Supreme Court bench. A rapist that will put a legal stamp on their plans to take rights away from women, minorities, and LGBT community.)

https://www.motherjones.com/politic...publican-mocking-survivors-of-sexual-assault/

Long Live the Supreme Ultimate Commander of The Other Side of Alice in Wonderland's Looking Glass!

Long live the Commanders that killed the U.S. Constitution, and put those sluts! whores! bitches! cunts! in their place, under the boot-heels of American Men!

fuck

Rachel Mitchell proves herself to be a true Aunt Lydia


Mitchell made up her mind and then looked for things in the testimony” to bolster her own pre-determined conclusion.

October 4, 2018

Michelle Anderson, President of Brooklyn College and an expert in sexual assault law, called the memo a “detailed picking apart of Ford’s testimony” and a “collection of immaterial points and minor inconsistencies, some of which Mitchell did not even give Ford an opportunity to clarify under oath.


Former sex crimes prosecutor Matthew Long, who trained under Mitchell at the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office in Phoenix, called the memo “absolutely disingenuous” and asserted that “Mitchell doesn’t have sufficient information to even draw these conclusions.” A “reasonable prosecutor,” he added, would conduct a full investigation—which Mitchell did not do—before making any conclusion about whether or not to prosecute a case.


Many experts were also puzzled that Mitchell failed to analyze Kavanaugh’s testimony and demeanor during the hearing in the memo. Forgotten in the Republican blusterings is what is at issue here—not whether Kavanaugh should be prosecuted, but whether he is fit to sit on the Supreme Court.


In the scope of the Kavanaugh hearings, Mitchell has emerged as a version of Aunt Lydia from Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale—a woman willing to do the dirty work of the Republican party and the Trump administration, even though her own colleagues have determined that she should know better and survivors across the country were counting on her to do better.


Who was Aunt Lydia, Precious ?


Aunt Lydia, the calculatingly cruel mistress of the Red Center, is the horrifying pinnacle of lawful evil: a true believer who has convinced herself that her obsession with control, in ways that are often both physically and psychologically torturous, is for the greater good. Lydia is the kind of villain who adapts feelings of remorse and twists them around to instead only fortify her resolve. Who truly believes she is the righteous one and that the women whose minds and bodies she destroys are collateral damage on the way to a better world.

https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/chosen-one-of-the-day-aunt-lydia-from-the-handmaids-tale

What was Sen. Orrin Hatch's message to the women of America ?


"Thanks to Ladies Against Women, all women in America have lost."


"Don't you females get it ?"


"You have lost!"


"Do not bother us, anymore."



Democracy Now speaks with Eve Nester


OCTOBER 05, 2018

We speak with Eve Ensler, award-winning playwright and author of “The Vagina Monologues.” She is also the founder of V-Day, a movement to end violence against women and girls. She recently published “A Letter to White Women Who Support Brett Kavanaugh” in Time magazine. She says to sexual assault survivors watching the Kavanaugh nomination unfold, “Your pain matters. Your experience matters. The trauma that you have faced matters. And there are many of us, many of us supporting you, loving you, holding you as you try to heal from this experience.”


https://www.democracynow.org/2018/10/5/eve_ensler_to_white_women_supporting


A Letter to White Women Who Support Brett Kavanaugh

author- Eve Ensler

On Oct. 2, I watched the President of the United States mock a woman who had recounted the trauma of being sexually assaulted in front of the world, on live television.

This is what I wrote:

Dear white women who support Brett Kavanaugh,

Last night when I saw Donald Trump mock Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, I couldn’t help focusing on the women behind him who cheered and laughed. I felt like I was falling into a familiar nightmare. It compelled me to reach out to you.

I remember the first performances of my play The Vagina Monologues in Oklahoma City, when half the women in the audience came up to tell me they had been raped or battered. Most of them whispered it to me, and often I was the first and only person they had told. Until that moment, they had found a way to normalize it. Expect it. Accept it. Deny it.

(gsgs comment- What was it, that Sen. Orin Hatch meant, when he told rape survivors to grow up ?

Was the phrase "growing up," meant to interpreted as:

Trump loyalists will use the dirtiest, ugliest, the most corrupt, the most traitorous methods possible, to win a seat for Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court bench?


Is Sen. Orrin Hatch signaling to the women that protest, that all American women have lost, and that we had better accept it, and learn to live with it ?

Does he point to women living in the United States, that are expecting life to be less sexist, less abusive, and less dismissive, in 2020 ?

