The first day of a tradition that has survived 23 years, births, deaths, marriages, divorces, cancer fights and recoveries, obstacles, impediments, conflicts and challenges.
This wknd with my boys could’ve fallen apart a hundred times.
Yet, here we are.
p.s. I haven’t slept in about 50 hours. Was a rough week leading up to the getaway.
Behind the public facade of McConnell being all in on Kav, Treason Turtle knows that R voters tend to vote best when they're voting angry.
Repubs got their best polling news in two years this week. The potential for a Kav loss woke the base.
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While a highly public defeat would seem like just that - a defeat - McConnell inevitably knows that it could be just the ticket to saving control of the Senate in November.
In ordinary times, I'd see the push to vote on Kav as a dire sign.
Today though, not so fast...
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A Kavanaugh defeat at the hands of Murkowski, Collins and Manchin wouldn't hurt Murkowski or Collins much (if at all) but would hurt Manchin - and more importantly, would probably swing the generic ballot 3-5 points nationwide.
The NYT’s sprawling exposé on the fraudulent myth of a successful Donald J. Trump is just everything journalism is supposed to be.
It’s a soaring journalistic achievement of legwork and research. It’s a careful unraveling. A distillation.
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It’s the kind of comprehensive investigative reporting that topples tyrants and preserves democracies.
It is a masterwork.
A Pulitzer is due and all but assured.
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Yet, at the same time it is also an accidental confessional and partially indicting of the Times’ itself.
Tucked among the 13,000 words is a single paragraph about the Times’ role in erecting the false edifice of the swaggering, young impresario who never was.
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Y’all will invariably fill my mentions with endless chides about my fact-based dislike of Avenatti but here’s something that ought to be processed regardless:
The right LOVES Avenatti’s grandstanding. It’s the only good thing that happened for them this week.
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The right wants to spin all of the accusations against Kavanaugh as a political hitjob.
They want to turn attention from the actual accusers to the Dems attached to them. Avenatti, Feinstein, etc.
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The more political these victims, their coming forward, and their stories can be made to seem, the easier it is for the right to dismiss them as just a political assassination.
The WH has allegedly opted to prevent the FBI from interviewing Avenatti’s client, Julie Swetnick.
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Yesterday, in the hall of the Senate, these two women found themselves facing Senator Jeff Flake with only a moment to change his mind.
The woman on the left, Ana Maria Achila, spoke first.
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Then, with the elevator doors closing, choked with emotion, desperate to be heard, desperate for all survivors of sexual assault to be heard, Maria Gallagher spoke.
“I was sexually assaulted.”
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Until that moment... with all the world watching... with cameras snapping... with the elevator doors about to close... she had told no one.
Maria Gallagher’s mother learned her daughter had been sexually assaulted the moment we did.
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