The Commentariat -- October 9, 2018

Late Morning/Afternoon Update:

Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "President Trump's ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki R. Haley, said on Tuesday she would resign at the end of the year, marking a high-profile departure of one of the few women in the president's cabinet." ...

... Jonathan Swan of Axios: "President Trump has accepted Nikki Haley's resignation as UN Ambassador, according to two sources briefed on their conversation. The timing of her departure is still unclear, the president promised a 'big announcement' with her at 10:30 a.m.... Haley discussed her resignation with Trump last week when she visited him at the White House, these sources said. Her news shocked a number of senior foreign policy officials in the Trump administration." Update: It's happened. CNN is reporting she just notified her top staff of her resignation this morning. She'll be leaving at the end of this year. The move came as a surprise to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo & National Security Advisor John Bolton.

Matthew Choi of Politico: "... Donald Trump on Tuesday further outlined his conspiracy theory that protesters were hired to oppose Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation.... 'The paid D.C. protesters are now ready to REALLY protest because they haven't gotten their checks - in other words, they weren't paid! Screamers in Congress, and outside, were far too obvious - less professional than anticipated by those paying (or not paying) the bills!' Trump tweeted.... Trump has yet to put forth any evidence to back up his claim of widespread paid protesters."

Greg Sargent: "When Trump purports to apologize to Kavanaugh on behalf of the 'nation' while sneeringly dismissing those claims, even as a majority opposes Kavanaugh and believes those charges, Trump is ... highlighting the degree to which this episode represents the further entrenchment of minority rule. With Kavanaugh now on the court, this could very well get worse. The New York Times reports that Trump's unusual public apology to Kavanaugh is actually part of a broader strategy of using the battle over his confirmation to enrage and galvanize conservative voters in the midterm elections. Trump injected partisan politics into the swearing in of a Justice who is supposed to remain neutral, for the explicit purpose of polarizing the country in ways he thinks will benefit his party. But when Trump uses the term 'nation,' it should be understood in the way that exclusionary populist demagogues (of which Trump is one) generally employ such formulations: Trump is, in effect, defining the nation to exclude the Americans who are deeply troubled by Kavanaugh, the charges against him, and the larger debate it encompasses."

*****

Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Matt Gertz of Media Matters: "Donald Trump rose to prominence and the presidency on the strength of his self-proclaimed mastery of 'The Art of the Deal.' It was that business acumen, Trump claimed, that allowed him to turn a paltry loan from his father into a vast empire. But last week, The New York Times revealed that Trump was not the self-made billionaire he had claimed to be but rather the recipient of at least $413 million from his father, in part through tax schemes the paper described as 'outright fraud.' The painstaking investigation ... is not just a skillful demolition of the origin story Trump told. It's also a rebuke to generations of journalists who bolstered Trump's tale. Trump provided the myth, but he needed the press to trumpet it out to the public. The result was a lie so durable that no single story, however brilliant, can unravel it.... the Times article names four journalists and biographers whose work was particularly vital: Gwenda Blair, David Cay Johnston, Timothy L. O'Brien, and the late Wayne Barrett. But on balance, reporters were taken in by Trump's skillful manipulation, vulnerable to his understanding that they were 'always hungry for a good story, and the more sensational the better.'... No longer relying on the press to burnish his image, Trump has convinced his supporters that critical news outlets can't be trusted." ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Wouldn't it be great if media outlets had spent as much money & effort chasing down Trump's fake business successes as they did chasing down every nuance -- real & imaginary -- of Hillary Clinton's e-mails!!!?

Isabel Dobrin of Politico: "... Donald Trump told reporters on Monday that he has no plans to fire deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who will accompany the president on his day trip to Orlando aboard Air Force One. 'I look forward to being with him. That'll be very nice,"'Trump said of Rosenstein. 'We're going to be talking. We'll be talking on the plane. I actually have a good relationship, other than there's been no collusion, folks, no collusion. But I have a very good relationship.' Asked directly if he has plans to fire Rosenstein, Trump said 'no, I don't.' He added later that he 'didn't know Rod before, but I've gotten to know him and I get along very well with him.'" Mrs. McC: Rosenstein probably reminds Trump every time they see each other about his great service to the country as a member of the Ken Starr team. (Also linked yesterday.)

Mark Mazzetti, et al., of the New York Times: "A top Trump campaign official [Rick Gates] requested proposals in 2016 from an Israeli company to create fake online identities, to use social media manipulation and to gather intelligence to help defeat Republican primary race opponents and Hillary Clinton, according to interviews and copies of the proposals. The Trump campaign's interest in the work began as Russians were escalating their effort to aid Donald J. Trump. Though the Israeli company's pitches were narrower than Moscow's interference campaign and appear unconnected, the documents show that a senior Trump aide saw the promise of a disruption effort to swing voters in Mr. Trump's favor.... The proposal to gather information about Mrs. Clinton and her aides has elements of traditional opposition research, but it also contains cryptic language that suggests using clandestine means to build 'intelligence dossiers.'... There is no evidence that the Trump campaign acted on the proposals.... It is unclear whether the Project Rome proposals describe work that would violate laws regulating foreign participation in American elections."

Byron Tau of the Wall Street Journal: "A veteran Republican operative and opposition researcher solicited and raised at least $100,000 from donors as part of an effort to obtain what he believed to be emails stolen from Hillary Clinton, activities that remain of intense interest to federal investigators working for special counsel Robert Mueller's office and on Capitol Hill. Peter W. Smith, an Illinois businessman with a long history of involvement in GOP politics, sought and collected the funds from at least four wealthy donors as part of the plan to obtain Clinton's stolen emails from hackers just weeks before election day in 2016.... Smith's effort to find what he believed were some 33,000 deleted emails Clinton said were personal was first reported by the Journal in a 2017 story, but the extent of his planning went far beyond what was previously known. Smith died 10 days after describing his efforts to a reporter for the Journal." Not firewalled; a "digest" version available via MarketWatch.

Mark Landler & Coral Davenport of the New York Times: "A day after the United Nations issued its most urgent call to arms yet for the world to confront the threat of climate change, President Trump boarded Air Force One for Florida -- a state that lies directly in the path of this coming calamity -- and said nothing about it. It was the latest, most vivid example of Mr. Trump's dissent from an effort that has galvanized much of the world. While the United Nations warned of mass wildfires, food shortages and dying coral reefs as soon as 2040, Mr. Trump discussed his successful Supreme Court battle rather than how rising seawaters are already flooding Miami on sunny days."

On behalf of our nation, I want to apologize to Brett and the entir Kavanaugh family for the terrible pain and suffering you have been forced to endure. Those who step forward to serve our country deserve a fair and dignified evaluation, not a campaign of personal and political destruction based on lies and deception. What happened t the Kavanaugh family violates every notion of fairness, decency and due process. In our country, a man or a woman must always be presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty. And with that, I must state that you, sir, under historic scrutiny, were proven innocent. -- Donald Trump, at Brett Kavanaugh's third swearing in, Monday evening

Um, no to all that, you lying dirtbag. But, say, Donald, why don't you swear in Brett every damned day between now & November 6 to keep this perfidy fresh in our minds? -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie ...