Is he telling women, that they had better wake up the idea that Sen. Orrin Hatch and the Trump alliance will be dragging them back, (screaming) into the pre-Liberation Era, and their future lives will resemble the Handmaid's Tale ?


Is Orrin Hatch shaking his head in disbelief, exclaiming his incredulousness at American women's blindness ? The legislature has been busy, tearing down women's access to an independent life for years.


/end gsgs comment)

Eve Ensler, continued-

(To the women, that laughed and applauded, as they watched the President of the United States mock a woman who had recounted the trauma of being sexually assaulted in front of the world, on live television.)

I write to you because we need you, the way I once needed my mother. We need you to stand with women who are breaking the silence in spite of their terror and shame. I believe inside the bodies of some of those women who laughed at that rally were other impulses and feelings they weren’t expressing.

Here is why I believe you should take this stand with me. Violence against women destroys our souls. It annihilates our sense of self. It numbs us. It separates us from our bodies. It is the tool used to keep us second-class citizens. And if we don’t address it, it can lead to depression, alcoholism, drug addiction, overeating and suicide. It makes us believe we are not worthy of happiness.


. I don’t think you want to apologize to your daughters forty years from now. Stop the ascension of a man who is angry, aggressive, and vengeful and could very well be a sexual assaulter. Time is short. Call your senators. Stop laughing and start fighting.

With all my love,

Eve


https://www.democracynow.org/2018/10/5/eve_ensler_to_white_women_supporting

Salt Lake Tribune

Tribune editorial: Hatch attack on alleged witness is despicable


The fact that no one involved in the Twitter attack on Julie Swetnick seems to see that is solid evidence that their opinion of who should and should not serve on the Supreme Court is to be ignored.

The despicable attack launched by Sen. Orrin Hatch and the Senate Judiciary Committee — more precisely, the Republicans on that committee — on one of the women who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault is a textbook example of why more victims do not come forward.

Worse, it betrays a positively medieval attitude toward all women as sex objects who cannot be believed or taken seriously.

Apparently, a former TV weatherman from Washington, D.C., provided the committee with a sworn statement revealing, allegedly, some details about Swetnick’s personal sexual preferences that are both none of anyone’s damn business and utterly irrelevant to the question of what Kavanaugh might or might not have done all those years ago.


What we now know for sure is that Hatch and others working for the Judiciary Committee have, without question, tried to slime one of Kavanaugh’s accusers in a way that is widely, and accurately, described as “slut-shaming."


http://time.com/5415254/white-women-brett-kavanaugh-donald-trump/

In embracing backlash we need to recognise, too, that this stance comes from a place of relative power; the ability to challenge the status quo is not a luxury that all women or people coming from a place of powerlessness can enjoy.

But we should not – more so, we cannot – waver. We should reject the narrative that the movements we are seeing are making the situation worse; that progress is being reversed. Change is not linear, and the retaliation may look like regression. Don’t be fooled – after all, we are just getting started.

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...o-has-gone-too-far-it-has-not-gone-far-enough

Sen. Lisa Murkowski Voted 'Present' Instead of 'No' on Kavanaugh as Favor to GOP Colleague


http://time.com/5417656/murkowski-vote-present-kavanaugh/

Time magazine's cover art

Dr. Christine Blaisey Ford's portrait, composed of the words that were used in her testimony, during the hearing


San Francisco-based artist John Mavroudis had a sense the cover illustration he just produced for Time magazine might turn into the most prominent and controversial work of his career.

After all, Mavroudis had inserted himself into the heated national debate about Christine Blasey Ford’s sexual assault accusation against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, using her own words from last Thursday’s Senate testimony to draw a powerful image of her face and right hand.

In a very bad situation, that’s one of the best things since Christine Blasey Ford’s case has come to light, the fact other women are feeling free to tell their stories,’’ Mavroudis said. “I was on the BART train coming into work when I read it and I was like, ‘Oh my God.’’’

The online reaction to Mavroudis’ striking typographical portrait, which depicts Ford with her eyes closed and her right hand raised as she’s being sworn to testify in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has been predictably mixed.


https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...art-christine-blasey-ford-history/1528190002/


Joan McCarter
Joan McCarter
@joanmccarter
This isn't a failure of Democrats. It's McConnell & Grassley breaking the Senate, McGahn breaking the FBI, and all of them helping Trump burn all the institutions down.

For what? Tax cuts?

2:37 PM · Oct 6, 2018

Joan McCarter
@joanmccarter

It wasn't Avenatti (tho he did little to help, tbh) and it wasn't a failure on the part of the Dems.

It's the total moral collapse of the GOP (minus Murkowski and plus Manchin), the total capitulation to Trump. Not even capitulation. Collaboration.

