Did Kavanaugh withdraw yet? No?

HOW 'BOUT NOW? Still no? Okay, let's type fast here. Because our money is on Judge Prepschool McRapenough tapping out any minute now. Let's review this wacky weekend, shall we?

The last hope for Republicans on the Judiciary Committee to save Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination was to stop Christine Blasey Ford from testifying so they could vote on Monday (that's today!) and swear the Roe-slayer in ten minutes later. Almost like they were racing against the clock because they knew more bad news was coming out! (See, that there is what we call "foreshadowing!")

So Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley issued a 10 p.m. Friday deadline for Blasey Ford to submit her prepared remarks and commit to testify Wednesday, despite her lawyer's clear statement that she could not appear before Thursday of next week. Except Susan Collins said no dice, and Blasey Ford's attorney reminded Grassley that her client was busy meeting with the FBI about the death threats raining down on her and her family, so maybe they could back the fuck up already.

The 10:00 p.m. deadline is arbitrary. Its sole purpose is to bully Dr. Ford and deprive her of the ability to make a considered decision that has life-altering implications for her and her family. She has already been forced out of her home and continues to be subjected to harassment, hate mail, and death threats. Our modest request is that she be given an additional day to make her decision.

At midnight Friday, Grassley blinked -- and in the most Grassley way possible.

TOTALLY NORMAL.

On Saturday, Blasey Ford announced her intention to testify this coming Thursday. And instead of admitting they got beat and withdrawing the nomination, for the love of God, Grassley and the boys set about trying to find a lady lawyer to interrogate a sexual assault survivor and call her a lying whore. Then they took to the airwaves to say that they had every intention of confirming Kavanaugh, no matter what Blasey Ford says. Because there's a handful of suburban white women who don't hate them yet, we guess?

Interesting choice of words there, Yertle! Republicans took heart when the other party guests named by Blasey Ford said they had no recollection of the party where she says she was attacked by Kavanaugh and his buddy Mark Judge. But they stuck by their refusal to call Judge to the stand to be questioned on the good old days at Georgetown Prep when he and "Bart O'Kavanaugh" would engage in blackout drunken hijinks. And they're still refusing to allow the FBI to investigate or call Judge or any other witness to testify Thursday.

Meanwhile, Grassley's communications consigliere Garrett Ventry, who'd been coordinating the PR response to Blasey Ford's allegations, resigned abruptly on Saturday after it emerged he'd been fired in 2017 from the office of North Carolina House Majority Leader John Bell in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations. Of freaking course!

Trumpland and Kavanaugh were vowing to fight until the death -- can't get clobbered in the midterms if your donors get pissed off about a failed SCOTUS nomination and close their wallets, can you? So they issued denials that Kavanaugh had been in on GOP hack Ed Whelan's harebrained scheme to exonerate his pal with an evil twin theory. Why was Whelan searching Blasey Ford's LinkedIn page 90 MINUTES after the White House got her name from The Post?

That morning, Ford alerted an associate via email that Whelan had looked at her LinkedIn page, according to the email, which was reviewed by The Post. LinkedIn allows some subscribers to see who views their pages. Ford sent the email about 90 minutes after The Post shared her name with a White House spokesman and hours before her identity was revealed in a story posted on its website.

Faced with admitting that Kavanaugh remembered exactly who she was from being in the room where it happened, or copping to leaking the name to Whelan so he could work his fuckery, the White House suddenly remembered that Raj Shah had "called a number of Trump allies to warn them about the upcoming story."

UH HUH.

Kavanaugh spent the weekend huddled at the White House for marathon murder boards to prepare for Thursday's hearing. But he got his wee feefees hurt by all the mean personal questions. The Post reports,

But Kavanaugh grew frustrated when it came to questions that dug into his private life, particularly his drinking habits and his sexual proclivities, according to three people familiar with the preparations, who requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. He declined to answer some questions altogether, saying they were too personal, these people said.

"I'm not going to answer that," Kavanaugh said at one point according to a senior White House official, who said that the questions were designed to go over the line and that he struck the right tone.

Yes, the guy who insisted upon asking how many times Bill Clinton ejaculated into the sink and touched Monica Lewinsky's genitals, the guy who demanded DNA from Vince Foster's daughter four years after his suicide, the guy who flogged lies about Hillary Clinton having an affair with Foster to journalists, THAT GUY is getting hot under the collar about inappropriate sexual questions.

KARMA'S A BITCH, AIN'T SHE.

Then Sunday morning The New York Times reported that Kavanaugh was going to blow this whole story out of the water by giving the Judiciary Committee his datebook from 36 years ago. Because there are absolutely ZERO entries in 17-year-old Brett's diary saying, "Go swimming, get blasted in the afternoon, corner girl in upstairs bedroom and try to rape her." Checkmate, Libs!

And then the second woman came forward.

Last night, The New Yorker's Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer broke the story of Deborah Ramirez, who alleges that a drunken Kavanaugh dropped trou and stuck his penis in her face when they were freshmen at Yale in 1983. Because he is a disgusting lout with no respect for women. (NOT ALLEGEDLY. FACT.)

