Democracy is for racists too

Nov8

In Florida’s gubernatorial election, the white candidate told Floridians who might be considering a vote for his rival, the black mayor of Tallahassee, “not to monkey this up.” The race was close, quite possibly would have gone the other way if the 1.4 million disenfranchised Florida voters a disproportionate number of whom are black, had the right to vote restored after serving their sentences. This lifetime ban from voting dates to an 1838 Florida constitutional provision tweaked thirty years later, after the Civil War, to comply with the letter of the amended U.S. Constitution while ensuring blacks did not take over the government. Florida is one of the few states who have this kind of lifetime disenfranchisement law, a law that affects almost a quarter of Florida’s black voters. The law was abolished by Florida voters in the election a few days ago, by a fairly robust margin. Now the next time a white candidate urges Floridians to “not monkey it up” there is a better than even chance he will have his racist ass monkeyed up at the polls.

Democracy, of course, is for racists too. The president called himself a nationalist during at least one of his many recent televised Nuremberg-style campaign rallies. At a combative press conference after his party lost the House of Representatives and there was a swing of governors that virtually evened the national map, a black female reporter asked the president if calling himself a nationalist didn’t embolden white nationalists. The president dismissed the question: “I don’t know why you’d say that. It’s such a racist question.” He repeated the phrase “racist question” in that tic-like way of his, repeating a good tasting talking point for emphasis, several times. This fellow knows something about racist questions, they were part of his father’s review process for apartment rentals until the Fair Housing Act made race-based discrimination a federal crime.

Racism is not a uniquely American problem, though our version of it has impressively exceptional roots. Not every country enshrined race-based slavery in its founding democratic constitution, protected the liberties of the owners of other people, inferior people, at law for almost a century, fought a bloody war to preserve or abolish it, instituted racist laws and had a century of terrorism against the formerly enslaved race winked at by local law enforcement. You want American Exceptionalism? Look no further than our history of racism at law and its kissing cousin, de facto racism. Let’s not talk about what Andrew Jackson’s fortune made in slavery and land speculation, the Indian Removal Act or the Chinese Exclusion Act, let’s move on.

On October 24, 2018 two African Americans, Maurice Stallard (69) grocery shopping with his grandson, and Vicki Lee Jones (67), walking to her car, were shot to death by a 51 year-old white racist named Gregory Bush. Bush had lost his right to have a gun after violence in his home, but he’d had that right restored. Easier to get your gun back than your vote, apparently. We say this man “allegedly” shot the two to death at Krogers, after trying and failing to enter a locked black church, though he was seen killing them by many witnesses. The famous presumption of innocence, you understand. He gets his right to a fair trial, no mob is going to take him out and lynch him just because he murdered a couple of people, or somebody said he did, anyway. That wouldn’t be American! They are still puzzled about why the racist fuck killed two black people, they’re investigating, you know.

Because we Americans have a five second attention span, the story of the racist murder of two random black people in Kentucky was wiped off the screen by the revelation, the very next day, that a staunch supporter of the president had sent pipe bombs to more than a dozen notable enemies continually railed against by the president. Two days later another maniac walked into a synagogue and started spraying bullets, leaving eleven dead, including a woman who was almost 100 years old. It struck me over and over that Maurice Stallard and Vicki Jones’s murders were not included in the tally of recent hate crimes. Merely being shot to death while grocery shopping with your grandson, or in the parking lot outside the Jeffersontown, Kentucky supermarket, well, bad shit happens, I guess. Hard to keep track of it all! There was a mass shooting in a club in California the other day, too bad all the people there didn’t have guns to shoot the shooter.

Now our slippery nationalist president is on the ropes as he lies about his great recent victory in the midterms, during which his party lost their majority in the House and only held on to the Senate because Republicans only had nine seats in play while the Democrats had twenty something, and several of those states had gone handily to the president in 2016. He was snarling at reporters, seemed to be feeling desperate, fired the Attorney General he’s been mocking and humiliating for the last year or two and is poised to make some daring, desperate gangster moves. He’ll be OK, we all know, because he’s pretty much a delusional psychopath who has never been accountable for a single fuck up in his life. It’s the rest of us we should be worried about.

Veterans Day Efforts in Vain

Nov6

It was raining today in New York City, on and off, and grey and chilly all day. Since Veterans Day, November 11, falls on a Sunday in 2018, retailers begin their special Veterans Day Sales on Monday, November 5, the day the holiday is celebrated by banks and other institutions in such years. I could have that wrong, I’m now told the reason there has been no talk about Veterans Day, or the awful plight of many veterans, is that it is celebrated on November 12th this year.