2:37 PM · Oct 6, 2018

F.B.I. was ordered to fail. The F.B.I. chose to fail women, fail our country, and follow the orders of a deranged despot.

Thanks, F.B.I. /end sarcasm sequence


Joan McCarter
@joanmccarter
50 senators confirm ultra-partisan right-wing perjurer and sexual predator to Supreme Court

4:10 PM · Oct 6, 2018

50 senators confirm ultra-partisan right-wing perjurer and sexual predator to Supreme Court

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/20...perjurer-and-sexual-predator-to-Supreme-Court


Joan McCarter
Joan McCarter
@joanmccarter
·
2h
Because it's final. Trump and McConnell have destroyed the Senate to destroy the SCOTUS. If a perjurer and would-be rapist can serve there, the SCOTUS, the Senate that approved him, and the White House that put him forward have all lost all legitimacy

4:04 PM · Oct 6, 2018



Joan McCarter
Joan McCarter
@joanmccarter
·
8h
.
@SenatorCollins
put her judgment ahead of the ABA, ahead of thousands of law professors.

Ahead of retired Justice John Paul Stevens.

Presumably for a handful of magic beans from McConnell

10:45 AM · Oct 6, 2018


Collins’ own political plans are up in the air. Collins, 65, has not yet said whether she will seek re-election in 2020. Last year she considered a run for governor, but after weeks of speculation decided to stay in the Senate.

Gideon said she has never heard anything that leads her to believe that Collins won’t seek re-election.

“She has become increasingly a more reliable vote for her party since the party gained control of all branches of the federal government. Her vote is less and less about Mainers,” Gideon said.

Paula Jean Swearengin
Paula Jean Swearengin
@paulajean2018
·
Oct 5
Women are back at
@Sen_JoeManchin
's campaign headquarters in Charleston, WV! They have the office locked today! If you can, stop by and give them some suppor

2:36 PM · Oct 5, 2018


Paula Jean Swearengin
Paula Jean Swearengin
@paulajean2018
·
Oct 5
.
@Sen_JoeManchin
just gave women all across the country a middle finger! We have to organize and get real people servants elected into office in the future!

#UniteOurFight
#EndCorruption
#PeopleFunded

4:12 PM · Oct 5, 2018


Paula Jean Swearengin
Paula Jean Swearengin
@paulajean2018
·
7h
"You all realize that Joe just tossed the ball to Patrick. Kavanaugh will more than likely decide Morrisey’s lawsuit to repeal the mandate that health insurers must cover pre existing conditions. At least with Morrisey, I know I’m getting a Republican." - Elizabeth Opyoke

12:00 PM · Oct 6, 2018

Stone Cold
@stonecold2050
Mylar CEO Heather Bresch, who increased EpiPen prices 461% while giving herself a 471% pay raise is Joe Manchin’s daughter. Do you still think we must keep him in office because he’s a Democrat ?

12:22 PM · Oct 6, 2018

Nine charged with trespassing at Manchin's office after protesting Kavanaugh


Jake Zuckerman Staff writer Oct 1, 2018


Seventeen women originally entered the office just after 2 p.m. Monday, making it known they would not leave until Manchin pledged to oppose Kavanaugh’s confirmation. Though they successfully got Manchin to agree to a nearly 40-minute conference call that they shared on social media, they could not get him to take a position one way or another on Kavanaugh.

Lt. Autumn Davis of the Charleston Police Department declined to comment Tuesday morning, although she said nine people had been charged.


Manchin is running for re-election against state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, a Republican who has voiced steady support for Kavanaugh since his nomination.

Though Manchin’s staff used campaign signs as makeshift curtains over the office windows, media and onlookers outside saw Charleston police officers handcuff the women and take them outside just after 1 a.m. Tuesday through gaps in the blockade.

https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/...cle_6b21989f-0a19-50ea-8168-be4957efe70f.html

Are Republicans Blaming Women for their choice of Brett "Rapey" (Mc) Kavanaugh ?


Republicans - "This is your fault. You made us do this. You pushed us too far."



Brett Kavanaugh’s terrible non-apology reminded experts of the language of abuse

OCT 5, 2018

https://thinkprogress.org/brett-kav...aa9b&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter


To many experts, those words mirrored the language often used by abusers.

Nicole Bedera, a researcher at the University of Michigan studying sexual violence and masculinity, told ThinkProgress the column read to her like a classic abuser apology. When abusers apologize, Bedera said, they make victims feel as if everything is their fault, rather than taking any blame themselves.