... Ashley Parker & John Wagner of the Washington Post: "President Trump further politicized an already contentious Supreme Court confirmation battle Monday evening, beginning a ceremonial swearing-in for Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh by apologizing to both Kavanaugh and his family 'for the terrible pain and suffering' he said they were forced to endure.... Since Kavanaugh was confirmed on Saturday, Trump has seemed more interested in inflaming rather than reducing the tensions over his Supreme Court pick amid questions over whether the high court is becoming too politicized.... The White House ceremony, which included cocktails and a band, in some ways felt like a cross between a campaign rally and a wedding reception. In addition to all of the high court justices, attendees included conservative commentator Laura Ingraham, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein." As the night wore on, Trump went up to the residence to watch Hannity, and Kavanaugh drank Rosenstein under the table. (Okay, maybe I made up that last bit.) ...

... Peter Baker of the New York Times: "President Trump went further on Monday than he has before in dismissing sexual misconduct allegations against Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh as the creation of political opponents, calling them 'a hoax' and 'fabricated.' With Justice Kavanaugh now confirmed and sworn in, Mr. Trump moved beyond simply questioning the credibility of his accusers to asserting that their stories were made up entirely. Last week he mocked the main accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, for gaps in her memory but did not explicitly suggest that her account was invented.... When he boasted about Justice Kavanaugh's confirmation to the police chiefs in Orlando, they applauded enthusiastically.... 'It was very unfair what happened to him,' Mr. Trump went on. 'False charges, false accusations. Horrible statements that were totally untrue.' He added: 'It was a disgraceful situation brought about by people who are evil. And he toughed it out. We all toughed it out together.'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Trump -- and apparently some police chiefs -- find something heroic and "tough" in not only sexually assaulting women, but lying about it & trashing their victims. ...

... Brett Samuels of the Hill: "President Trump said Monday that he expects a lot of Democratic voters to support Republican candidates in the upcoming midterms because of how the party's lawmakers handled sexual misconduct allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.... Trump dismissed the allegations against Kavanaugh -- including that he sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford when the two were in high school — as 'a hoax that was set up by the Democrats.'" (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: Democrats must stand up to this line of attack, and it's not that haaaard. "Sexual assaults are hoaxes" is easy to counter, especially when the Number 1 messenger is also the country's Number 1 sexual assaulter (and by his own admission). One blind spot Democratic candidates have -- think the swiftboating of John Kerry -- is that they view Republicans' attacks as so ridiculous the attacks aren't necessary to address. Unfortunately, that's giving wa-a-a-ay too much credit to voters. Run a 30-second (or 15-second!) spot all over the country of Trump's grab-'em-by-the-pussy (bleep!) moment with a voiceover: "This man says sexual assault is a hoax." Sleazy? Yes, I think it's called fighting fire with fire. ...

... Becky Bohrer of the AP: "Alaska Republican party leaders plan to consider whether to reprimand U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski for opposing Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation. The party has asked Murkowski to provide any information she might want its state central committee to consider. Party Chairman Tuckerman Babcock says the committee could decide to issue a statement. Or he says it could withdraw support of Murkowski, encourage party officials to look for a replacement and ask that she not seek re-election as a Republican. He says the party took that more extreme step previously with state legislators who caucused with Democrats. He says all this follows outrage from Alaska Republicans." ...

     ... digby: "By the way, Sarah Palin is threatening to run against [Murkowski] in 2022 over the Kavanaugh vote. But she'll quit before it ever gets started." ...

... ** Paul Krugman: "... the readiness with which senior Republicans embraced crazy conspiracy theories about the opposition to Kavanaugh is a deeply scary warning about what might happen to America, not in the long run, but just a few weeks from now.... When people on the political fringe blame shadowy forces -- often, as it happens, sinister Jewish financiers -- for their frustrations, you can write it off as delusional. When people who hold most of the levers of power do the same thing..., it's a tool: a way to delegitimize opposition, to create excuses not just for disregarding but for punishing anyone who dares to criticize their actions. That's why conspiracy theories have been central to the ideology of so many authoritarian regimes.... The G.O.P. is an authoritarian regime in waiting." This is a must-read by somebody who's usually right. ...

... Cass Sunstein in Bloomberg: "... it is unspeakably cruel to ignore the intensity and the depth of the feelings of those who identify with [Christine Blasey] Ford. To treat Kavanaugh’s confirmation as an occasion for celebration, or for glee, is to twist a knife. It deepens both public and private wounds.... Political gloating is normal. Mocking human suffering is not."

Election 2018

North Dakota Senate. Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "Representative Kevin Cramer of North Dakota has repeatedly made headlines this year in his race against Senator Heidi Heitkamp because of off-the-cuff comments that range from inflammatory to indelicate. But his latest provocation on sexual misconduct sparked a furious and tearful rejoinder from Ms. Heitkamp on Sunday, one day after she voted to oppose the Supreme Court nomination of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.... He ripped into the #MeToo movement. 'That you're just supposed to believe somebody because they said it happened,' Mr. Cramer said, alluding to Christine Blasey Ford ... and, more broadly, women who have come forward to claim that they were sexually abused or assaulted. Invoking his wife, daughters, mother and mother-in-law, Mr. Cramer said: 'They cannot understand this movement toward victimization. They are pioneers of the prairie. These are tough people whose grandparents were tough and great-grandparents were tough.'... Heitman responded, 'I think it's wonderful that his wife has never had an experience, and good for her, and it's wonderful his mom hasn't.... 'My mom did. And I think it affected my mom her whole life. And it didn't make her less strong.... She got stronger and she made us strong. And to suggest that this movement doesn't make women strong and stronger is really unfortunate.'"

Okay, So Taylor Swift Does Matter. Claudia Rosenbaum & Michael Blackmon f BuzzFeed News: "Since Taylor Swift flexed her star power Sunday with an Instagram post that encouraged her 112 million followers to register to vote, Vote.org has experienced an unprecedented flood of new voter registrations nationwide. 'We are up to 65,000 registrations in a single 24-hour period since T. Swift's post,' said Kamari Guthrie, director of communications for Vote.org. For context, 190,178 new voters were registered nationwide in the entire month of September, while 56,669 were registered in August. In Swift's home state of Tennessee, where Swift voiced support for two Democratic candidates running in this year's midterms, voter registrations have also jumped." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Gee, I never thought of voting till Taylor Swift said it was cool. ...

... So You Thought Wingers Were Nuts. Avi Selk of the Washington Post: "Taylor Swift's declaration that she plans to vote for Democrats next month fell like a hammer across the Trump-worshipping subforums of the far-right Internet, where people had convinced themselves, for reasons it will take some time to explain, that the world-famous pop star was a secret #MAGA fan.... In some ways, it's not much different from how every other conspiracy theory arises out of nonsense on that anonymous message board[.]... The delusion traces back to the middle of the Obama administration, 2011, when a certain fraction of 4chan users convinced themselves that Swift had let them name her cat.... [She didn't.] Amateur sleuths began sifting through the website in search of more supposed secret messages from the pop star [all of which were bogus].... A few years later..., a neo-Nazi blogger came across a joke meme that mashed up photos of Swift with quotes from Adolf Hitler. He apparently mistook these as authentic and published them on the Daily Stormer under the headline: 'Aryan Goddess Taylor Swift: Nazi Avatar of the White European People.'... The mood was more foul than usual after the forum's imaginary protege declared her real feelings. The Washington Post's language policies prevent linking to most of what 4chan had to say. Suffice to say, a meme of Pepe the Frog openly weeping with a gun to his head appeared in one of the most popular threads, more or less summing up the mood." ...

