"Kavanaugh confirmation draws a range of reaction from women" by Stephanie Ebbert Globe Staff October 06, 2018
The events of the past week took many women back to that sunken place where they found themselves the day after the 2016 election, felled by the sudden recognition of their place in American politics.
“I had to spend a few hours curled up on my couch,” Jane Piercy, 56, of Brookline, said outside the State House on Friday night. “I’m not making that up, either. I just felt sick,” but she did not stay home for long. On Friday night, Piercy was among the hundreds who rushed to Beacon Hill to protest the Senate’s handling of sexual assault allegations raised against Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh and the devastating implication that, a year into the #MeToo movement, and with Kavanaugh now confirmed as a justice, women are still not being heard.
“The message is, women don’t matter,” Piercy said at the protest. “I guess that’s why we’re here — because we don’t believe that. I’m not giving up without a fight.”
That is not true at all.
I don't see why I have to say it again after 12 years here, but women matter very much. Much of this blog has dealt with issues that matter to women -- a divergence from the original goals of this blog which were 9/11 truth, ending the wars, and keeping the Republicans from stealing the 2006 election. Look at how far we have come.
I know my attitude is a bit parochial regarding "women rights," whatever that means. Somehow it is equated with being allowed to kill like men in the military, without any recognition of their special gift to bring forth life. Let's face it, the species does not continue without women. They are something worth protecting.
And I'm not minimizing the sexual abuse stories, either. Until a few years ago, I had no idea how pervasive the problem was (along with the elite pedophilia, which receives little coverage in my pre$$ outside the Catholic Church and educational institutions) and really have to offer my apologies to all. I don't have any answers at this stage, and there doesn't seem to be much consensus out there.
What I have noticed is that the women of Gaza, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, and all the other places the U.S. is waging either overt or covert warfare, be it military might or economic privation, are all but ignored by my Globe and national pre$$. I could throw out Haiti off the top of my head as another example. Can't even remember the last time the Globe wrote an article about them.
The message ricocheted, too, around Washington, D.C., where the Senate gallery erupted in loud and sustained protest as Vice President Mike Pence called for a vote on Kavanaugh’s confirmation. One woman began screaming, “I do not consent!” and others chanted, “Shame on you!”
Many women had already channeled their anger from the 2016 election — when the electorate shrugged off Donald Trump’s boast that, as a celebrity, he could grope women at will, and anointed him president — into a record number of congressional candidacies in the midterm elections, now just weeks away, and though it pained many to hear sexual misconduct allegations, this time leveled at Kavanaugh, again dismissed as politicized, fictitious, or inconsequential, they were, this time, ready to bounce back.
Next Sunday marks the one-year anniversary of the birth of the #MeToo movement — a hashtag campaign begun on Twitter encouraging women to divulge their own experiences with sexual harassment and assault. The reckoning that followed was staggering. A Bloomberg report last week tallied at least 425 prominent people — almost all men — publicly accused of sexual misconduct, from lewd comments to rape, but the president came away unscathed and many women reacted angrily to the idea that a Supreme Court nominee, too, could shake off accusations, even in this changed climate.
I read somewhere once that "the movement began as all movements do -- on Twitter," but couldn't find it in the stacks of printed papers when I was inactive. Not only did they out themselves as controlled opposition waging a political cudgel, it also disrespected the history of movements throughout this country when there was no Twitter, from the Revolutionary War to Martin Luther King Jr. Goes to show you that these protests the pre$$ take such an approving interest in are nothing but agenda-pushing organs designed to lead you astray.
The Senate Republican majority leader derided the claims as a political smear campaign and that outraged voters like Piercy, a member of the NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts Foundation board of directors. “That’s just a cover,” she said. “Susan Collins has lost all credibility with me. You can’t say, ‘I believe her,’ and then vote to confirm him. She’s trying to have it both ways.”
The vote for Kavanaugh drew a very different reaction on the other side of the widening chasm in American politics. To many conservative women, Kavanaugh’s confirmation was vindication. They viewed the last-minute revelation of a 36-year-old sexual assault claim from high school as a cynical last-ditch effort by liberals to derail the confirmation of a justice who will tilt the court conservative, and many saw it as the culmination of a rush to judgment against men — first seen in the epidemic of sexual assault cases on college campuses, and later in the trial-by-Twitter ostracization rituals of the #MeToo movement.
That is a surprising paragraph seeing as the Globe usually presents women as this monolithic force with a hive-like mentality akin to the Borg, not as a kaleidoscope with different views.