“In the case of abuser, they tell the survivor, ‘I know that what I did wasn’t good, but I only did it because I was pushed too far,'” Bedera said.


That, she said, was precisely what Kavanaugh did in his column.

Bedera said she was also struck by Kavanaugh’s promise that his aggressive, angry outbursts would not happen again.

“But the thing we know about abusers is they will do it again,” she said. “If it were really a one-off, he wouldn’t have to work this hard.”

Understanding the ways in which Kavanaugh has employed different, specific damage-control tactics, Bedera noted, is particularly important.



“If [an] institution responds poorly and supports a culture that makes these sorts of events more likely… the institutional betrayal adds harm over and above the personal,” Freyd explained, adding, “Dr. Blasey Ford was the victim of very great institutional betrayal."


Freyd said she believes the effects of the abuse won’t stop with Ford. Though she has been unable to research it, she expects that people who empathize or identify with Ford will experience the harms of institutional betrayal because of the way many Republicans in Congress and in the White House have responded to the allegations.

“It’s affecting our wellbeing, our bodies and our minds,” she said. “It’s almost like we went through this natural disaster except it’s not a natural disaster. It’s all human made."


https://thinkprogress.org/brett-kav...aa9b&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter


gsgs comment

They betray each other.

They betrayed their own country.

They decided to betray citizens, a long time, ago.

/end gsgs comment

Is a Supreme Court Justice placed on the bench, so that they can take revenge on the people that opposed his appointment ?


"This is a circus,” Kavanaugh said at one point, his voice rising to a pitch.

“The consequences will extend long past my nomination."

" The consequences will be with us for decades."

"This grotesque and coordinated character assassination will dissuade confident and good people of all political persuasions from serving our country and as we all know in the political system of the United States in the early 2000s,..."

"what goes around comes around.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...d2d65b86d0c_story.html?utm_term=.22536b92938e



Susan Collins’s Declaration of Cowardice


Collins made no mention of McConnell ignoring the Merrick Garland nomination for nearly a year, deploying the “nuclear option” to deny minority influence over Supreme Court confirmations and saying he would “plow right through” despite the Ford allegations, which he called “a good smear” with a “complete lack of evidence."

She praised Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), who on his way to her speech had said Republican women don’t want to serve on his committee because “it’s a lot of work” (aides pushed him to recant), and who earlier was joined by Trump in alleging that George Soros paid the sexual assault survivors who protested.

She properly lamented the “great disunity,” “extreme ill will” and loss of “common values.” Certainly, there is much to regret about the confirmation process, and the late emergence of assault allegations (although Democrats’ reluctance to introduce an anonymous allegation and their insistence on an investigation was the opposite of McCarthyism). But how can Collins talk about “ill will” while ignoring its primary author?

To be worthy of Margaret Chase Smith, Collins would have to take a personal risk and use her pulpit and her vote to denounce the misogynist who leads her party and her colleagues who enable him. Without that, her message is a Declaration of Cowardice.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...d2d65b86d0c_story.html?utm_term=.22536b92938e

McConnell ripped up Senate precedent in the Spring of 2016 when he blocked the normal confirmation process for Merrick Garland, President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee to replace Justice Antonin Scalia. He insisted that it was the Senate’s responsibility to deny Obama his Constitutional right to nominate a Supreme Court justice, because, in an election year, the vacancy should be filled by whoever wins in order to let American voters weigh in (even though they already had by electing Obama by a considerable margin, twice). So the Majority Leader used his power to ignore Garland’s nomination, proudly tell off the president, and disable the Court for almost a full year.


Indeed, with his dream achieved on Saturday, McConnell admitted that his whole stated premise for blocking Garland — that it was, as he once said, “about a principle, not a person” — was bullshit — unless taking over the judicial branch by any means necessary was the principle. Asked if he would commit to not confirming a Trump nominee to the Supreme Court if another vacancy happened in 2020, McConnell replied, “We’ll see what it looks like in 2020. First, do we have a vacancy? Second, who is in charge of the Senate?”

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligence...-stacking-will-outlast-kavanaugh-outrage.html


Mitch McConnell is irritated by women, protesting.

Mitch McConnell is confident that the mob of annoying women will not persist, and the noise will "blow over."


https://www.cbsnews.com/live-news/b...-stream-senate-confirmation-today-2018-10-06/


After Mitch McConnell went to the Senate floor to reassure everyone that these things blow over the way they always do as long as Republicans win, he said that "the mob" had energized Republicans for the midterms.

Joy Reid was not having it for a minute, even as Chris Matthews repeated his words as if they were gospel.