... AND Felicia Sonmez of the Washington Post: "President Trump on Monday fired back at Taylor Swift over her endorsement of Democrats in next month's midterms, declaring that his enthusiasm for the pop megastar's music has waned by 'about 25 percent.'" ...

... So you got your enthusiastic Taylor Swift fans, you got your sad & angry ex-Taylor Swift fans, and now you got your Christopher Columbus & Marco Polo fans. Thanks to PD Pepe for introducing us to some more of America's well-informed electorate. (That bit there at the top of the page: "Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance"? Yeah, it's relevant. Every day:

Annals of "Journalism," Ha Ha Ha. Justin Wise of the Hill: "Former White House communications director Hope Hicks is joining Fox as its chief communications officer. The media company made the announcement on Monday, saying that Hicks will be based in Los Angeles." Mrs. McC: Great! I'm sure Hopey-Dopey will make Fox "News" even more fair and balanced. Trump probably insisted the Trump Media outlet hire Hicks. (Also linked yesterday.)

Craig Timberg, et al., of the Washington Post: "Google kept quiet for more than six months about its discovery of a bug that put at risk the personal data of hundreds of thousands of Google+ users, the company said Monday, a delay that could spark a new round of regulatory and political scrutiny. The decision to not immediately report the software bug -- in a process that included briefing chief executive Sundar Pichai -- was discussed in an internal document that expressed concerns about the company's reputation and the possibility of increased scrutiny from regulators, said a person familiar with internal deliberations at Google. Google said Monday that it did not immediately announce the data leak because it was unsure which users were affected."

Beyond the Beltway

Jesse McKinley, et al., of the New York Times: "A driver with an improper license. A limousine company with a trail of failed inspections and ties to a scheme to illegally obtain driver's licenses. And a limousine itself that had also been deemed unsafe. Two days after a devastating limousine crash in upstate New York that killed 20 people, officials revealed new details about their inquiry that suggested that the trip never should have been allowed to happen.The mounting questions about the accident increasingly centered on the limousine company, Prestige Limousine, which had a shoddy record, operated out of a back room in a low-budget hotel and had a history of dealings that seemed to extend to Dubai. On Monday, officials moved to suspend the company's operations and seize its vehicles. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo told reporters that the limousine involved in the accident had failed an inspection last month and 'was not supposed to be on the road.'" See also yesterday's Ledes.

News Ledes

New York Times: "Hurricane Michael approached a fortified Florida Panhandle on Tuesday and strengthened into a Category 3 storm that is expected to make landfall on Wednesday as the most powerful tropical cyclone to strike the mainland United States so far this year. The National Hurricane Center said that the storm had maximum sustained winds of 120 miles per hour, and would reach the Florida coastline on Wednesday. Emergency declarations were issued for parts of Alabama, Florida and Georgia, and the authorities ordered tens of thousands of people to evacuate as they opened storm shelters and shut down schools."

The Washington Post "has removed article limits on coverage of Hurricane Michael to make these stories available without a subscription."

The Commentariat -- October 8, 2018

... Forgot what day it was till I went to the Post Office. -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie

     ... Thanks to Bobby Lee & Akhilleus for IDing an appropriate song for the day.

Late Morning Update:

Isabel Dobrin of Politico: "... Donald Trump told reporters on Monday that he has no plans to fire deputy Attorney General Rod Rosentein, who will accompany the president on his day trip to Orlando aboard Air Force One. 'I look forward to being with him. That'll be very nice,"'Trump said of Rosenstein. 'We're going to be talking. We'll be talking on the plane. I actually have a good relationship, other than there's been no collusion, folks, no collusion. But I have a very good relationship.' Asked directly if he has plans to fire Rosenstein, Trump said 'no, I don't.' He added later that he 'didn't know Rod before, but I've gotten to know him and I get along very well with him.'" Mrs. McC: Rosenstein probably reminds Trump every time they see each other about his great service to the country as a member of the Ken Starr team.

Brett Samuels of the Hill: "President Trump said Monday that he expects a lot of Democratic voters to support Republican candidates in the upcoming midterms because of how the party's lawmakers handled sexual misconduct allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.... Trump dismissed the allegations against Kavanaugh -- including that he sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford when the two were in high school -- as 'a hoax that was set up by the Democrats.'"

Annals of "Journalism," Ha Ha Ha. Justin Wise of the Hill: "Former White House communications director Hope Hicks is joining Fox as its chief communications officer. The media company made the announcement on Monday, saying that Hicks will be based in Los Angeles." Mrs. McC: Great! I'm sure Hopey-Dopey will make Fox "News" even more fair and balanced. Trump probably insisted the Trump Media outlet hire Hicks.

*****

Coral Davenport of the New York Times: "A landmark report from the United Nations' scientific panel on climate change paints a far more dire picture of the immediate consequences of climate change than previously thought and says that avoiding the damage requires transforming the world economy at a speed and scale that has 'no documented historic precedent.' The report, issued on Monday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of scientists convened by the United Nations to guide world leaders, describes a world of worsening food shortages and wildfires, and a mass die-off of coral reefs as soon as 2040 -- a period well within the lifetime of much of the global population.... The report was the first to be commissioned by world leaders under the Paris agreement, the 2015 pact by nations to fight global warming.... President Trump, who has mocked the science of human-caused climate change, has vowed to increase the burning of coal and said he intends to withdraw from the Paris agreement. And on Sunday in Brazil, the world's seventh-largest emitter of greenhouse gas, voters appeared on track to elect a new president, Jair Bolsonaro, who has said he also plans to withdraw from the accord." ...

... Kevin Sack & John Schwartz of the New York Times: "FEMA's public assistance program has provided at least $81 billion ... to state, territorial and local governments in response to disasters declared since 1992, according to a New York Times analysis.... But an examination of projects across the country's ever-expanding flood zones reveals that decisions to rebuild in place, often made seemingly in defiance of climate change [and at the whims of local officials], have at times left structures just as defenseless against the next storm.... Local officials desperate to restore normalcy to disoriented communities will get to decide how to spend those federal dollars -- choices made more consequential, and costly, as sea levels rise and Atlantic storms generate greater surge and rainfall because of climate change." ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: It doesn't help that the majority of natural disasters seem to occur in the South, where "local official" means Mayor Joe Bob Know-Nuthin.

Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "... the GOP secured its greatest amount of political power and leverage since at least the Great Depression.... Assuming the court is more tilted toward the GOP going forward, that delivers the GOP the last vestige of power in Washington that had thus far eluded it. While justices are technically nonpartisan, experts say this is shaping up to be the first reliably conservative Supreme Court since at least the New Deal era more than 75 years ago. By some measures, the court was already more conservative than it was then.... Republicans control 33 out of 50 governor's seats.... The GOP also holds complete control of the governor's seat and the state legislature in 25 states (compared to eight for Democrats).... The GOP controlled 4,104 out of 7,383 state legislative seats as of July.... In Washington, the GOP's House majority currently includes 235 seats.... Republicans' narrow 51-49 Senate majority ... when ... combine[d] with the GOP's control of the House and the presidency, it gave the GOP unified control of policymaking in Washington for just the fourth Congress since the Great Depression." ...

... Josh Marshall: "We should now be looking at a very different 6 to 3 progressive majority in which Gorsuch and Kavanaugh are absent and Merrick Garland and another Justice are present. In little more than two years, the theft of the Garland seat and the tainted 2016 election have together forced a massive redirection of the jurisprudential course of the country. Mitch McConnell shows up again and again in the process, first as the key driver of the theft of the Garland seat and second as a significant player blocking a bipartisan response to Russian intervention in the election. His fingerprints cover both events.... I point this out merely to illustrate the dramatic and far-reaching consequences of rule-breaking, over a very short period of time, that will ramify out decades into the future." ...

... ** Garrett Epps of the Atlantic: "The long revolution of the civil-rights movement, and the social revolution of the 1960s and '70s, changed our national life, largely for the better. The changes came not from elites, but from ordinary Americans -- African Americans who refused to accept subordinate status; women who would no longer accept male domination; young people who rebelled at the killing in Vietnam.... During this part of our history, when ordinary citizens demanded change from their governments, the Supreme Court often stood ready to guarantee their right to do so.... As the turn of the century came and went, [the Court's] decisions still often pointed the way to a more perfect union.... [But the Republican] party made the Supreme Court a partisan issue." Read on. This is, as the headline declares, "a requiem for the Supreme Court." Mrs. McC: The prologue especially is precisely what I had been thinking. ...

... Mary Papenfuss of the Huffington Post: "... Donald Trump said Saturday he's 'a hundred percent' certain that Christine Blasey Ford named the wrong person when she said Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her, he told reporters on Air Force One. He also called Kavanaugh, who was sworn in as a Supreme Court justice today after being confirmed in a 50-48 Senate vote, 'squeaky clean.' Beyond the sexual assault accusation, a number of his Yale classmates have said Kavanaugh lied under oath about his drinking habits.... Trump also insisted women were 'extremely happy' about Kavanaugh's confirmation because they're apparently relieved the men in their lives are less likely now to be accused of sexual assault. 'Women were outraged at what happened to Brett Kavanaugh,' he added, according to pool reports." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: As Ken W. pointed out yesterday, this is the same jerk who was 100 percent certain he saw A-rabs celebrating in Jersey on 9/11 & Barack Obama was born in Kenya. It's also the same guy who is 100 percent certain the women who accused him of sexual assault are gold-digging liars.

... Christal Hayes of USA Today: "Hours after his Supreme Court pick was sworn in Saturday..., Donald Trump said on Fox News that those who made up 'false' stories about Brett Kavanaugh should be penalized. Trump, talking with Fox News' Jeanine Pirro, said he hated watching the slew of sexual assault allegations grow against Kavanaugh and dubbed all the accusations 'fabrications' with 'not a bit of truth.' 'I think that they should be held liable,' Trump told Pirro. 'You can't go around and whether it's making up stories or making false statements about such an important position, you can't do that. You can destroy somebody's life.'" (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "The bitter partisan fury that engulfed Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh's Supreme Court confirmation was the fiercest battle in a political war over the judiciary that has been steadily intensifying since the Senate rejected Judge Robert H. Bork in 1987. But an even greater conflagration may be coming.... Facing a Supreme Court controlled by five solidly conservative justices, liberals have already started to attack the legitimacy of the majority bloc and discussed ways to eventually undo its power without waiting for one of its members to retire or die. Some have gone as far as proposing -- if Democrats were to retake control of Congress and the White House in 2020 or after -- expanding the number of justices on the court to pack it with liberals or trying to impeach, remove and replace Justice Kavanaugh.... Today, the majority five on the Supreme Court are all movement conservatives -- Republican lawyers who came of age after an ideological backlash a generation ago to decades of liberal court rulings." ...

... Emily Atkin of the New Republic (Oct. 6): "A Morning Consult/Politico poll released Monday showed that 69 percent of Republican women favor [Brett Kavanaugh's] confirmation.... 'As Susan Collins just proved, it’s not enough to elect more women,' [Ethan Todras-Whitehill, founder of advocacy group SwingLeft, wrote on Friday. 'We have to elect more DEMOCRATIC women.'" ...

... Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post: "You cannot say a party that embraces a deeply misogynistic president who bragged about sexually assaulting women and mocked and taunted a sex-crime victim; accepted a blatantly insufficient investigation of credible sex crimes against women in lieu of a serious one that the White House counsel knew would be disastrous; repeatedly insulted and dismissed sex-crime victims exercising their constitutional rights; has never put a single woman on the Judiciary Committee (and then blames its own female members for being too lazy); and whips up male resentment of female accusers is a party that respects women. Its members resent women. They scorn women.... The Republican Party no longer bothers to conceal its loathing of immigrants, its contempt for a free press, its disdain for the rule of law or its views on women. Indeed, these things now define a party that survives by inflaming white male resentment." ...

... Sarah Kendzior, in the [Canadian] Globe & Mail: Brett Kavanaugh's "flaws are so many, his unfitness so obvious, that he achieved what is often said to be impossible in the Donald Trump era: He united Americans of different backgrounds and political persuasions in common cause. After Saturday's official Senate vote, naming him to the Supreme Court, we are united in common anguish. The confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh was, at heart, a referendum on the integrity of U.S. institutions and of the impunity of elites -- and the U.S. failed. Senators who purport to believe in rule of law vouched for a judge who sees himself as above it. Senators who purport to believe in democracy honoured a man who degrades it, and did so in deference to a man seemingly attempting to destroy it -- President Trump.... This is now Mr. Trump's Supreme Court of the United States, run on white male entitlement and alternative facts." ...

... A Couple of Republicans Kinda Catch on:

... Tom Nichols in the Atlantic: "Unlike Senator Susan Collins, who took pages upon pages of text on national television to tell us something we already knew, I will cut right to the chase: I am out of the Republican Party.... Small things sometimes matter, and Collins is among the smallest of things in the political world.... Her speech on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh convinced me that the Republican Party now exists for one reason, and one reason only: for the exercise of raw political power, and not even for ends I would otherwise applaud or even support.... She had clearly made up her mind weeks earlier, and she completely ignored Kavanaugh's volcanic and bizarre performance in front of the Senate.... But during the Kavanaugh dumpster fire, the performance of the Democratic Party -- with some honorable exceptions like Senators Chris Coons, Sheldon Whitehouse, and Amy Klobuchar -- was execrable.... The Republicans, however, have now eclipsed the Democrats as a threat to the rule of law and to the constitutional norms of American society.... Raw power, wielded so deftly by Senator Mitch McConnell, is exercised for its own sake, and by that I mean for the sake of fleecing gullible voters on hot-button social issues so that Republicans may stay in power." ...