"We were sitting in a circle," she said. "People would pick who drank." Ramirez was chosen repeatedly, she said, and quickly became inebriated. At one point, she said, a male student pointed a gag plastic penis in her direction. Later, she said, she was on the floor, foggy and slurring her words, as that male student and another stood nearby. (Ramirez identified the two male onlookers, but, at her request, The New Yorker is not naming them.)

A third male student then exposed himself to her. "I remember a penis being in front of my face," she said. "I knew that's not what I wanted, even in that state of mind." She recalled remarking, "That's not a real penis," and the other students laughing at her confusion and taunting her, one encouraging her to "kiss it." She said that she pushed the person away, touching it in the process. Ramirez, who was raised a devout Catholic, in Connecticut, said that she was shaken. "I wasn't going to touch a penis until I was married," she said. "I was embarrassed and ashamed and humiliated." She remembers Kavanaugh standing to her right and laughing, pulling up his pants. "Brett was laughing," she said. "I can still see his face, and his hips coming forward, like when you pull up your pants." She recalled another male student shouting about the incident. "Somebody yelled down the hall, 'Brett Kavanaugh just put his penis in Debbie's face,' " she said.

In the interest of fairness, let's acknowledge that Ramirez's memory is fuzzy, and several people she says witnessed the incident are denying that it occurred. But there are others who remember hearing about it at the time.

The story stayed with him, he said, because it was disturbing and seemed outside the bounds of typically acceptable behavior, even during heavy drinking at parties on campus. The classmate said that he had been shocked, but not necessarily surprised, because the social group to which Kavanaugh belonged often drank to excess. He recalled Kavanaugh as "relatively shy" until he drank, at which point he said that Kavanaugh could become "aggressive and even belligerent."

But this isn't some story Ramirez cooked up at the last minute. As Mayer told NBC's today show this morning,

The story broke overnight. But it dates back 35 years ... She didn't come forward with it. What happened was, the classmates at Yale were talking to each other about it, they were emailing about it. We've seen the emails, back in July before Christine Blasey Ford came forward, and eventually the word of it spread. It spread to the Senate. It spread to the media. And we reached out to her.

Also, Kavanaugh's roommate at the time found the allegation credible.

"Debbie and I became close friends shortly after we both arrived at Yale," he said. "She stood out as being exceptionally honest and gentle. I cannot imagine her making this up." He said that he never witnessed Kavanaugh engage in any sexual misconduct, but did recall him being "frequently, incoherently drunk." He described Ramirez as a vulnerable outsider. "Is it believable that she was alone with a wolfy group of guys who thought it was funny to sexually torment a girl like Debbie? Yeah, definitely. Is it believable that Kavanaugh was one of them? Yes."

Brett Kavanaugh a mean drunk? You don't say!

And speaking of boys will be boys will be drunken assholes who abuse women, The New Yorker interviewed Mark Judge's college girlfriend Elizabeth Rasor, who reported that Judge had lots to say about drunken debauchery in high school.

Rasor recalled that Judge had told her ashamedly of an incident that involved him and other boys taking turns having sex with a drunk woman. Rasor said that Judge seemed to regard it as fully consensual. She said that Judge did not name others involved in the incident, and she has no knowledge that Kavanaugh participated. But Rasor was disturbed by the story and noted that it undercut Judge's protestations about the sexual innocence of Georgetown Prep.

Which brings us to the Michael Avenatti portion of our program. Because ... 2018.

RUH ROH!

OH.

Now, let's say that you are a Republican Judiciary Committee staffer trying desperately to protect your team's SCOTUS nominee. Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer have just brought forward a second accuser, whom you knew about a week ago.

The offices of at least four Democratic senators have received information about the allegation, and at least two have begun investigating it. Senior Republican staffers also learned of the allegation last week and, in conversations with The New Yorker, expressed concern about its potential impact on Kavanaugh's nomination. Soon after, Senate Republicans issued renewed calls to accelerate the timing of a committee vote.

Which puts the GOP insistence that they ABSOLUTELY HAD TO vote on Monday in a rather different light. But say you are this staffer -- do you (A) stall for time, or (B) invite Avenatti to tell the Committee what he knows?

Oh, my God! They actually opened the door to let Michael Avenatti suggest that Kavanaugh participated in gang rapes as a teenager. (And they released Blasey Ford's confidential letter to Dianne Feinstein five minutes after the New Yorker story went live, of course.)

But Avenatti wasn't done.

Which we assume is a reference to this.

Democrats are calling for a halt to the hearings and a full FBI investigation. And we are calling for one thousand Silkwood showers. Because this is all horrible and we are done here except to say we support victims of sexual violence and we believe Blasey Ford and Ramirez.

Also, too ...

BRETT KAVANAUGH, YOU GO THE FUCK AWAY RIGHT NOW!

[NBC / WaPo / WaPo, again / NYT / The New Yorker]

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