Whatever, this Monday fell on the last day of all out tribal warfare before the midterm elections which will decide whether the almost 40% who love Trump will continue to control both houses of Congress as well as the Executive and Judiciary branches of our great democracy. The House of Representatives is in play, and if Democrats recapture a majority, by swinging about thirty seats, they will gain subpoena and investigatory powers. These powers will help keep the president and his people honest, restore our federal republic’s checks and balances closer to what the framers of the constitution intended.

In July 2014 a man was killed on a street corner in Staten Island. He was a big, easy-going man, well-known in the area. He put in long hours on his feet every day selling illegal cigarettes, evading the New York State taxes and effectively putting those tax dollars in his pocket by selling contraband cigarettes he had driven up from the South where the legal price of cigarettes is apparently much lower due to a much lower “sin” tax there. He did this black market business for years, at the same place, and the cops had arrested him numerous times. He served at least one hitch in prison, but he was not a hard man. He was known as a peace maker in that section of Staten Island. Sometimes he was arrested, sat in jail overnight, was issued a summons, and went home.

One particularly hot summer day he told the cops to please not fuck with him, that it was too hot to go to jail, to come back another time. The police left. A few days later, when cops came to arrest him, one got him in a chokehold and continued to choke while the man, Eric Garner, gasped “I can’t breathe” over and over until the officer choked him to death.

The Staten Island grand jury that heard the charges brought by District Attorney Dan Donovan on behalf of the family of the dead man and the community of Staten Island was unlikely to indict the cop for murder or even manslaughter. The dead man had a long criminal history, was an imposing man, with a prison record, much bigger than the officer, Officer Pantaleo, and so it was hard to argue that the case was murder or even manslaughter. No white blue collar community in America is going to indict a cop for killing a lowlife of any race, especially not a black ex-con. It doesn’t seem fair to them to try an officer for murder in a situation like that. The coroner ruled the death a homicide, but that doesn’t mean a grand jury had to indict the killer.

There was a strong case to made that Officer Pantaleo had been reckless, or careless, or negligent, in using excessive and ultimately deadly force on an unarmed man he was arresting. The DA of Staten Island never brought the criminal charge of reckless endangerment before the grand jury and so Officer Pantaleo was never indicted or prosecuted for anything in connection with Garner’s killing.

The DA was a Republican party stalwart who once ran unsuccessfully for New York State Attorney General. He was elected to Congress from New York’s Eleventh District in a special election in May 2015, after Republican congressman Michael Grimm resigned following his indictment for felony tax evasion. He got 56.8% of the vote when he was re-elected in 2016, in a district Trump won by over 20%, the only district in New York City Trump won. He is running for reelection after overcoming a challenge from Michael Grimm, now out of prison, in which he “out-Trumped” the former representative.[1] He is being opposed by a thirty-one year old Afghanistan war veteran named Max Rose. Over a million dollars has come into the Rose campaign chest from outside the district, though none of it from corporations, who are major donors to Donovan. If I was rich, I’d probably give Rose a generous donation.

Instead, I headed to Staten Island to canvass for him on this final day. I wanted to speak face to face with as many registered Democrats and the over 100,000 Independents on Staten Island as I could, convince as many as possible to vote for Rose the following day. The margin of victory is likely to be in the low thousands, or even closer, if the predictions of a tight race are right. It will be an uphill battle for Rose and truly every last vote counts in these district elections.

If you are dealing with brutal forces in a contest where brutality is winked at, signaled to each other, it is best to come right out and express your political views in the most direct possible way. I wanted to talk to voters face to face, let them see this old man who’d made a long trip to talk to them about why this race, the only race where a Republican and a Democrat are vying for a Congressional seat in New York City (all the rest are solidly Democratic), is so important.

Max Rose is for gun control, Dan Donovan supports the Second Amendment, though he would also support background checks. Max Rose will vote for legislation to curb climate change, Dan Donovan is not sure, since he’s not a scientist, how much human pollution really affects the escalating climate catastrophe we are all seeing. “You have to ask the scientists,” he says, in a very confident, politic way. He tends to vote with the rest of his party, and to go along with the wishes of our strongman-type president. He fended off a primary challenge from Michael Grimm by veering further toward the extreme right, swearing his allegiance to the president. He is a politician I would like to see out of office.

