Jane Mayer writes in the New Yorker:

At some point in 2016, the F.B.I. had received unverified Russian intelligence describing purported e-mails from Lynch to a member of the Clinton team, in which she promised that she’d go easy on Clinton. An unnamed source told the Post that the intelligence had been viewed as “junk.” Nonetheless, Comey has reportedly told aides that he let the disinformation shape his decision to sideline Lynch. Fearing, in part, that conservatives would create a furor if the alleged e-mails became public, he began to feel that Lynch “could not credibly participate in announcing a declination.” A subsequent report, by the Justice Department’s inspector general, described Comey’s behavior as “extraordinary and insubordinate,” and found his justifications unpersuasive.

The Russians were so good even the director of the F.B.I. was fooled.

Adam Goldman and Michael S. Schmidt report in the New York Times:

The deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, suggested last year that he secretly record President Trump in the White House to expose the chaos consuming the administration, and he discussed recruiting cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Mr. Trump from office for being unfit.

Is this a satirical reporting? Very disappointed with New York Times. These guys are going to get Rosenstein fired and bring the Mueller investigation to an end.

Susan B. Glasser writes in the New Yorker:

In his twenty months as President, Trump has seen firsthand the shift on the Hill among formerly skeptical elected Republicans, most of whom (aside from Sessions) were not enthusiastic supporters of his Presidential campaign. The South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham called Trump a “kook” when he ran against him in the 2016 primaries, before becoming one of the President’s closest confidants in the Senate and his frequent public defender. Ted Cruz, another 2016 rival, called Trump “utterly amoral” and a “pathological liar” before endorsing him; now he’s bringing Trump to Texas to campaign for him in an unexpectedly close November race. Few senators, however, have flip-flopped on the subject of Trump more dramatically than Dean Heller, the highly vulnerable Nevada Republican who welcomed the President for a campaign rally in Las Vegas on Thursday. A few weeks before the 2016 election, Heller was quoted memorably as saying he was “a hundred per cent against Clinton” and “ninety-nine per cent against Trump.” But that was then. Today, Heller considers Trump a “great leader” and told Republicans in a call to drum up interest in the rally beforehand, the Times reported. “We’re so thrilled to have the President.”

What a bunch of Trump-suckers.

Jeremy W. Peters and Elizabeth Dias report in the New York Times:

Worried their chance to cement a conservative majority on the Supreme Court could slip away, a growing number of evangelical and anti-abortion leaders are expressing frustration that Senate Republicans and the White House are not protecting Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh more forcefully from a sexual assault allegation and warning that conservative voters may stay home in November if his nomination falls apart.

Yes, evangelical fuckers who don’t give a fuck about women’s right should just stay the fuck home. You will do a great service for this country by not voting for the GOP bag of dicks.

The GOP guys are nothing but a bag of dicks. They are anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-immigrant, and anti-women.

They will push that alleged rapist through whether Dr. Christine Blasey Ford testifies or not. She has put everything on the line for nothing. They don’t give a fuck about her even they know damn well that she is telling the truth.

Like Anita Hill, Dr. Blasey Ford will go down in history as a victim and her perpetrator will hold one of the most prestigious positions in this country. It’s fucked up, but we are still living in the white men’s world.

Jia Tolentino shares her own account of an incident happened to her when she was in high school. It is such a powerful story that I am going quote in length. She writes in the New Yorker:

Like Ford and Kavanaugh, I went to a private high school where excess and entitlement abounded. Reading the details of Ford’s account, and listening to Kavanaugh’s defenders since, I have found myself thinking about something I’d almost forgotten: a night when I was home from college for the summer, at a house party, where a group of friends drained a couple of bottles of tequila and bourbon. Late in the evening, one guy at the party asked me to come upstairs and tuck him in. I did, wasted and giggling, and then he pulled me onto the bed, briefly trapping me, kissing me, saying all sorts of things. I struggled against him, and after a fierce, alarming tussle—“rough horseplay”—I wrenched myself free. This did not traumatize me, but the feeling was unmistakable. He was trying to establish that he could make me do whatever he wanted—an essentially violent impulse, familiar to anyone who has ever been forced into an encounter she cannot control.