... Sophia Nelson (also a Republican), in an NBC News opinion piece: "Collins' decision to vote to confirm Kavanaugh put a dispiriting exclamation point on something I've known for quite some time: The Republican party has turned its back on women.... Of course, we know that those 'rights,' [described in the Declaration of Independence] ... were only granted to white, Protestant men or white male landowners.... In short, white men -- by birthright -- were entitled to everything.... As I watched a parade of Republican women line up to cast their vote for a sitting federal judge credibly accused of drunkenly sexually assaulting multiple peers in his youth..., I saw women upholding male power and privilege.... Ultimately, the vote on Saturday was about preserving the status quo. It was about keeping women in our place.... They are a party run by white men, for white men, with the tacit support of a certain kind of white woman."

Mrs. McCrabbie: Sorry, I forgot the funnies yesterday, because nothing seems funny:

Hmm. Katie Benner of the New York Times: "Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, and President Trump planned to travel to Florida together on Air Force One Monday morning, a week and a half after the two were scheduled to discuss remarks Mr. Rosenstein had made about the president's fitness for office and an offer to secretly tape conversations with him."

Jennifer Keil of the New York Post: "A sprawling mansion on the Upper East Side has been frozen as part of a hard-core battle between the US government and Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.... US officials say Deripaska, an aluminium billionaire, is close both with Russian mob leaders and Russian president Vladimir Putin -- and that he is on the sanctions list because he is allegedly involved in murder, money-laundering, bribery and racketeering. Deripaska also had President Trump's ex-campaign manager Paul Manafort -- who has been convicted of crimes including money-laundering and who is cooperating with US special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe -- on his payroll for years."

Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post: "The disappearance and alleged killing last week of dissident Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi while he was visiting the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul is only the latest challenge to a U.S.-Saudi relationship that both governments have diligently cultivated. The Trump administration has said little beyond expressing public concern over Khashoggi's fate, and the kingdom has sharply denied any knowledge of his whereabouts. In private, officials from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on down have been frustrated with the lack of a substantive response to direct high-level queries, according to administration officials. Confirmation that Khashoggi was killed -- as some senior Turkish officials have charged -- or even his disappearance at Saudi hands is likely to spark a new round of congressional pressure to reassess the relationship with Riyadh."

Election 2018

Kansas. Idiocracy. Patrick Smith of ThinkProgress: "Trump rallies are rarely uneventful, and Saturday night's event in Topeka, Kansas was no exception. This time it was [Kris] Kobach -- the state's Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate -- who was responsible for some of the controversy. Kobach made the claim that tougher immigration policies, like the ones put in place since Trump took office, would have saved the lives of the roughly 3,000 people who perished in the 9/11 attacks.... Kobach also tied his anti-immigration sentiments to one of his favorite subjects: voter ID laws. Claiming that they 'created trust in our elections,' he suggested that a voter fraud epidemic is hurting the country. Kobach also claimed that Democrats are allowing it to happen, saying 'they don't care about U.S. citizens' votes being canceled out.' There is little to back up Kobach's claims." --s

Tennessee. Sarah Mervosh of the New York Times: "Taylor Swift, the pop music titan who has been notably apolitical in turbulent political times, broke her silence on Sunday and endorsed two Democratic candidates running for election in Tennessee. In a post on Instagram, Ms. Swift said she planned to vote for Phil Bredesen, who is competing in a tight Senate race against a Republican candidate backed by President Trump, and Representative Jim Cooper, an incumbent who represents the Nashville area.... She pledged support for L.G.B.T.Q. rights and racial and gender equality.... The singer is beloved by some white supremacists, who claim her as an Aryan goddess, and in 2017, her lawyers fought back against a blog post that portrayed her as a white supremacist figurehead." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Should we care what entertainers think? Not much. But the media care & are making a big deal of Swift's endorsements, so there you go.

Sam Levin & Carey Gillam of the Guardian: "In an historic verdict in August, a jury ruled that Monsanto had caused a man's terminal cancer and ordered the agrochemical corporation to pay $289m in damages. The extraordinary decision exposing the potential hazards of the world's most widely used herbicide, has paved the way for thousands of other cancer patients and families to seek justice and compensation in court.... Monsanto has filed an appeal, and a hearing is scheduled for Wednesday in San Francisco.... A snowballing series of courtroom challenges are now threatening the legacy and finances of the corporations -- and the future of a chemical that is ubiquitous around the globe." --s

Beyond the Beltway

Buh-Bye, First Amendment. Now You Can't Even Protest in Your Own Front Yard. Blake Montgomery of BuzzFeed News: "Police in Texas removed an anti-Republican political sign from a woman's yard Tuesday night last week, amid nationwide rancor over the Senate's vote on Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court. The poster, made by Marion Stanford of Hamilton, Texas, and placed in her yard, shows an elephant painted in red, white, and blue with stars, a well-known symbol of the Republican Party. The elephant is sticking its trunk up the skirt of a young blonde girl with pigtails crying for help. Beside the image is the slogan 'Your vote matters.'... 'Police told me to remove the sign or they would take it and would arrest me,' Stanford said. 'So I let them take the sign.' The city manager of Hamilton has denied that the police seized the sign, telling the newspaper that Stanford gave it away.... Stanford said [the poster was] ... a version of a Washington Post editorial cartoon [by Ann Telnaes, who drew the original cartoon in response to the Republican Party's support of Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore.... Telnaes ... responded ... on Twitter: 'Good thing I'm not cartooning in Texas.'" Both Stanford's sign & Telnaes' cartoon are pictured with the story. Thanks to Akhilleus for the lead.

Way Beyond

O Trumpo Brasileiro. Ernesto Londoño & Manuela Andreoni of the New York Times: "Brazilians on Sunday expressed their disgust with politics as usual and endorsed an iron-fist approach to fighting crime and corruption by giving the far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro an ample lead in the first round of the presidential election. Mr. Bolsonaro stunned the political establishment by rising to the top of a crowded presidential field despite a long history of offensive remarks about women, black people and gay people. He also offered an emphatic defense of the country's old military dictatorship. The victory was all the more remarkable because Mr. Bolsonaro lacked the backing of a major party and campaigned on a shoestring budget, relying mainly on social media to build a base. As of mid-September, the Bolsonaro campaign reported having spent about $235,000, a small fraction of the $6.3 million Fernando Haddad of the leftist Workers' Party disclosed having spent. Mr. Haddad, who also made the runoff, came in a distant second." ...