In the heated days that followed Ford’s and Kavanaugh’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, support for Kavanaugh among Republican women rose to 69 percent, according to a Morning Consult/Politico poll. That figure was 49 percent just days earlier.
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, a national antiabortion group, lauded Kavanaugh’s confirmation and said in a statement, “Senate Democrats should be ashamed of exploiting human pain and the serious issue of sexual assault for a partisan political agenda. Americans saw through the vilification of an exceptionally qualified nominee and their senators will be held accountable.”
Yeah, you read that right. Susan B. Anthony was opposed to abortion.
Related:
"Supporting victims of sexual abuse should not come at the expense of due process, others argue. Dr. Paul Braaton, a board member with the Catholic Medical Association (CMA), said that the group of medical professionals is committed to working with those impacted by sexual abuse within the church. “I think a lot of people, particularly on the left, have jumped into guilty until proven innocent, and I don’t think that’s the way it should be,” Braaton said. Antiabortion groups also stood by Kavanaugh throughout the confirmation process. “Such a circus of hate in order to preserve the ability to abort America,” tweeted Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List. With Saturday’s vote, the Kavanaugh confirmation battle has nearly concluded, but what will endure for Catholics, said Zach Hiner, the executive director of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), is the desire to see a new day for their church. Many are tired of the scandals and want to know what they can do to make them stop....."
It's going to take a miracle, and I can see why Catholics would feel that way.
Also see: Pope OKs study of Vatican archives into McCarrick scandal
The solution is spending less time in church.
Senators like Collins and McConnell also faulted the many activists and sexual assault survivors who protested angrily in Washington for the chaotic atmosphere. On Friday night, McConnell told Fox host Laura Ingraham, “They’ve been after all of us. We’ve sort of been under assault, and everybody decided to stand up to the mob and not be intimidated by these people.”
Thankfully, no one was hurt or worse.
Where conservatives saw a mob and liberal exploitation, sexual assault survivors saw a pattern of political indifference to the suffering of women unchanged by the Women’s March, the #MeToo movement, or even Anita Hill’s testimony of sexual harassment before the Senate Judiciary Committee 27 years earlier. Still, they pledged to keep fighting back.
There wasn't indifference at all. I read and watched and came to my own conclusions regarding credibility and the connections of certain people.
“At this stage, we just have to show up and keep a long view,” said Colette Berard, 39, of Somerville. “I’m a history teacher so I think of other movements in our country. . . . They want us to be complacent.”
For every action there is a reaction.
In Washington on Saturday, hundreds of demonstrators chanted “Vote No” outside the Supreme Court, and one woman dressed as a handmaid to represent the antifeminist future imagined in Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel, “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Others wore T-shirts with a foreboding prediction for the midterm elections: “November is coming.” When a passing motorist shouted support for the man of the hour — “Kavanaugh rules!” — a few in the crowd shouted back an obscenity.
Is that over-the-top hyperbole helping the cause?
“We were here visiting family, and instead of sightseeing, we’re here protesting Kavanaugh because we feel it’s that important,” said Carlin Harris, 55, of Tacoma, Wash., who wore a sparkly “Shame on Collins” poster on her back. “We were here two days last week and again today.”
Tourist just joined in, huh?
$oro$ paying for the vacation?
“I wanted to show up and be counted because I want to make it clear I don’t think this fight is over. While the Supreme Court nomination might be, the longer-term issue of listening to women, respecting women and human rights in general is an ongoing battle,” said one protester, Dara Friedman-Wheeler, 43, of Baltimore.
There is one in every crowd.
“I don’t think people were listening,” she added. “I don’t think they’re listening today either — at least I don’t think Congress is — but I hope that other people, that women who, for example, are survivors of sexual assault, will see that they are not alone and that we’re not giving up.”
They aren't alone; there are others protesting Trump.
She was there with her grad school professor, Anthony Ahrens, 59, of Washington, who said he was showing “solidarity with people I know who have been abused and have been triggered in recent times. Part of being out is real concern about the process, the lack of a serious investigation, the partisanship, the sheer abuse of power, and the dangers for the country that come from that sort of approach to governance.”
Bill Clinton.
Suzanne St. Onge, 59, of Maryland, protested outside the Supreme Court with a sign that said “Prepare to Retire,” directed at the power establishment in D.C.
“I can’t take the hypocrisy anymore of supposedly draining the swamp and making it significantly worse,” she said.
