Christine Blasey Ford, Venezuela, Sarah Huckabee, Sanders: 3 Stories You Should Read 9/17/2018
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In the category of: This is awkward and incredibly important.
Brett Kavanaugh Accuser Willing To Testify Before Senate Judiciary Committee: Lawyer
“She’s willing to do whatever it takes to get her story forth,” Christine Blasey Ford’s attorney said.
A woman who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her when they were high school students is willing to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, her lawyer said Monday.
Christine Blasey Ford identified herself in a Washington Post interview published Sunday as the author of a confidential letter sent in late July to two members of Congress. She is willing to tell her story publicly, her lawyer, Debra Katz, said Monday on NBC’s “Today” show.
“She’s willing to do whatever it takes to get her story forth,” Katz told NBC’s Savannah Guthrie, when asked if Ford would testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is scheduled to vote Thursday on whether to advance Kavanaugh’s nomination to the full Senate.
In the category of: Things that make no sense, but might happen anyway.
Trump needs to keep his filthy mitts off Venezuela
So what is going on in Venezuela? The crisis is extremely complicated, but observers generally argue it is rooted in two major developments: epic corruption and authoritarianism within the government, and the post-2014 collapse in the price of oil. Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world, and has long been heavily dependent on oil export earnings for basic economic stability.
The immediate political background starts with Hugo Chavez, who was elected president of Venezuela in 1998 on a left-wing populist platform. He undeniably had a wide caudillo streak, was more than a little corrupt, and had a bad habit of nationalizing industries on a whim without careful planning or management. But on the other hand he did plow a great deal of the oil revenue into welfare programs that drastically cut the Venezuelan poverty rate, and was thus enormously popular.
In the category of: Daughter of the Patriarchy
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump’s Battering Ram
What does the press secretary believe in—other than defending the President’s every word?
On Fox News, an interviewer noted to Sanders that Trump needed to make “inroads” with the “white suburban professional woman—normally, a mother, college-educated.” The interviewer told her, “You fit that description,” and asked, “What is Trump’s best argument for that particular voting group?”
“Real simple,” Sanders replied. “The things that keep most of the moms—myself included—that I’ve talked to up at night are: Who’s gonna change America? Who’s gonna make it safer? Who’s gonna create jobs? Who’s gonna make education better? Who’s gonna make life better for my kids?”
Sanders declared that she opposed abortion and supported the Second Amendment, tax cuts, and “more localized government.” After the final Presidential debate, she told the host of a North Carolina radio program that Trump offered the strongest “pro-life position that any Republican nominee has given in my lifetime.” She called it “a pivotal moment” that “should give every Christian and every evangelical, every Catholic, reason to support Donald Trump and reason to vote for him, because that is the difference between right and wrong, good and evil.”
