Four Post reporters give us some background:

When Donald Trump won his upset presidential victory in 2016, Christine Blasey Ford’s thoughts quickly turned to a name most Americans had never heard of but one that had unsettled her for years: Brett M. Kavanaugh.

Kavanaugh — a judge on the prestigious U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit — was among those mentioned as a possible replacement for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016. When Trump nominated Neil M. Gorsuch, Ford was relieved but still uneasy.

Then, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy announced his retirement, and Ford, 51, began fretting again.

“Her mind-set was, ‘I’ve got this terrible secret. . . . What am I

Pliny the in Between on the MeToo gauntlet:

… Read the rest

Atwood based The Handmaid’s Tale on reality, including recent history. Shannon Quinn gives some examples:

During her research process in the 1980’s, Margaret Atwood found an article about a fundamentalist Christian group in New Jersey called The People of Hope, who wanted to return to the old ways of society spelled out in the Bible. The group was started in 1975 by a New York stockbroker and ordained Catholic priest named Robert Gallic. They called the women “The Handmaidens of God”. Atwood took a pen and circled the word “Handmaidens” with a pen. She found the name for her dystopia’s subservient female characters, and the inspiration for the fictional religious group who would take over the government.

Women in

A very very far-right Congressional Representative, Paul Gosar, has a bunch of siblings who did a political ad…for his opponent.

The brothers and sisters — Tim, Jennifer, Gaston, Joan, Grace and David — appeared in campaign advertisements for David Brill, the Democrat hoping to unseat Gosar in Arizona’s 4th Congressional District in the upcoming midterm election.

The Gosar siblings framed their endorsement of Brill as a matter of values, saying their brother, who has long drawn headlines for his far-right views, and his politics were simply too much for them to stomach.

“We gotta stand up for our good name,” said brother David Gosar in the advertisement. “This is not who we are.”

“I couldn’t be quiet any

The Times editorial board says, sarcastically, have sympathy for the poor Republicans who tried so hard to pretend they’d improved since the shitshow over Clarence Thomas.

Leave it to Donald Trump to strip away the mask and reveal the troglodyte beneath. Administration officials reportedly labored to keep him from going on the attack against Dr. Blasey, but after a few days, the presidential id once again rose up and overwhelmed them and their message. On Friday morning, Mr. Trump tweeted:

“I have no doubt that, if the attack on Dr. Ford was as bad as she says, charges would have been immediately filed with Local Law Enforcement Authorities by either her or her loving parents. I ask

Archaeologist Ticia Verveer on Facebook:

These lovely glass birds contained cosmetics in powder form, to which access was gained by breaking the end of the bird’s tail. This type of powder container was made by glassblowing, a technique perfected circa 50 BC by Roman glassworkers in the eastern Mediterranean region.

Production of these small glass birds was particularly abundant during the reign of Emperor Augustus (27 BC-AD 14) and was still quite popular until circa AD 70.

Although many such birds have been found in Greece, Cyprus, and Syria, northern Italy (particularly Piedmont) and the canton of Ticino in modern Switzerland seem to have been the principal region for the production and distribution of this type of container.

H/t Vanina… Read the rest

How to keep up. An hour or two ago the Times published a story reporting that Rod Rosenstein was talking about invoking the 25th Amendment in 2017.

Huge scoop by ⁦@adamgoldmanNYT⁩ and ⁦@nytmike⁩ on Rod Rosenstein talking about secretly recording Trump and raising 25th amendment in the Comey firing aftermath https://t.co/IJTpHUpkP4

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) September 21, 2018

Many many journalists and lawyers and such on Twitter pointed out that Trump is likely to see this as the perfect pretext to fire Rosenstein, and wondered if the Times had really thought this through. There were a lot of tweets of the infamous Times headline about the FBI’s finding no evidence of Russian interference some ten minutes … Read the rest

In other news, it’s no longer August so here in the US the frenzy about Halloween is being whistled up by marketers. How about a sexy handmaid costume??!

An upsetting dystopian future has emerged where women no longer have a say. However, we say be bold and speak your mind in this exclusive Brave Red Maiden costume.

Oh yes, that’s the way to “be bold and speak your mind” – by wearing a tiny skirt to signal “this way to the important bit” and shoes you can’t walk a step in. Hahaha theocratic oppression of women, great, now spread your legs, bitch.… Read the rest

Republican Congressman Ralph Norman today:

“Did y’all hear this latest late-breaking news from the Kavanaugh hearings?” Norman said during his opening remarks of a debate against his Democratic challenger Thursdayin South Carolina,according to The Post and Courier. “Ruth Bader Ginsburg came out that she was groped by Abraham Lincoln.”

The congressman made the joke after telling the crowd that he almost had to miss the debate and travel back to Washington to address the accusation.

Haw haw haw haw – geddit? Abraham Lincoln, because Ginsburg is so old. Haw haw haw, sexual assault is so hilarious.… Read the rest

John Lundin on Facebook:

There’s something sick about ‘campaigning’ for a Supreme Court nomination to begin with, then this…

“When you rent a bus that seats 80 but only 6 women show up”

That’s just weird. A bus? With his face plastered on the side along with WOMEN FOR KAVANAUGH? Weird weird weird. But then it’s “Concerned Women for America” – concerned about all this scary talk of equal rights and abortion and stuff. More bible, less feminism, please.

… Read the rest

Matthew Desmond on the vast number of the working poor in the US:

These days, we’re told that the American economy is strong. Unemployment is down, the Dow Jones industrial average is north of 25,000 and millions of jobs are going unfilled. But for people like Vanessa, the question is not, Can I land a job? (The answer is almost certainly, Yes, you can.) Instead the question is, What kinds of jobs are available to people without much education? By and large, the answer is: jobs that do not pay enough to live on.

In recent decades, the nation’s tremendous economic growth has not led to broad social uplift. Economists call it the “productivity-pay gap” — the fact that

George Felis shared this post on Facebook and was inspired by comments to take a more extended look at the “why do people shrug off bullying when it’s only girls?” question. I got his permission to quote what he said.

Evidence that Kavanaugh was a high school bully would be generally taken to be a plausible indicator of his character, and even those who disagreed — those who rejected the idea that such youthful bad behavior could serve as a significant indication of the kind of person he is to this day — wouldn’t simply fail to understand why or how someone might think otherwise. But much of the conversation around the evidence that Kavanaugh committed sexual assault on a