Joy shot back, "And the mob are WOMEN."

"Mitch McConnell -- his breathtaking hypocrisy is almost creepily admirable," she observed. "He can pretend that history hasn't happened."

Warming up, she began to list McConnell's accomplishments. "This is the man who broke the United States Senate. This is the man who presided over a record number of filibusters, who said they would make President Obama a one-term president, who said ,'You will not fill this Supreme Court seat' to the President of the United States, who claimed for himself the sole right to decide what President gets to fill a Supreme Court seat," she said, voice rising as she ticked off all of the ways he's wrecked our government.

Not pausing to let anyone interject, Reid went on: "To almost 400 days in the end, this man HELD OPEN the seat vacated by the death of Antonin Scalia, not let the President, duly elected, who won a MAJORITY of the popular vote unlike the current guy, he wouldn't let him fill a Supreme Court seat."

"Merrick Garland still sits on a Federal Appeals Court, not even spoken to!" she exclaimed. "Senate members wouldn't even meet with Merrick Garland!"


Winding up her thoughts, she said, "Mitch McConnell's hypocrisy is so unbelievable! I cannot believe that there is a human being, a figure in American politics who can break the United States Senate, deploy the nuclear option to force through Neil Gorsuch, and then claim that Democrats are the ones who destroyed the comity!"


https://crooksandliars.com/2018/10/joy-reid-breathes-fire-mitch-mcconnells/amp


on youtube

Protests continue after Kavanaugh confirmation


Live Video: Protesters Scream as Senators Take Final Vote on Judge Drinky


7 hours, 36 minutes ago

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/art...m_as_Senators_Take_Final_Vote_on_Judge_Drinky


I do not consent!


Over the screams of protest, Mitch McConnell plowed right through

BREAKING: GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell says regardless of an accusation of attempted rape, they will ‘plow right through’ with Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court pic****itter.com/lHDikSxnk0

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) September 21, 2018

https://www.esquire.com/news-politi...-ram-brett-kavanaugh-through-mitch-mcconnell/

Susan Collins you are a betrayer of women.

— Molly Ringwald (@MollyRingwald) October 5, 2018


Molly Ringwald
@MollyRingwald

Susan Collins you are a betrayer of women.

4:35 PM · Oct 5, 2018

Rape Culture Inside the Republican Party


The Republicans pleaded with Orange Cheeto-lini tRump to pick another candidate for Supreme Court Judge.

tRump would not change his mind.

Why did the Republicans try to steer tRump away from Kavanaugh ?


The Republicans knew everything.


The public was left unaware, but secrets are kept as mutual blackmail in the Republican party. No one speaks to anyone outside of a trusted circle, of their own personal alliance, unless they are answering to a higher powered alliance. There are enormous amounts of money involved. I could see why Putin would encourage a split between sane Republicans that flinched when Brett Kavanaugh was forced on them, and members of the tRump alliance, determined to get Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court at any price, including throwing themselves into the fire.

Now, the USA is more divided than ever. Rape victims of the USA are now pitted against the men that support Kavanaugh. Yet, another division Men VS Women. As if the War Against Women was not obvious, enough.

Twenty percent U.S. households tuned in to watch Ford describe what was probably the worst moment of her life, when, she said, two boys laughed uproariously and turned up the music to drown out her screams while one (put his hand over her mouth, to silence her screams) tried to force himself on her.


(What saved Dr. Christine Ford from rape, was her one piece bathing suit, under her clothes. Kavanaugh was violent enough to attempt rape, too drunk to focus. Kavanaugh was too drunk to understand that she could not breathe.)

In her testimony, Ford also said that she ran into Mark Judge about six to eight weeks after the attack while he was working in a local supermarket. If Judge worked at the supermarket in August of 1982, an attack on the first night of July that year would be consistent with the timeline of Ford’s recollection.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/topic/brett-kavanaugh?page=4


Mark Judge turned pale with panic, when Dr. Ford walked into his workplace location, after Kavanaugh tried to rape her. His secret life was in direct conflict with his daytime job.


What was Mark Judge afraid of ?

Did Mark Judge supply Brett Kavanaugh with more victims to rape, from the list of teens he worked with, at the supermarket ? Or, was there an agreement that they would not risk their reputations at work, because secrecy could not be guaranteed ?

Mark Judge knew what he had done, and what was done to her. Mark Judge may not have had a conscience, but he did have a memory. He was afraid of the consequences for his participation. If Mark Judge did not jump on the bed, during the attempted rape, Kavanaugh might have killed a 15 year old girl, by asphyxiation. Here lies the question- Was it the habit of Kavanaugh, to silence his rape victims with his hand, after he drugged them with Rohypnol ?


