7 days of relentless Donnie lies makes one weak.
Free month of Prime for first Sunday show guest who says “lie”.
When the king (Ben Sasse) of weak statements, that are completely divorced from any actual action, says someone else’s statement was weak you know we are through the looking glass. I can’t believe the press continues to give him a pass with his hand wringing statements that lead nowhere.
I’m not a big fan of BS myself but in this case, give him credit, he makes an important intellectual point. I had not thought through the difference between realism and weakness in that way.
He has provided logic through which we can more effectively articulate and demonstrate Trump’s weakness.
On some level I must not be as tired of this as I feel, because I keep doing it, but help me understand why Sasse’s ineffectual hand-wringing should somehow be the press’s fault. Should they tell him they won’t give him any publicity until he starts taking authenticity pills? What do you want, exactly? There’s not enough ink in the world to yell at every two-faced person in public life. Maybe he himself should bear the bulk of the criticism? Call me crazy.
I have it on good authority, that it runs in the family.
I see this guy is auditioning to be the new Jeff Flake. A few mealy-mouthed words of protest when Trump is egregiously bad, but will still vote along with him 90 percent of the time.
I saw him on Colbert talking about Whitaker and was struck at how effective he is in person. He comes off as a genuinely troubled conservative and a charming, very smart guy you’d be glad to have as a son-in-law. And he does make a good point here. The only drawback is the way he votes with Trump bing bing bing down the line. That one’s hard to get past.
Here’s Ben Sasse–long form. This is his response to me when I emailed him about his SC confirmation vote of Kavanaugh. Sent the week of the vote and got a reply last week. To give him a minuscule amount of credit, I contacted both Nebraska Senators, and he’s the only one to reply. I’ve contacted both several times before, and Sasse at least always replies. Take it for what it’s worth for an (R) in a very red state.
Thank
you for reaching out about the recent Supreme Court confirmation vote.
I’d like to share with you my observations on this broken process and
offer thoughts on why I voted to confirm Justice Kavanaugh.
Supreme
Court confirmation hearings should provide an opportunity to revisit
basic “School House Rock” civics. They should give us a chance to
celebrate our system of checks, balances, and limited government. We
should explain how the judiciary is a separate, co-equal branch that is
frequently called to examine whether the actions of the other two
branches are lawful and constitutional.
Unfortunately,
that is not what happened this year and, frankly, that’s not what’s
happened for the last three decades. A big problem stems from the fact
that we currently have a fundamental misunderstanding of the judicial
branch’s role within our constitutional system. Congress punts its
policy duties to the administrative state to avoid having to take
controversial positions, so members can get re-elected more easily. With
Congress shirking its duty to establish laws, the judiciary—and the
Supreme Court in particular—are now viewed as a substitute political
battleground.
The
solution here is not to try to find judges who share our policy
preferences and confirm them to be supreme policy-makers. The solution
is to restore the balance of power established by the Constitution. We
need a Congress that writes laws and then stands before the people for
re-election. We need a judiciary that applies the law to facts in cases
that come before it. This is basic civics. In the Senate Judiciary
Committee’s first hearing on Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination, he
demonstrated that he understands this role of a judge, that he would
uphold his oath to defend the Constitution, and that he will fairly and
dispassionately rule on the law and the facts of cases before him.
However,
just days before the Judiciary Committee was set to vote on Judge
Kavanaugh’s nomination, news broke of allegations of serious misconduct
by Judge Kavanaugh against Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. The Judiciary
Committee’s Ranking Minority Member, Senator Dianne Feinstein, had known
about these allegations for months. These serious allegations could –
and should – have been investigated back in July through the
confidential vetting process that the Judiciary Committee has used for
decades precisely to investigate sensitive matters like this. But
instead of working through that established process, which could have
helped restore some public trust, Senator Feinstein hid these
allegations from members of the Judiciary Committee, got Dr. Ford a
hyper-political lawyer, and then sprung this at the most politically
destructive moment – after the FBI background investigation had already
been concluded.
