The Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally meets on Tuesday night for an evening of political conversation over cocktails. Massachusetts is the only state with a primary election tonight. There are 63 days until the November general election.
We meet every Tuesday at the Roanoke Park Place Tavern, 2409 10th Ave E, Seattle. You’ll find us in the room at the rear of the tavern beginning about 8pm.
Can’t make it to Seattle? There are 255 chapters of Living Liberally, including 22 in Washington state, seven in Oregon and three in Idaho. Find a chapter near you. Or consider starting your own chapter.
Funny how the Stock Market is now just sitting there doing nothing and going in reverse, just after reaching the epic milestones that were bragged about. Almost as if it is artificial, and manipulated by folks on Wall Street. Can’t wait for the crash!
So Kavanaugh is easily explained. “Coach K” played football back in the day.
Too much football with his helmet off. Explains a lot of Republicans actually.
And daresay most of the HA trolls?
A Mississippi militia would not tolerate desertion. So when his recruit called her father to come remove her from the base the militia waited.
He then shot the father, the recruit and then the militia disbanded by self inflicted gunshot.
@1 “Can’t wait for the crash!”
Be careful what you wish for …
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/04/jpmorgan-says-next-crisis-will-feature-flash-crashes-and-social-unrest.html
… unless, of course, you’re shopping for cheap stocks like me. How does Boeing for $10 sound? Microsoft for 50 cents? Amazon at $1.25? Starbucks for a nickel (the stock, not the latte)? People like Bezos and Zuckerberg will count their wealth in thousands, not billions. All their money is just computers pixels anyway. You don’t even get a paper certificate anymore.
Ex-Sen. Jon Kyle replaces McCain. Kyle, 76, says he won’t run in 2020. The governor who appointed him probably wants that nom himself.
Companies are doing great. Workers aren’t. “Incomes have been stagnant since 2000. There’s no sign Trump is fixing that.”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/gaping-hole-trumps-economic-boom-2-192314032.html
Of course he isn’t. He’s padding and pockets of the GOP’s billionaire donors — and putting an anti-worker judge on the Supreme Court. The only way things will get better for workers is by voting out Republicans and voting in Democrats. The GOP has never been a working-class better, isn’t now, and never will be. The GOP caters to the rich, and the rich get that way on the backs of workers, and at workers’ expense. Why would anyone in their right mind expect Trump or the GOP to do anything for workers?
@6 I don’t know – probably because I’m a dumbfuck with no education and living in squalor because those damn Mexicans do shit I’m too lazy to do.
@7 I’m as lazy as you, but as a capitalist, I get paid for owning stock while doing absolutely nothing.
7,
The way you people choose to live looks hard as fuck to me.
Racked out of your lounge chair every morning at 5 am
with nicotine shakes, down to the food pantry line by 8 before they run out of cheese, caging spare change outside the topless espresso hut, hustling $5 BJs at the truck stop till lunch, can route till dinner, trading Fanta for pills behind the Kwik-E-Mart, all culminating in the sweet sweet bliss of crushing and snorting Oxy by day’s end.
Was spending your seven years of high school crushing beer cans on your forehead and dreaming up new ways of torturing the disabled kids really worth all that?
I suppose there must be some consolation knowing so long as you are willing to practice this self depredation in one of the 100 least economically productive counties you’ll be guaranteed a massively disproportionate representation in Congress.
MA safe D primary. NY safe D Primary.
I’m good with the Democratic delegation in Congress becoming younger, more female and a lot more people of color.
There’s a Dumbfuck posts here who like to talk about not having a bench.
10,
GOP bench should be transitioning to supervised release in about twelve years or so.
Those GOP voters who haven’t yet OD’d will be an average age of 85.
Speaking of terrible messages…opens Twitter…
@2 Democrats had a solution to this horrible judge becoming a Supreme court judge for decades. It’s called impeachment. The article suggests Cavanaugh has been on good behavior, the only qualification that counts for Federal judges continuing as Federal judges. If only you all had had a crystal ball, only any of the judges on that particular court are often appointed to the Supreme Ct.
This is what happens when you have a Dumbfuck in the Whitehouse.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/north-korea/china-eases-economic-pressure-north-korea-undercutting-trump-admin-n906166
Here ya go, Orange Pied Piper Fans, #artofthedeal:
“US trade deficit jumps by the most in 3 years … [e]xports of soybeans and civilian aircraft declined and imports hit a record high, suggesting that trade could be a drag on economic growth in the third quarter.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/05/us-trade-deficit-jumps-by-the-most-in-3-years.html
This is what happens when morons elect an ignoramus and none of them know wtf what they’re doing.
@13 If you want to be taken seriously, you should at least spell the guy’s name right.
Brett Kavanaugh was a GOP political operative and party hack who diligently climbed the party ladder via a succession of jobs. At the same time he climbed the legal ladder, starting with judicial clerkships, then working for Ken Starr, and moving to a White House job from there. His party service and legal career entertwined — as a lawyer, he spent much of his time working for party causes — and he was rewarded for his party service with an appointment to the D.C. Circuit, which Democrats opposed. It took his party 3 years to confirm him, and after he was confirmed, accusations surfaced that he had “misled” the Senator in his confirmation hearings about his role in the Bush regime’s torture regimen. Kavanaugh is a smart guy with all the right paper credentials, but he’s a partisan hack, and not a good guy, and putting someone like him on the Supreme Court is an act of blatant partisanship and an effort to politicize the federal judiciary.
@12 What do you expect Trump to say? He thinks blacks — including women and children — are supposed to quietly submit to being murdered by trigger-happy racist white cops.