Did Brett Kavanaugh kill a girl, somewhere along the line ? Did his university friends cover up a murder ? Did he intend to cause his victims to lose consciousness, so that they did not struggle and resist rape ? Did the university cover it up, by saying it was suicide, or accidental death ?

"The government cupped its hands over women’s mouths and turned the music up."

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/topic/brett-kavanaugh?page=4

Dr. Christine Ford faced a decision. To break her silence, or to remain silent. This is what Brett Kavanaugh discovered when he was a teen. He could do horrible things to young women, and they would remain silent about what was done to them.

He could commit these crimes, without facing any consequences, because of Rape Culture traditions had found the vulnerable cracks in the social structure.

A woman that admitted to being of a victim of rape, automatically became a woman toppled from her pedestal. She had unknowingly made herself an enemy of men, because she touched the third rail of sacred/profane. Woman do not speak of the penis in public, women do not speak of rape in public. For fucks sake, Kavanaugh's early victims could not tell their best friends that they were raped. They had to couch their warnings in hints, about not going upstairs to use the bathroom, because it was dangerous -because there were beds. Fear of what a rapist and his friends might do to a rape victim "that talked," kept the knowledge inside small cells. Is this how you get the statistics ?

One out of four friends, is raped.

She, or he, tells their close friends. The other three friends know who raped the victim. They avoid the rapist.

What is said in the cell, stays in the cell.

Meanwhile, Brett Kavanaugh pretends that he is his own Town Cryer, in the halls of his school. He sings a song of disinformation- He falsely advertises his sexual prowness, when he completely lacks the skills of seduction-he raped a young woman, and yet he slut shames her, and tells his school associates that her sexual drive is so strong, that her self restraint in non-existent...

He has no self-restraint at all.

He just proved it it, by his act of singing this song of defamation in his very own school. Has he fallen so far, that he now arrives at school in a drunken state ? He will leave the school, and enter university in the same drunken state. He will join others, like himself, that rape, because the university turns a blind eye to Rape Culture.

Erasing and Disappearing Non-Republicans


What is not discussed, is the un-ending effort to erase and disappear anyone that presents an opposition to the utter domination by the Republican party, through Evangelist Christians, and multi-national conglomerate corporations.

Between utterly selfish people, that are willing to sell out the citizens of America, hysteria of people that see White Domination ebbing away, and a willingness to deny reality, and drag everyone back to the brutality and inhuman conditions, of a system based on fear, pain, suffering, and death.

The vicious kick of the Fascist jackboot, to the gut. The heel of the boot that crushes the face.

Elections have become dependent on money.

If people cannot find employment that lifts them above poverty, and the government no longer provides services to help people in need ? The working classes will not have spare money to invest in their election choices.

As it is, there are states engineer ways to deny people their right to vote.

Click to expand...

Through Republican efforts, a major step to dis-empowering non-Republicans has been taken. The USA could have had a surplus. The Republicans engineered a ready excuse to deny funds, resources, and help, to those that need them. Republicans point to mountain of deficits and debt, neglecting to state that it was Republicans that legislated them into place.

Same as it ever was, same as it ever was,...

-Talking Heads

Republicans targeted women, because women are a major voting block, and the majority of women occupy a lower economic standing on the ladder. Economically burdened with children, and elderly parents.

Republicans took away access to reproductive health care, birth control, and abortion.

Mitch McConnell stepped forward to champion the removal of health care for the elderly, the ill, the damaged, and the disabled. Ted Cruise stepped forward to give insurance companies a weapon against people that need health care.

OCT 17, 2018

https://thinkprogress.org/ted-cruz-...to-defend-a-key-part-of-the-law-ae616b058506/

If you are not a Wealthy, White, Male, Republican supporter, or a woman that supports Republicans, you are a target of Republican hostility and aggression

Women screamed, cried, pleaded, directly into the ears and faces of Republicans.The answer the women received, was that their agony, their suffering, the damage they lived with, did not matter. Republican men voted with Republican men. That meant voting against women.

This week, Republicans used truth as a weapon.

(Unusual, is it not ?)

Elizabeth Warren was not given wise and informed advice. She unwittingly inserted herself into an issue.


https://theintercept.com/2018/10/19/elizabeth-warren-dna-native-americans/

The Cherokee Nation just this week had decided to challenge a recent decision by a federal judge in Texas who declared a law called the Indian Child Welfare Act unconstitutional.