... Tom Phillips of the Guardian: "Fernando Haddad, [Jair] Bolsonaro's opponent in the pivotal second-round vote on 28 October, has a mountain almost as high as Brazil's Pico da Neblina to climb if he is to scupper the right-wing populist's dramatic political ascent.... Just to draw level with Bolsonaro, Haddad would need virtually every single one of the voters who opted for the third and fourth-placed candidates, Ciro Gomes and Geraldo Alckmin, to switch to his side. 'The path for Haddad to close that gap looks almost impossible,' said Brian Winter, the editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly, describing Bolsonaro as a 'huge favourite' to win. 'If you simply add Bolsonaro plus two-thirds of Alckmin's [5m] votes, it's over.'" --s

Edward Wong & Alissa Rubin of the New York Times: "In a stunning move that could set back the country's efforts to expand its global presence, the Chinese Communist Party announced late Sunday that the missing president of Interpol, Meng Hongwei, was under investigation on 'suspicion of violating the law' and was 'under the supervision' of an anticorruption watchdog tied to the party. The announcement that Mr. Meng, a Chinese national, was being detained was posted online by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the party's watchdog against graft and political disloyalty, on Sunday night. A few hours later, Interpol said it had received Mr. Meng's resignation 'with immediate effect.'... The detention of Mr. Meng, 64, is an audacious step by the party, even by the standards of the increasingly authoritarian system under the leadership of President Xi Jinping."

Barbie Nadeau of the Daily Beast: "The face of 30-year-old Bulgarian investigative journalist Victoria Marinova had been beaten with such brutal force that the popular television journalist was not recognizable. Her semi-nude body was found in a remote area along the River Danube in Ruse, Bulgaria on Saturday, but it took hours to positively identify her. Initial reports in local Bulgarian media indicated that she had been raped, according to Interior Minister Mladen Marinov. She was also strangled and and suffocated. Her car keys, mobile phone, glasses and much of her clothing had been removed from the remote wooded area. Marinova is the fourth journalist to be killed in Europe in the last 14 months.... Bulgarian prosecutor Georgy Georgiev says investigators are now considering whether Marinova's efforts to expose corruption in Bulgaria were a motive in her murder."

News Lede

New York Times: "The 2018 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science was awarded on Monday to a pair of American economists, William D. Nordhaus and Paul M. Romer for their work highlighting the importance of government policy in fostering sustainable economic growth. Mr. Nordhaus was honored for pioneering the assessment of the economic impact of climate change, including his advocacy for governments to tax carbon emissions. Mr. Romer was honored for his work on the role of policy in encouraging technological innovation.... The announcement of the award came on the same day that a United Nations panel on climate change released a report warning of dire consequences from climate change and urging governments to respond to the problem with greater urgency. The Nobel Prize committee said that its choice of laureates underscored the need for governments to cooperate."

The Commentariat -- October 7, 2018

Late Morning Update:

Mary Papenfuss of the Huffington Post: "... Donald Trump said Saturday he's 'a hundred percent' certain that Christine Blasey Ford named the wrong person when she said Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her, he told reporters on Air Force One. He also called Kavanaugh, who was sworn in as a Supreme Court justice today after being confirmed in a 50-48 Senate vote, 'squeaky clean.' Beyond the sexual assault accusation, a number of his Yale classmates have said Kavanaugh lied under oath about his drinking habits.... Trump also insisted women were 'extremely happy' about Kavanaugh's confirmation because they're apparently relieved the men in their lives are less likely now to be accused of sexual assault. 'Women were outraged at what happened to Brett Kavanaugh,' he added, according to pool reports." ...

... Christal Hayes of USA Today: "Hours after his Supreme Court pick was sworn in Saturday..., Donald Trump said on Fox News that those who made up 'false' stories about Brett Kavanaugh should be penalized. Trump, talking with Fox News' Jeanine Pirro, said he hated watching the slew of sexual assault allegations grow against Kavanaugh and dubbed all the accusations 'fabrications' with 'not a bit of truth.' 'I think that they should be held liable,' Trump told Pirro. 'You can't go around and whether it's making up stories or making false statement about such an important position, you can't do that. You can destroy somebody's life.'"

*****

Nasty, Lying, Unhinged Violent Would-be Rapist Drunk to Join Supreme Court. Sheryl Stolberg of the New York Times: "A deeply divided Senate voted on Saturday to confirm Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, delivering a victory to President Trump and ending a rancorous Washington battle that began as a debate over ideology and jurisprudence and concluded with questions of sexual misconduct. The vote, 50 to 48, was interrupted repeatedly by protesters, with the Capitol Police dragging screaming demonstrators out of the gallery as the senators sat somberly at their wooden desks in the chamber below.... The final tally fell almost entirely along party lines, with Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska -- the lone Republican to break with her party -- recorded as 'present' instead of 'no' as a gesture to a colleague, Senator Steve Daines of Montana, who was attending his daughter's wedding and would have voted 'yes.' Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia was the lone Democrat to support Judge Kavanaugh." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Update: Powerful Old White Men Fall All Over Themselves to Sign up Nasty, Lying, Unhinged Violent Would-be Rapist Drunk. "[Kavanaugh] was promptly sworn in by both Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and the retired Justice Anthony M. Kennedy -- the court's longtime swing vote, whom he will replace -- in a private ceremony." ...

... Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "President Trump predicted Saturday that Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) 'will never recover' politically for her vote against Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh as he celebrated his nominee's ascension following an extraordinarily brutal confirmation process.... 'I think she will never recover from this,' Trump said. 'I think the people from Alaska will never forgive her for what she did.'... He singled out Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) for praise.... 'I think what Susan Collins did for herself was incredibly positive,' Trump said. 'It showed her to be an honorable, incredible woman. I think she's got a level of respect that's unbelievable. I really mean it.' Trump called The Post from the White House residence on Saturday afternoon, shortly before the Senate held its final vote and before he jetted to Kansas for an evening campaign rally, where he was looking to take a victory lap." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: As Trump likes to say when he has no idea what he's talking about, "We'll see." His point of course is that there's a price to pay for integrity. ...

... Speaking of "We'll See." Chas Danner of New York: "[R]egarding the political cost the GOP may have to pay for its pushing of Kavanaugh and its self-serving dismissal of the allegations against him, [Mitch] McConnell brushed off the outrage, insisting that 'these things always blow over.' He's also happy that Kavanaugh, who he has called a 'political gift,' came out on top because it demonstrated GOP resolve and, in his mind, cleared Kavanaugh of any wrongdoing.... McConnell seems to see himself as both the hero, and a victim, in this story. His victimhood is at the hands of the women who spoke up and confronted members of Congress, and on behalf of his fellow Republicans, including Kavanaugh. His heroism is a result of his willingness to do anything to grab and hold onto power in service of his ultraconservative cause.... Indeed, with his dream achieved on Saturday, McConnell admitted that his whole stated premise for blocking [Merrick] Garland -- that it was, as he once said, 'about a principle, not a person' -- was bullshit, unless the right to take 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.'" --s ...

... Terry Schwadron of DC Report: "Once again, the lesson is being rammed home: We care only about winning even if it means trampling personal reputations.... [W]e ought to be yet more concerned about what is passing as reasonable behavior by our public officials.... Though Kavanaugh's Republican advocates suggest unfounded, personal allegations against the judge are out of control, he's actually a public figure.... It seems to me to be quite another thing for Trump and Senate Republicans to level their rhetorical guns on private citizens, particularly women who have nothing to gain and lots to lose by stepping up to say that they were subject to private, bad behavior, however long ago.... Rather than Trump himself, Mitch McConnell turns out to be the heavy, the bully, in this story." --s ...