That is one thing on which we agree.
She said she has already twice contributed to a future challenger to Senator Collins. “Everybody I know is doing that, too,” she said. “I don’t need to figure her out. We need to eliminate her.”
Looks like a THREAT to me.
Collins better be careful.
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The Globe isn't done lashing out at the laughter, and swears they will shred Republicans this November.
The Globe isn't done lashing out at the laughter, and swears they will shred Republicans this November.
All just a dream:
"Conservatives’ dream of control becomes reality" by Jess Bidgood Globe Staff October 07, 2018
WASHINGTON — The Senate narrowly confirmed embattled nominee Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court Saturday, cementing the conservative majority on the nation’s highest court after a bitter confirmation battle that left the Senate bruised and the nation divided.
It didn't have to be this way.
The disunion was evident in the 50-48 vote that put Kavanaugh on the court — a historically narrow margin — and in the screams of the protesters yelling, “Shame!” inside the chamber as the roll call was tallied. Kavanaugh was whisked almost immediately via motorcade to the Supreme Court and sworn in by Chief Justice John Roberts and retired Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court’s swing vote whose departure created the vacancy.
The whirl of events brought an end to a wrenching confirmation process in which allegations of sexual assault brought new urgency to the country’s ongoing #MeToo reckoning, but were ultimately not enough to derail a nomination that represented the culmination of a decades-long effort to tilt the judiciary further right.
The confirmation made Kavanaugh Trump’s second successful Supreme Court nominee after Neil Gorsuch last year. It had appeared to be on track to be an easy triumph for Trump and his conservative allies, who wanted to put a fifth reliably conservative justice vote on the court, but the nomination became engulfed in serious allegations of sexual assault by Kavanaugh when he was a teen and spiraled into a national debate over the prevalence of sexual assault in American culture and the very credibility of the Supreme Court itself.
Hey, we got through the eight illegitimate years of George W. Bush.
For Democrats, as well as scores of survivors of sexual assault who have spoken up in support of Kavanaugh’s accusers, his confirmation Saturday represented a stark defeat. Despite weeks of turbulent debate, the vote fell largely along party lines, with two exceptions. Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat who is running for reelection in a state where Trump commands strong support, stood up, leaned forward, voted in support of the nomination, and then gazed up at a female protester who yelled, “I am a survivor of sexual assault” before she was removed, screaming, by officers in the gallery.
Does behaving like a baby help the cause?
And look at it this way: women have no one to blame but themselves. It's Republican women senators plus Democrat betrayer Manchin that put him over and in.
Moments later, Lisa Murkowski, the Alaska Republican, rose to her feet, her mouth set in a grim line, and said, “No.” (She later changed her vote to “present,” which was a gesture of collegiality, preserving the 2-vote margin, because Senator Steve Daines of Montana was out of town and unable to record his “Yes” vote.)
At least there is still collegiality down there.
Just one big club, huh? All closing ranks.
Murkowski and Susan Collins, the Maine Republican whose support of Kavanaugh seemed to guarantee his confirmation, embraced on the floor after the vote. As the final count was read out, a lone protester called out: “This is a stain on American history, do you understand that?”
The confirmation effort was a partisan brawl from the start, because Kavanaugh, a Yale-educated judge on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, was expected to be a more reliably conservative judge than the outgoing justice, Anthony Kennedy, who sometimes joined the liberal majority on cases involving gay rights, abortion rights, and affirmative action.
Beginning with endless interruptions by protesters who were given admittance tickets by Feinstein and other senators.
Kavanaugh, who had worked for Kenneth Starr as he investigated President Clinton and in George W. Bush’s White House, was considered an ideal pick by a group of legal conservatives, including conservative organizations like the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation, that have been working for decades to remake an American judiciary that they feared had become far too liberal.
What I see there is him protecting the secrets of those scandalous families as he serves on the court.
Legal experts say that, with Kavanaugh on the bench, some legal protections favored by progressives may be rolled back. “He’ll vote to limit Roe v. Wade, he’ll vote to limit gay rights and to limit controls on political expenditures,” said Alan Dershowitz, the emeritus Harvard professor who describes himself as a liberal Democrat but has frequently defended Trump on Fox News. “That’s the cost we pay for electing a Republican president. It’s part of a system.”
I suppose the other side sees it as a benefit, but not here.
Dershowitz suggested Kavanaugh’s excoriating confirmation process could affect some of his votes. “His job now for the next five years is going to be rebuilding his reputation, and I think he’s looking to do that in ways that maybe will surprise people,” Dershowitz said, adding he expected Kavanaugh will care deeply about due process and free speech.