You know what’s going to happen when sports become politicized, and going to an NFL game or Nascar race slaps a party label on you? It will cut the audience for those sports in half. When buying a game ticket and cheering for a football team identifies you as a Republican, then Democrats won’t go to games. And vice versa for sports favored by Democrats. Team owners know this. That’s why they’re so ambivalent about the anthem controversy and shy away from punishing the players. They know they’ll alienate half the country if they follow Trump’s lead and crack down on the player protests. Plus they have union contracts to contend with.
Look what’s happening to Nascar. Over the years, Nascar became identified with the beer-swilling, trailerbilly, yahoo set. Today, you go to a Nascar event, you run into a sea of red “MAGA” hats. Trump voters all. What’s happening to Nascar? Ticket sales are crashing, TV contracts are shriveling, tracks are closing, Nascar itself is up for sale.
The same thing could happen to other sports, and the owners know it. They didn’t get to be team owners by being stupid or oblivious to what their fans are thinking. Sports fans are strongly patriotic, but the black player protests — launched by Kaepernick — have resonated with many in the NFL fan base. Trump’s ranting hasn’t taken hold because those fans recognize its racist motivation, and the majority of people in this country think racism is a social evil and morally wrong.
Nike, too, is run by very smart people. They see what Trump is blind to: The public supports Kaepernick’s goal of better treatment for black people, not Trump’s racism. Who can’t relate to parents not wanting their kids to get shot while playing in a public park simply because of their skin color? To blacks, the status quo is unacceptable. To many sympathetic whites, it’s unacceptable. Thinking people, and anyone with empathy and a conscience, can’t accept this. Kaepernick has many supporters, black and white; Trump has few, and their numbers and influence are dwindling. They are on the wrong side of history and morality, and our evolving society is leaving them behind. Nike, a company that has built its business model around popular sports, and made a vast fortune for its founder in the process, knows a winner when it sees one.
13,
The issue isn’t Kav. He’s been a fine judge so far. Not brilliant. But at least reasonable. The process that partisan Republicans have adopted, to withold most of his professional record from review in order to rush through his hearings in record time, sets a very bad precedent and ought to be reconsidered. Especially in light of the obvious reasons for that rush: to clear the way for a constitutional crisis emanating from the White House immediately after the mid terms.
The real issue rests in the person of the dangerously incompetent, emotionally unstable, deeply compromised, criminally liable President making the appointment. Too many unanswered questions and loose ends. Too many rapidly emerging legal records implicating the campaign, the White House, and this President in financial crimes, conspiracy, and obstruction. Before another lifetime appointment is confirmed more of those questions must be answered. The people deserve to know who is making these permanent appointments.
The OSC should be permitted to complete at least a preliminary report clearing the President of any criminal wrongdoing before a confirmation vote is held. The President must agree to be deposed respectfully, and called upon to answer at least some of the OSC’s questions in order to establish his innocence. A more complete picture of how outside finances were used during the campaign to assist in obtaining non disclosure agreements from women alleging extra marital affairs is needed. That must include an accounting of where that money came from, how it was reported, and who was responsible. The people ought to know that the campaign was not illegally seeking essential assistance from foreign sources. The basic questions must be answered first.
Nobody questions that Donald J. Trump will remain President through 2020. There will be plenty of time for him to extend this nomination until after these deeply troubling questions about his election and his Presidency have finally been put to rest. Our democracy works best when it works methodically and patiently. There are no good reasons to rush this process forward at this time. All the reasons used to justify the schedule amount to a willing admission of criminal guilt. The Senate should never confirm a nominee put forward by a President they suspect of criminal wrongdoing. They certainly should not rush the process in order to avoid that outcome.
@19 “He’s been a fine judge so far.”
I disagree. He’s been a partisan judge. He’s a rightwing ideologue whose rulings consistently disfavor certain groups, e.g. workers and consumers, and favor others, i.e. corporate interests. He’s been doctrinaire in ruling against labor, ACA, the environment, and individual civil rights. He participated in drafting the Bush regime’s torture policies. And he’s been conveniently inconsistent on some big important issues: He worked for Ken Starr, drafted Starr’s report, and helped facilitate a Democratic president’s impeachment; but now argues that a Republican president can’t even be investigated. The guy’s a partisan hack doing his party’s partisan work, and doing it from the bench. That should be disqualifying no matter how “brilliant” he is at editing an Ivy law review or mouthing memorized legal platitudes. He’s a snake, and can’t be trusted. His record demonstrates that; and that’s why the Republicans trying to ram this unqualified nominee down the American people’s throats are withholding his record and don’t want scrutiny of his record. All judicial appointments are partisan to a degree, but this one goes far beyond what has, in the past, been considered within bounds. Judges aren’t supposed to wear their politics on their sleeves, and this one has done so since his first job out of law school, and has continued to do since being elevated to the federal bench. That should make him unpromotable. It does everyone else.
Trump wanted a “fuck you,” in-your-face, Supreme Court nominee, along with someone who’ll help implement a radical rightwing agenda of concentrating power and wealth in the hands of a tiny elite and reducing everyone else to serfdom, and that’s what this guy is.
And anyone who thinks this is about limited government, assiduous fidelity to the Constitution, and protecting individual rights is smoking banana peels. This is a judge who legislates from the bench and has no compunctions about overruling the people’s elected representatives when they try to constrain the ruling class.
20,
Most of his record of rulings that I disagree with can easily be remedied with legislation. I for one am not comfortable resting my confidence in the “equality” of our system of laws with several hundred old white guys from mostly ivy league private school backgrounds who get to set their own daily work schedules and answer to nobody.
Republicans have no other choice.