... ** Chief Justice Part of Kavanaugh Conspiracy. Carol Leonnig, et al., of the Washington Post: "Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has received more than a dozen judicial misconduct complaints against ... Brett M. Kavanaugh in recent weeks but has chosen for the time being not to refer them to a judicial panel for investigation. A judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit -- the court on which Kavanaugh serves -- sent a string of complaints to Roberts starting three weeks ago, according to four people familiar with the matter. That judge, Karen LeCraft Henderson, had dismissed other complaints against Kavanaugh as frivolous, but she concluded that some were substantive enough that they should not be handled by Kavanaugh's fellow judges in the D.C. Circuit. In a statement Saturday, Henderson acknowledged the complaints and said they centered on statements Kavanaugh made during his Senate confirmation hearings.... The situation is highly unusual.... Never before has a Supreme Court nominee been poised to join the court while a fellow judge recommends that a series of misconduct claims against that nominee warrant review. Roberts/s decision not to immediately refer the cases to another appeals court has caused some concern in the legal community. If Kavanaugh is confirmed, legal experts say, the details of the misconduct complaints against him may not become public and instead will be dismissed. Supreme Court justices are not subject to the misconduct rules governing these claims." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Zoe Tillman of BuzzFeed News: "Chief Judge Merrick Garland disqualified himself from handling ethics complaints against ... Brett Kavanaugh, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit announced Saturday morning. The statement did not explain why Garland ... had decided to step aside, or provide an update on the status of the complaints. Multiple ethics complaints have been filed against Kavanaugh in his current court, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, about his testimony in recent weeks in the US Senate and his response to allegations of sexual misconduct. The chief judge of the circuit normally handles ethics cases, but they have discretion to step aside if they conclude 'circumstances warrant disqualification,' under the federal judiciary's rules. If the chief judge is disqualified, the complaint falls to the next most senior judge of the court, in this case Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson, who issued Saturday's statement.... 'The complaints do not pertain to any conduct in which Judge Kavanaugh engaged as a judge. The complaints seek investigations only of the public statements he has made as a nominee to the Supreme Court of the United States[, Henderson said in her statement.]" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Justin Wise of the Hill: "Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan said Friday she fears the high court may lack a justice going forward who would serve as a swing vote on cases, speaking hours after ... Brett Kavanaugh secured enough votes to be confirmed. Kagan said at a conference for women at Princeton University that over the past three decades, starting with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and continuing with Justice Anthony Kennedy, that there was a figure on the bench 'who found the center or people couldn't predict in that sort of way.' 'It's not so clear, that I think going forward, that sort of middle position -- it's not so clear whether we'll have it,' Kagan said."(Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... John Bresnahan of Politico: "After weeks of backroom deals, dramatic hearings and rage-filled protests that pitted the #MeToo movement against ... Donald Trump, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is on track to be confirmed by the Senate on Saturday by the narrowest of margins. The vote, scheduled for late Saturday afternoon, is expected to be anticlimactic after the Senate soap opera that has come before." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... John Wagner & Seung Min Kim of the Washington Post: "The Senate was poised to confirm Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh as the next Supreme Court justice Saturday afternoon by one of the narrowest margins in the institution's history, capping off a brutal confirmation fight that underscored how deeply polarized the nation has become under President Trump. After the remaining votes fell into place on Friday, Democrats, in a show of defiance, spent all night making impassioned floor speeches against the nomination and continued into Saturday morning. They voiced fears about how Kavanaugh would rule on an array of issues, including abortion rights and executive power, and highlighted the allegations of decades-old sexual assault that roiled his confirmation process for the past three weeks." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Michael Scherer & Robert Costa of the Washington Post: "Now-Justice Kavanaugh was narrowly confirmed Saturday by the Senate, 50-48, in a vote that tracked expectations from the summer, with only one Democrat and one Republican defecting from the party line. But few of the players emerged from the process unchanged or unblemished, underscoring the uncharted territory of deepening distrust and polarization that now defines the American system. The events further distanced the Senate Judiciary Committee from its nearly forgotten bipartisan traditions and raised new questions about the potential for the Supreme Court to maintain an independent authority outside the maelstrom of politics." Mrs. McC: Both of these reporters are conservatives, but their piece is worth reading to get a perspective on what Republicans/Fox "News" think about their "victory." ...

... BUT Dylan Scott of Vox has perhaps a more accurate read: "This is the governing ideology of the Republican Party: We don't care what anybody else thinks. We have the power. We have the will. We have the votes. We'll do what we want. In politics, there's winning the argument, and there's winning the vote. Republicans lost the argument, but they ultimately had the votes.... Republicans ... have no evidence to support their claims that [Christine Blasey] Ford might have been assaulted some other time, in some other place, by some other person. Yet they kept making them, ignoring any questions about Kavanaugh's own honesty and clinging to an ill-defined standard of additional corroboration for an alleged assault that took place nearly 40 years ago. And Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin took the same position. But that was typical of the GOP's argument. Whatever rhetorical contortions were necessary, whatever procedural formalities must be endured, whatever must be done to put Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court would be done." ...

... AND Republicans Don't Give Two F@#ks about Your Democracy. Steve M.: "Republicans have demonstrated that they see public confidence in institutions as an expendable luxury. Americans will now lose confidence in the Supreme Court as they've lost confidence in Congress, the presidency, and our electoral system. Republicans don't care. They control all these institutions, which do what they want done. That's all that matters to them. What's the approval rating of Congress? It's 19%, according to Gallup. Gallup polls this question monthly, and the number has been 20% or less every month since Republicans took over the House in January 2011.... Republicans elected a president who dishonors the presidency at every opportunity. So what? He's signing the bills they want and appointing the judges they want. So we should all stop saying that institutions are being damaged as if we expect anyone in power to care. The people who run the government have calculated that respected institutions simply aren't necessary. And that's working out just fine for them." --s ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: Republicans ignored Brett's lies & his insane rant & based their excuse for confirming him on one of two legal standards: "beyond a reasonable doubt" -- the criminal standard -- or "preponderance of the evidence" -- the civil standard. (Trump raised the standard to no doubt at all.) So voters should apply a legal standard to them on this election day & every election day thereafter: the penalty for aiding & abetting. You & your buddy rob a bank; after you race outside with the loot, your buddy shoots the guard dead. Even though you didn't shoot anyone & never intended to do so, you are criminally liable for the murder. Under this legal standard, every Senator who voted to confirm Kavanaugh is guilty of all the crimes & bad judgment the hearings revealed. Vote 'em out & lock 'em up. ...