That's the thing. You really have no idea how he is going to rule on anything.
Laurence H. Tribe, another professor at Harvard Law School who has been a frequent critic of the president, decried the process of selecting Supreme Court justices as fundamentally undemocratic. “Of the five justices picked by Republicans, including Kavanaugh, four were nominated by presidents who first took office after losing the popular vote — and most, including Kavanaugh, were confirmed by senators representing far fewer voters than the senators voting no,” Tribe said, in an e-mail.
Of course, our Constitution was devised by aristocrats to protect the rights of the minority against mob rule.
He should know that!
As Saturday wore on, more than 1,000 protesters massed on Capitol Hill. Young girls carried signs vowing they would remember Kavanaugh when they were old enough to vote, and people chanted, over and over, that they believed the claims of the survivors.
Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat, stepped to the microphone in front of the Supreme Court and said the stakes for the country could not be higher. Touting what she called a “30-day plan,” she urged Democratic voters to retake the House and Senate in the midterm elections, but Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate majority leader who engineered the victory, said after the confirmation that he believed the angry battle over Kavanaugh would motivate Republican voters.
“We finally discovered the one thing that would fire up the Republican base and we didn’t think of it. The other side did it,” McConnell said. “The tactics that have been employed both by Judiciary Committee Democratic senators, and by the virtual mob that’s assaulted all of us in the course of this process, has turned our base on fire.”
Looks like Warren is now in a dogfight.
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I'm just wondering if we have all been played.
[flip to below fold]
More articles to make you cry:
Lawrence businesses fight for survival as gas remains shut off
The chain coffee shop is humming along undisturbed.
What’s the future for the Cape Cod bridges?
That's when I did a U-turn (sorry about the squirrel) and grabbed a bus.
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Chicago jurors ‘just didn’t buy’ officer’s testimony
What is noticeable is the lack of coverage the Globe gave the trial, and don't worry, I'm sure he will find a new police job.
Military families angry about damage, thefts during moves
Banks foreclosed on them.
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Everything you need to know about HUBweek 2018
Well, Matt Damon and Bill Simmons talked for almost 2 hours about another colossal playoff failure from David Price before Ben Affleck discussed his alcoholism and Gisele Bundchen talked about her first date with Tom Brady.
Today there will be a tour of the Peabody Essex Museum and Jack Connors will be presented with a leadership award at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute.
Unfortunately, one speaker had to be cancelled:
"Rosie’s Place founder Kip Tiernan fought poverty and injustice in words and deeds, using her command of language to open people’s eyes to the suffering of the poor and society’s duty to heal it....."
May she rest in peace.
"An Allston man was arrested early Saturday morning after he allegedly pulled a woman into an alley in Brookline and sexually assaulted her, police said. Mainor Edgardo Suazo-Martinez, 20, was charged with assault with intent to rape, strangulation, and kidnapping, according to a statement from Brookline police. He also had a warrant out for his arrest. Around 2:30 a.m., Suazo-Martinez approached a woman who was walking home from her friend’s house, and tried to start a conversation, police said. The woman didn’t want to talk, so Suazo-Martinez took her phone and keys from her hands, according to police. “The victim continued walking towards her home and was grabbed and pulled into an alley near Thorndike Street,” the statement said. Suazo-Martinez “sexually assaulted the victim and choked her.” The woman was able to get away, and police found Suazo-Martinez near Brighton Avenue and Harvard Street around 3:20 a.m. Suazo-Martinez is being held on $100,000 bail and is scheduled to appear Tuesday in Brookline Court."
I believe her, but the judge released him on a medical (the Kavanaugh fallout has already begun).
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I'm sure they are sobbing in Indonesia:
"Indonesia finds itself in disaster’s grip, again and again" by Hannah Beech New York Times October 06, 2018
SIGI, Indonesia — The starfish-shaped island of Sulawesi in Eastern Indonesia, which just a week ago suffered a 7.5-magnitude earthquake followed by a tsunami that crested over electricity poles, is a place of divided faiths. It is also a place where catastrophe after catastrophe, both natural and manmade, have been inflicted on Muslims and Christians alike.
In little more than half a century, Sulawesi has endured dozens of earthquakes, landslides, floods, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions; anti-communist pogroms that claimed at least half a million lives nationwide; and sectarian strife that culminated in the heads of schoolgirls deposited near a church and police station.