Once
Dr. Ford chose to come forward after her contact with Senator Feinstein
was leaked, I fought to delay the Senate vote so that we could
thoroughly investigate Dr. Ford’s claims and provide her with the chance
to share her story with the Committee, in public or private. This
hearing consisted of eight grotesquely public hours, where we saw and
heard from two different families hurting badly, leaving me absolutely
heartbroken for both Dr. Ford and Judge Kavanaugh. Each family received
numerous death threats because this process was intentionally turned
into a made-for-TV circus by people who care more about politics than
either of these families. The Senate did not serve either of them well,
nor has it served the American people well through this process.
I
began this advice and consent process with an open mind and a desire to
uncover the truth. I voted to confirm Justice Kavanaugh based on the
evidence and his qualifications. After spending more than 150 hours
doing my homework and reviewing documents and investigatory material, I
completed my reading of the FBI’s seventh background investigation (that
included 146 additional interviews) before the vote.
I
believe that Dr. Ford is a victim and that she was terribly served by
the Senate’s media circus. I also believe that there are core problems
with the accusation against Justice Kavanaugh, including the fact that
each of the four people that Dr. Ford placed at the event rejected key
elements of her allegations.
Deliberating
on the facts of one case is not a judgment on the importance and
complexities of the #MeToo movement – which does not belong to the left
or to the right, but to the women who have confronted a legacy of sexual
assault in this country.
I
have two daughters, and God forbid, in the event that something ever
happened to one of them, I want them to feel they could come forward
knowing that their accusations will be taken seriously, that they
wouldn’t be dismissed or vilified for speaking up, that they wouldn’t be
ashamed or blamed. I also have a son, and in the event that, God
forbid, he is accused of a crime, I hope that he is presumed innocent
and he is permitted to exercise his right to defend himself. And I think
there are a whole lot of parents across Nebraska who think the same
thing – not because of our politics; we want this because we believe
that girls and boys, women and men, daughters and sons are created with
dignity and worth.
Pay no attention to the man flogging this book.
Found this whopper immediately while skimming.
What do you want, exactly? There’s not enough ink in the world to yell at every two-faced person in public life.
I want the press to follow up and ask him, as a United States Senator, what actions he is willing to take to rectify the issues he is constantly wringing his hands about. Otherwise Sasse’s press appearances are just laying the B roll for his future campaign ads to burnish a bipartisan and simple decency reputation that his actions belie. Left unchallenged he is let off the hook when he is one of the few people with the power to actually do something about it.
I think the problem is that there really is hardly any story here, at least not the one being reported. It has often been noted that the news is inherently attracted to tragedy, since “Man Gets Home From Work Safely” is not a story, while “Man Killed in Deadly Car Crash” is. In this case, there is a story, but one that the press apparently cannot really report since it falls into the area of opinion. The story is that Trump is publicly bragging about supporting the Saudi’s in spite of the fact that they are obviously behind the murder of a journalist, and Sasse is unable to offer more than a tepid statement that is somewhat short of fully endorsing Trump’s statements. To simply let Trump and Sasse speak for themselves is, technically, news, of a bland sort. We probably want the press to report the statements and also publish the obvious reaction that such statements are crazy, or worse. Unfortunately, they are reluctant to do that, in part because it would look like they were taking sides in a partizan divide, and in part because they have been cowed by a constantly aggressive conservative onslaught. I don’t envy the press for being in this difficult, perhaps impossible, position, even as I sympathize with the idea that their insistence of avoiding controversy is a big part of the problem.
(Edit: unrelated to my post, is anyone else experiencing the absence of the little icons that identify the usual functions and actions in the comments?)
OT: Just wanted to say I love your Athena coin avatar.
Saw some similar column in the L.A. Times. It’s like instead of hiring the nice girl two houses down to babysit, the parents got a wolverine instead. And we’re supposedly less than civil for not seeing the wolverine’s good side.
Same here, for three days.
Meanwhile Trump is now acting out both parts.
I think this is like the Nixon wandering the halls talking to portraits of past Presidents stage, except Trump is also doing the voices of them talking back to him.
Do you know they haven’t? Everyone here knows he votes with Trump. Did we laboriously research that ourselves, individually? I sure didn’t. I know it for some mysterious other reason.
is anyone else experiencing the absence of the little icons
Yes, I was reduced to hovering over the squares to read the tooltips until I saw the one that said “upload” to post an image below.