The federal judge decided earlier in the month that the law was unconstitutional, based on the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection clause—in essence, arguing that Native American families were being given preferential treatment based on race.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/10/elizabeth-warren-dna-test-native-american.html

Native Americans have been struggling against Republican aims, for their own survival.

Ramona Peters addresses the need for an Indigenous perspective in conservation work. She states, “ The disconnect between Western science and traditional knowledge has caused the land to be abused. Characterization of plant life only around what benefits humans can derive reminds me that Westerners have been charged with the mission to dominate the earth through the 1452 papal bull of Pope Nicholas V.” Redefining conservation through an Indigenous lens, Ka‘imi Hermosura speaks about the obligations of being a good environmental steward that stems from Native Hawaiian cosmology: “ There are many responsibilities in growing taro, but also there is an exchange of mana, or chi, because you love to do it.” And Elizabeth (Tis) Peterman raises concern over the impact of large-scale mining on the Tlingit sacred headwaters and the resulting loss of food security, warning that “ The short term gain of these mines is at odds with our long term survival. Mines and clean water are not compatible.”

https://www.culturalsurvival.org/pu...ur-lands-and-lifeways-protecting-sacred-lands

Office of Refugee Resettlement
Health and Human Services

The Health Department’s Christian Crusade

The religious right has infiltrated the office of Health and Human Services, and reproductive rights are the first target


October 24, 2018

Late into the night, ( March 2017) the officials were huddling about how to handle the situation down in San Antonio. They began drafting a directive that would radically reimagine the role of incoming ORR director Lloyd, granting him unprecedented power over the pregnant, underage girls who ended up in the agency’s custody — including the power to make “all medical decisions for the unaccompanied alien child in place of the child’s parents.”


Before Scott Lloyd was even sworn in as the head of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), he ordered an accounting of all pregnant girls in the office’s custody.


ORR director Scott Lloyd believes every abortion should be subject to his personal authorization.


"Even when he’s not personally meeting with minors, he is finding new ways to inject himself into their decision-making process,” says Brigitte Amiri, an ACLU lawyer who’s suing HHS over ORR’s abortion policy. “That right there is just a stunning abuse of power and imposition of ideology — his own personal religious ideological opposition to abortion — on these young people.”

"The idea that [Lloyd] could conclude that an abortion, which is constitutionally protected in the U.S., was contrary to the best interest of everyone — every unaccompanied minor in his custody — was horrifying,” says New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood, who led a group of 19 state attorneys general who filed an amicus brief supporting the girl’s right to access. And the fact that Kavanaugh could see merit in the argument, she added, was an ominous sign for reproductive rights nationwide — but at the time, no one knew how ominous.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politi...-and-human-services-abortion-policies-738904/

25 October 2017


"The teen's case “is a canary in the coal mine,” Ms Amiri said. “It is emblematic of what is to come


“It shouldn't take dozens of lawyers for anyone to get an abortion, and that's what it took in this case,” said Susan Hays, legal director for Jane's Due Process.



https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...d-immigrant-teenager-court-case-a8020381.html

Ladies Against Women

The Aunts Sold Themselves for A Job And Sold Women Out


Allied Progress
Allied Progress
@AlliedProgress
·
Oct 4
Trump’s
@CFPB
Nominee
@KathyKraninger
has yet to comment on Eric Blankenstein’s racist and sexist writing. Her silence is deafening.
WWKKD?

#FireBlankenstein #ProtectConsumers

Trump’s CFPB Nominee Has Yet to Comment on Blankenstein’s Racist and Sexist Writing

https://alliedprogress.org/news/wwkkd-what-will-kathy-kraninger-do/

Allied Progress Retweeted
Karl Frisch
Karl Frisch
@KarlFrisch
·
Sep 28
Eric Blankenstein lamented that a woman who “‘f***s someone she shouldn't have’” can “‘get rid of the problem’” with an abortion, but men can't. Now he runs the
@CFPB's fair lending office. Tell
@MickMulvaneyOMB
to #FireBlankenstein!
#ProtectConsumers

5:35 PM · Sep 28, 2018


Allied Progress
Allied Progress
@AlliedProgress
·
Oct 4
THIS IS INSANE. Eric Blankenstein claimed abortion laws were partially to blame when a man murdered the mother of his child to avoid paying child support. Now he oversees
@CFPB
fair lending enforcement. It’s time for
@MickMulvaneyOMB
to #FireBlankenstein and #ProtectConsumers.


Women are using their hands to lift other women higher, and women in higher positions pull other women higher. The Aunts dig their obscenely expensive high heels into the backs of women as if they were a staircase of corpses. The Aunts reach the top by standing on all other women, only to reach out, and across to The Extremist Radical Right, and take possesion of the bayonet. The Aunts stab downwards.