At least 1,649 people have been confirmed killed by the twin natural disasters Sept. 28. Many more are believed to have died, been buried under soil, swept away by waves, or trapped in a tangle of crushed buildings that will take months, if not years, to clear.
That leaves a bitter taste in my mouth because I was told there was much progress yesterday.
Each day, dozens of corpses are stuffed into body bags and interred in mass graves. A week in the tropics means that expediency trumps ceremony.
Trump's ceremony?
He didn't have anything to do with this, did he?
An archipelago of more than 13,000 islands, Indonesia is an unlikely nation. Dutch colonialists collected these islands peopled by hundreds of ethnic groups and united them for their abundance of natural resources, including spices and sugar, rubber and tobacco, coffee, and an island of nutmeg trees considered so valuable it was traded in 1667 for Manhattan.
The sprawl of Indonesia notwithstanding, the center of gravity remains in Java, the small, densely populated island in the west of the country that includes the capital, Jakarta. Apart from a brief interregnum, no Indonesian from outside Java has led the country. The periphery, including Sulawesi, feels far away, but Indonesia’s official excesses infected the whole country, most notably in 1965 and 1966, when an anti-communist purge by soldiers and paramilitaries led to at least half a million extrajudicial executions and possibly as many as 3 million deaths.
The massacres were largely ignored in the West, where a red scare was in full swing. Even today, many Indonesians considered communist sympathizers and other victims responsible for their own murders.
What the Times isn't telling you is the depth of U.S. involvement in the program. The CIA even handed the government a list of about half-a-million people for extermination. That's why it was ignored, and still is!
During that purge, hundreds were persecuted here in Palu, according to a local human rights group, Solidarity for the Victims of Human Rights Violations.....
At least we didn't turn it into a Korea or Vietnam.
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Here is something good to cry over:
"Two Syrian rebel groups began withdrawing their heavy weapons Saturday from a northwestern area of the country where Russia and Turkey have agreed to set up a demilitarized zone, opposition activists said....."
Don't take refuge in the Turkish consulate.
Just painting a picture with words:
"Banksy painting self-destructs after fetching $1.4m at Sotheby’s" by Scott Reyburn New York Times October 06, 2018
LONDON — British street artist Banksy pulled off one of his most spectacular pranks Friday night, when one of his trademark paintings appeared to self-destruct at Sotheby’s in London after selling for $1.4 million at auction.
I guess it's better than submitting hoax papers for peer review.
The painting, mounted on a wall close to a row of Sotheby’s staff members, had been shredded by a remote-control mechanism on the back of the frame.
Morgan Long, head of art investment at the London-based advisory firm the Fine Art Group who was sitting in the front row of the room, said in an interview Saturday that she next saw a man being removed from the building by Sotheby’s security staff.
“We’ve been Banksy-ed,” Alex Branczik, Sotheby’s head of contemporary art in Europe, said at a news conference afterward.
Branczik added that he was “not in on the ruse.”
Sotheby’s has not named the client whose $1.4 million purchase has been destroyed. International auction houses do not divulge the identities of their buyers unless the buyer requests it.
Joanna Brooks, director of JBPR, who answers media enquiries on behalf of Banksy, declined to comment on whether the artist himself had been removed from the salesroom, but suspicious minds wondered whether Sotheby’s was completely taken by surprise. Anyone in the auction house who handled the painting would have surely noticed a mechanism on the back of the frame. And the artwork was also the last lot in the auction.
“If it had been offered earlier in the sale, it would have caused disruption and sellers would have complained about that,” Long said. “And Sotheby’s let a man with a bag into the building. They must have known.”
So what is he saying, it was a "conspiracy" and "inside job?"
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Here is more of his work:
GRAND OPENING -- Palestinian boys stood near a hotel being opened in the West Bank city of Bethlehem with the help of an elusive British graffiti artist Banksy. The hotel, which sits next to a mural-covered separation barrier built by Israel, has nine rooms packed with work by Bansky. The owner is calling it the "hotel with the worst view in the world."
--source--"
At first I thought there was a crack in the wall and a section missing; then I realized it was a mural on the wall, and at the bottom of the V you can see someone has painted the Al-Aqsa mosque. That was when the waterworks started for me. If you look closely you can see a young Palestinian flashing a peace sign. Kids are sitting on a pile of rubble and yet somehow they retain hope.
Globe checked out quick on that one.
I wonder what happened in Gaza this weekend.