While writing this, I went back to my diary, to see how I described, at the time, what occurred. “That’s where I went wrong, agreeing to tuck him in,” I wrote. “But tucking people in is so adorable. I wish I could be tucked in, you know? . . .He pulled me on the bed and kissed me, and I had no idea what to do. I see him every night, even though we just met this summer. He’s a good guy. I couldn’t, like, slap him.” A few paragraphs later, I wrote, “Fuck. I kept trying to leave! He kept fucking pulling me on him. I finally got out. I keep asking myself how I could have handled it . . .I was afraid to be rude.” I decided that I was “an enormous idiot, and I feel taken advantage of. That’s what they call it, isn’t it? Unwanted sexual advances? I wish there was an absolute jury, to tell me how much is my fault. Because I feel so guilty that I feel like that’s a sign that it was my fault.” I continued to berate myself, even after writing that there was “no acquiescence. It was someone kissing me, and me trying to get away.”

Men are so afraid, in this moment, that they will suddenly be held accountable for things they always thought they could get away with. But look at how profoundly inertia is on their side. After this party, which took place not even a decade and a half ago, I told one friend and my boyfriend, about what happened. I didn’t tell anyone else. I knew, without anyone having to explain it to me, that this was a common and unremarkable incident—that everyone, including me, had been shaped by the disgraceful understanding that he had the right to make me uncomfortable but that I did not have the right to make him uncomfortable by telling them what he did. I think of Ford not telling anyone—“in any detail,” the Post reported—about what happened to her until 2012. Why would you tell someone about a stupid high-school party where some stupid kid pushed you down on a bed and groped you when you can summon a hundred voices reminding you that tons of guys do this, that it’s no big deal? I am certain that the boy who pulled me onto the bed has no memory of it now. I hope, sincerely, that he has a good life. But I wouldn’t put him on the Supreme Court.

Thank you for sharing such a painful past. I believe Dr. Ford as well.

Stormy Daniels:

He knows he has an unusual penis. It has a huge mushroom head. Like a toadstool… I lay there, annoyed that I was getting fucked by a guy with Yeti pubes and a dick like the mushroom character in Mario Kart… It may have been the least impressive sex I’d ever had, but clearly, he didn’t share that opinion.

I think I am going to read this book.

Paige Williams writes in the New Yorker:

A press secretary who had an abiding respect for First Amendment freedoms likely would have resigned once it became clear that Trump intended to steamroll his way through the Constitution. But Sanders stayed, even after Trump praised Vladimir Putin and condemned his own federal intelligence agencies; even after he publicly considered handing over Michael McFaul, the former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, to Putin’s regime for “interviewing”; even after Trump announced his intention to revoke the security clearances of former national-security officials who had criticized his leadership; and even after Trump joked at a rally that Greg Gianforte, the Montana representative who body-slammed a reporter, had “fought—in more ways than one—for your state.” The Arkansas Times, an alt-weekly, recently declared, “If the Huckster spawn had a soul, she’s sold it.”

Nothing new really.

It takes tremendous pains and risks for a woman to speak out against a powerful man. Professor Christine Blasey Ford had done what she has to do for our country. I have nothing but deepest respect for her heroic action. She could have stayed silence on the attempted rape many years ago, but her conscience and her love for this country had forced her to come forward.

She has done her part to save the highest court in the land. It is now the Republicans’ turn to do their part. It is up to them to put their country before their party and get the alleged rapest off the nomination. If they fuck this up. It will be their shame forever. Then again, I would not count on these spineless fuckers to do the right thing. They have zero decency left in them.

Paul Krugman writes in the New York Times:

So what makes her “divisive”? The fact that Republicans keep attacking her? That would happen to any Democrat.

Or maybe it’s just the fact that she’s a woman — a woman who happens to have been far better at her job than any man in recent memory.

That’s right. She has done far more than Newt Gingrich, Dennis Hastert, John Boehner, and Paul Ryan. I have more respect for her than spineless Ryan.