Walkouts are becoming more common, during this "modern age" of high tech.


Inequality is a huge issue, and not just with women.


It has become glaring, to an intolerable level.

Democratic Women Help Seize House & 7 Governorships in Historic Midterm

November 7, 2018

CAROL ANDERSON:

When we’re looking at what we’re seeing right now, is that the number of votes that it takes, because of the massive gerrymandering that we have going on, it still is part of that thing where it requires a blue tsunami in order to get a blue trickle. And we need to have that as part of our analysis.

(gsgs comment- This time around, it was the toadies and servants that lied, cheated, and were stealing Democracy from Democrats.)

https://www.democracynow.org/2018/11/7/carol_anderson_massive_voter_suppression_could


The last time we had an economy this good during a midterm was in 1998, when the party in power actually picked up seats in the House. The fact that Democrats did so well in face of such huge headwinds is a rebuke to Donald Trump and no one else. Suburban voters simply got tired of his racist and xenophobic schtick and turned on him en masse. The result was a historic victory for progressives.

https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-d...e-election-was-still-a-blowout-for-democrats/

Getting to Equal: Three Ways We Can All Fight for Gender Mainstreaming in the U.S

November 7, 2018

http://msmagazine.com/blog/2018/11/07/getting-equal-three-ways-can-fight-gender-mainstreaming-u-s/

Gender Mainstreaming


The ultimate goal is to achieve gender equality.”

As such, gender equality is the overarching and long-term development goal, while gender mainstreaming is a set of specific, strategic approaches as well as technical and institutional processes adopted to achieve that goal. Gender mainstreaming integrates gender equality in national public and private organizations, in central or local policies, and in services and sectoral programmes. In the long run, it aims to transform discriminatory social institutions, laws, cultural norms and community practices, such as those limiting women’s access to property rights or restricting their access to public space

http://www.unwomen.org/en/how-we-work/un-system-coordination/gender-mainstreaming


#1: Speak up for a systems approach.


#2: Consider CEDAW

Nearly all members of the United Nations ratified the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), but the U.S. never did, and our elected officials still refuse to do so. CEDAW lays a roadmap to addressing many hot topics in the U.S.—including reproductive rights, maternity leave and affordable child care.

#3: Follow the funding

As gendered inequities are better understood, we must allocate funding to implement programs that close those gaps. Our neighbors to the north are making progress on this: Earlier this year, Canada performed their first ever gender analysis of the federal budget and identified several key areas.

http://msmagazine.com/blog/2018/11/07/getting-equal-three-ways-can-fight-gender-mainstreaming-u-s/

gotsnowgotslush said:

September 27, 2018

https://www.esquire.com/news-politi...avanaugh-hearing-republicans-white-male-rage/

CHARLES P. PIERCE WRITES


Brett Kavanaugh's hearing devolved into an exhibition of furious contempt for those who would keep him from what he's entitled

The Hour of Angry White Male Rage had come 'round at last.

What emerged on Thursday was a stunning outburst of wounded privilege and raging contempt for people who would deny him that to which he was entitled.



CHARLES P. PIERCE

Senator Cory Booker pinned him on whether or not he thought Dr. Ford was part of a "calculated and orchestrated political hit," Kavanaugh as much as crawled under the table. He smarmily retreated to the notion that something really bad may have happened to Ford, but that his alleged grinding on her while Mark Judge giggled and turned up the stereo wasn't it.


And "(Democrat's) revenge on behalf of the Clintons"?





https://thinkprogress.org/brett-kav...raw-widespread-criticism-online-912c64cfb31f/


CHARLES P. PIERCE

Oh, and that threat right there at the end? The going around and the coming around. He will overturn Roe now, not merely because he thinks it's bad law, but because the circus made him do it. He will have his revenge on all these drones who put him and the kids through this "hell," and it will come from the highest court in the land.


https://www.esquire.com/news-politi...avanaugh-hearing-republicans-white-male-rage/

Click to expand...

Kavanaugh is childish, reckless and irrational. He's also prone to temper-tantrums. This is exactly the OPPOSITE of the sort of person who should be on the Supreme Court.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...ht-and-left-rallies-descend-on-portland-again

https://www.oregonlive.com/portland...ortland_rallies_involving_patriot_prayer.html



https://www.wweek.com/news/courts/2...and-police-can-keep-warring-protesters-apart/


Here, we have the larval presence of what would give birth to Handmaiden soldiers.