Waiting for the Confirmation Vote Open Thread [KT]

Happy Saturday! Thanks to Krakatoa for setting up the day and to Misanthropic Humanitarian for reminding us this morning that there were things going on in the world other than the confirmation hearings.

Things are looking up, but after all that has happened the past few weeks, I'm still a little nervous about the vote today. How about you?

Susan Collins

My attitude toward Susan Collins has undergone some changes during this whole mess. There were the early death threats and rape threats against her and her staff if she didn't vote against Kavanaugh, which lent perspective to the reports of threats against Dr. Ford. Then there was her status as a hold-out, an obstruction to confirmation.

Then there was her speech yesterday. I haven't listened to the whole thing. Forty three minutes is a long speech these days. Here's a written transcript so you can maybe share excerpts.

The Return of Occupy

In case you were feeling nostalgic for Occupy

PROTEST LEADER: "I am going to go to Heidi Heitkamp’s office"

CHANTING: "I am going to go to Heidi Heitkamp’s office"

CONFUSED PROTESTER: "Why? She's on our side."

PROTEST LEADER:

Clues that Dr. Ford could be lying

Yesterday, Ace said:

I'm getting a little tired of bending over backwards to claim "something certainly happened" to Blasey. I think she's straight-up lying.

I can't be sure of that, of course.

But she seems to act in bad faith a lot. . . .

. . . for me, the worst example is the nasty passive-aggressive mean-girl insinauation she dropped about Leland Keyser, claiming, innocently-sounding, that she hopes that Leland Keyser gets over the "health challenges" she's having, strongly implying that Keyser has some kind of brain-affecting progressive disease like Alzheimer's.

Spoiler alert: It's not. She has back and neck problems. Nothing to do with the brain.

But Lil' Miss Innocent Baby-Talk Vocal Fry strongly implied that her "friend" was deranged.

Some friend.

I had never thought about it that way. I thought she was implying that her friend Leland was lying in a sworn statement because her health problems made it too hard to deal with the stress of telling the truth.

Anyway, one thing that made her statements seem suspect to me was when she said that she sent her letter to her congressional representative in July because she didn't know how to send it to Senator Feinstein. The San Francisco Chronicle had already noted that the letter had been "sent by a Stanford law professor on behalf of the accuser."

Neither of these people knew how to send a letter to Feinstein's office?

Anything about her testimony stand out as odd to you?

Two ONTs last night

WeirdDave was worried. Maetenloch's ONT was late, but it was worth the wait.

I would like to direct your attention to his Quote of the Day II, concerning Miguel Estrada. The Democratic Party has been the Party of Cruelty for a long time. I remember hearing a woman commentator making Estrada out to be a monster on Pacifica Radio during that time. Don't remember what she said, but it was so horrifying that I remember where I was when I heard it.

There's a lot of other content in that post worth of some deep attention.

Music

Bill Kristol doesn't deserve this. Ahoy!

Take care this weekend. Don't let politics consume you.

posted by Open Blogger at 11:33 AM

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