** Francis Wilkinson in Bloomberg: "It's worth noting ... that in a battle over whether a woman's claims against a powerful man were to be believed, the decisive event was a speech by a woman who had no expectation, or even intention, of being believed herself. Senator Susan ... Collins's speech offered a series of ostensible rationales for her vote in favor of Kavanaugh. But her rationales were reminiscent of Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell feigning outrage over the perfidious delaying tactics of Democrats.... McConnell didn't expect his protests to be taken seriously. He was showing the Republican base, which has been conditioned by Donald Trump to savor such displays, that he could spin out an absurd falsehood in service to the cause.... The open contempt for truth -- a comic level of gas-lighting -- is the whole point.... But she anchored her speech in the vapors of Trump and McConnell's post-truth, confirming it as the lingua franca of the entire party." [Open in private window] --s

... Alexis Grenell in a New York Times op-ed: "With the exception of Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, all the women in the Republican conference caved.... These women are gender traitors, to borrow a term from the dystopian TV series 'The Handmaid's Tale.' They've made standing by the patriarchy a full-time job.... The women who supported them ... we're talking about white women. The same 53 percent who put their racial privilege ahead of their second-class gender status in 2016 by voting to uphold a system that values only their whiteness, just as they have for decades.... White women benefit from patriarchy by trading on their whiteness to monopolize resources for mutual gain. In return they're placed on a pedestal to be 'cherished and revered,' as Speaker Paul D. Ryan has said about women, but all the while denied basic rights." Read on. ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: I found Grenell's essay helpful. I've been unable to understand why any woman would vote for Trump, and Grenell has part of the answer. By the fact of their gender, white women already are second-class citizens, so they're afraid if they "elevate" people of color (of both genders) by giving them equal protection, their own status will suffer. It's a pathetic, self-defeating type of selfishness -- racism in the cause of retaining their tenuous "place" in a patriarchal hierarchy that sets them above men & women of color. This country has always been an elitist white patriarchy, and these women haven't the vision to see what in a brief period in the 1960s & '70s looked like hope for racial & gender equality. They have voluntarily enslaved themselves. ...

... Rebecca Morin of Politico: "Susan Rice on Friday appeared to toy with a possible Senate run against Susan Collins after the Maine Republican announced her support for ... Brett Kavanaugh. Rice, who served as President Barack Obama's National Security Adviser responded to a tweet calling on someone to challenge Collins. Jen Psaki, who served as Obama's communications director and is now vice president of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, tweeted: 'who wants to run for Senate in Maine? there will be an army of supporters with you.' Eleven minutes later, Rice had a simple response. 'Me.' Rice later clarified her tweet saying she is 'not making any announcements' about a possible campaign run." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Kristine Phillips & Eli Rosenberg of the Washington Post: "A crowdfunding site where activists have been raising money to defeat Sen. Susan Collins in 2020 was inundated with pledges Friday afternoon, after the Maine Republican announced she would support Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court. By 3:55 p.m., the site had crashed, apparently overwhelmed. 'Senator Susan Collins has people more motivated than we've ever seen before,' Crowdpac tweeted.... The site was back online a little less than two hours later. By Saturday afternoon, the campaign that vows to support Collins's future opponent had surpassed $3.2 million -- not an insignificant amount for a political race in a state with among the smallest populations in the country (1.3 million)." ...

... That time a drunken Brett Kavanaugh smashed the cargo box of a pickup truck & refused to pay for it -- one of the many complaints lodged against Kavanaugh on the FBI's tip line. This is a WSJ story, but at the time I linked it, it was not firewalled. Mrs. McC BTW: The WSJ makes this sound like a crank trip, but the complainant provided details of Brett's behavior & his own attempt to collect from Brett, AND he had a witness to corroborate the story. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

John Harris of Politico: "The president's gleeful taunts of [Al] Franken as a quitter at a campaign rally in Minnesota Thursday night -- he folded 'like a wet rag,' Trump cackled -- were, for Democrats, a wicked preface to their ash-in-mouth defeat this weekend in the Kavanaugh nomination fight. Whether Trump knew it or not, his remarks were perfectly pitched to stoke anxieties that have haunted many top Democratic operatives for a generation: the fear that their party loses big power struggles because Republicans are simply tougher, meaner, more cynical and more ruthless than they are. A belief in one's own virtue feels good. Losing a battle that could shape the American political landscape for decades feels bad. The tension between the two left some Democrats grappling anew this weekend with the implications: Maybe they really are the Wet Rag Party." --s

Kellen Browning of McClatchy DC [Oct. 3]: "The Trump administration has repealed a safety regulation governing trains that carry large quantities of oil, sparking new fears among Washington state officials and environmental activists that devastating oil spills could be more likely. The Department of Transportation announced last week that trains carrying flammable liquids such as crude oil and ethanol would no longer be required to install electronically controlled pneumatic braking systems, an Obama-era rule instituted to decrease the chance of train derailments." --s

Benign Bribery. Jeremy Slevin & Zahra Mion of ThinkProgress: "The D.C. City Council voted this week to overturn Initiative 77, a ballot measure that would have raised the tipped minimum wage in the nation's capital to $15 an hour by 2026. The initiative itself passe by an 11-point margin in June, bolstered by support in predominantly African-American precincts. But a group of legislators led by Democratic Council Chairman Phil Mendelson quickly moved to repeal the ballot initiative, citing economic concerns and opposition from small businesses, which culminated in this week's vote.... The lawmakers behind the recent repeal ... received thousands of dollars in contributions from the restaurant industry, raising doubt about their motivation for rolling back the popular measure." --s

Way Beyond the Beltway

Tom Phillips of the Guardian: "The far-right frontrunner [Jair Bolsonaro, a 63-year-old former paratrooper notorious for his hostility to black and gay people, the environment and the left] to become the next president of Latin America's largest democracy has vowed to make Brazil great again, as election-eve polls gave him a commanding lead in what many view as the most important election in its history.... With just hours to go until 147 million Brazilians choose their next leader on Sunday, polls gave Bolsonaro a 15-point lead over his closest rival, the Workers' party (PT) candidate Fernando Haddad,.... That would not be enough to avoid a second-round showdown..., since an outright majority is required for a win.... However, Bolsonaro's ascendancy in the polls and the palpably erratic mood in Brazil is such that a first-round win is no longer considered an impossibility." --safari: Trump's America has become a disease worldwide. We haven't reckoned with the fact we're no longer a "force for good".

Martin Farrer of the Guardian: "As higher US interest rates and fears of a trade war piles pressure on economies around the world, China's central bank said on Sunday that it was cutting the reserve requirement ratios (RRRs) by 1% from 15 October to lower financing costs and spur growth in the world's second-biggest economy.... Investment growth has slowed to a record low and net exports have been a drag on growth in the first half of the year. China releases a snapshot of its services sector on Monday, which will be closely watched for signs of slower growth. The injection of cash into the economy, which will be 750bn yuan ($109.2 billion), will also boost hopes that the negative impact of higher US tariffs on Chinese exports can be eased." --s

Carlotta Gall, et al., of the New York Times: "Turkish investigators believe a well-known Saudi dissident was killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.... The critic of the Saudi government, Jamal Khashoggi, entered the consulate on Tuesday to obtain a document he needed to get married and never emerged, according to his fiancée, who had stayed outside. Waiting for him inside the consulate, according to two people with knowledge of the investigation, were Saudi agents who had recently arrived in Turkey with the intent to silence Mr. Khashoggi. It was not clear if the plan had been to bring him back to Saudi Arabia alive, and something went wrong, or if the intention was to kill him there."

News Lede

New York Times: A limousine "crash killed all 18 occupants of the limousine, including its driver, as well as two pedestrians, in an accident that left deep tire tracks in the ground and the small town of Schoharie, N.Y., reeling.... The loss of life stunned even seasoned investigators, who called it the nation's deadliest transportation accident since a 2009 plane crash near Buffalo, N.Y., killed 50 people."