A friend was kind enough to give me a ride to South Ferry in his car, which saved me a lot of time and hassle getting down to the ferry. After being casually sniffed by a beautiful golden retriever, a working dog with a security handler, I waited for the next ferry to Staten Island. I was lucky enough to board one of the old ferries with the outside deck for my cruise to Staten Island. These old ferries had been taken out of service for years after a maniac hacked a bunch of people with a machete. It is much easier to safeguard a ferry where everyone is in one large compartment. This is the first ferry I’ve been on since that maniac’s attack, decades ago, that had the outdoor deck. We passed Ellis Island in the distance, the place where poor people from Europe and beyond came seeking to be admitted as immigrants or refugees.

All four of my grandparents had checked in there in the years before the immigration restrictions for poor people, strict national quotas, were put into place the year my father was born, 1924. People crowded along the railing to get photos of the Statue of Liberty. We all did. There was a group of Indians or perhaps Pakistanis (the women wore head scarves, and sandals, though it was chilly and rainy) and they were delightedly taking and posing for pictures, along with everyone else who was traveling with someone. People lined up along the railing, took turns smiling for the cellphone camera, with the dramatic statue behind them. The woman next to me on the bench and I smiled at each other as we approached the Statue of Liberty. You have a camera and you pass that beautiful statue, a symbol so full of promise for a better life to millions over the years, millions who have contributed richly to American life and history, you do this:

On ramps right outside the Saint George ferry terminal in Staten Island there are dozen of bus stops. I was informed by google maps that I could take the S-46 or the S-48 buses to Max Rose headquarters at 629 Forest Avenue. It was chilly on that bench by the water. I put on my extra layer and turned to the other old fart on the bench at the S-46 bus stop with me. He was wearing a baseball hat with a huge American flag on it. I asked him if the 46 would take me to Forest Avenue. He told me the 48 was better, because it went along Forest itself, and I could watch the numbers, it would be hard for me to get lost. The 46 went on a street parallel to Forest, but you really had to know your way around or things would get bad fast. I thanked him and went over to sit on the bench at the 48 stop.

(I witnessed, and was a second too slow to help out on, a surprising and poignant scene between high schools kids on that 48 bus– but that will have to wait for another post).

When I got to the office, about fifteen minutes before my required training for canvassing was to begin, the young woman at the door informed me that if I was here for canvassing, they were turfed out. She explained that meant that all of the names and addresses they had to canvass had been covered already by volunteers. She told me that I could join the phone bank, and motioned to a room full of young people, shoulder to shoulder, consulting lists and talking on their phones. They were reading some kind of script, I suppose, it was noisy in there. I used the bathroom and headed back to the front door.

“You want to join the phone bank?” she asked me as I approached the door. It wasn’t what I’d come for, I wanted to show some Staten Island Democrats my old face, talk to them in person for a few moments, impress on them the importance of going to vote the next day. The Democrats need to flip about 30 seats in the Congress and this race, expected to be an easy win for the Republican, appears to be running neck and neck. Making calls from the makeshift call center did not have the same appeal to me that speaking to people face to face did. I told her I was going to walk around the block and think about it.

I stepped out into pissing rain. It was raining hard enough now that ten minutes out in it were enough to soak your pants. I decided to look for something to eat, to sit inside and stay warm and dry while I decided what to do. I saw two young women with a pile of Max Rose brochures in front of them, sitting in a coffee shop. I thought about going in to speak with them, then felt self-conscious about approaching them. They would probably have been happy to talk to me about Max Rose, I’m sure, maybe even convince me how important it was for us all to be making phone calls. They never got the chance. I bought a hot pretzel a few doors away and caught the next bus back to the St. George Ferry Station.

Right before I went to sit down at the sheltered bus stop I snapped a photo of Max Rose’s Staten Island campaign office (the eleventh district extends into Brooklyn where Max Rose already has an 80 to 20 lead). It was then that I noticed that his campaign headquarters was in the same small building as Mandolin Brothers. Mandolin Brothers was a famous purveyor of excellent new and vintage stringed instruments. You could play and buy beautiful guitars, mandolins, banjos, ukuleles there. I was only there once, years ago, and pretty close to closing time, but it was a great place I always intended to return to. I smiled to think they’d loaned their space to Max Rose for his campaign. Not only great musical instruments, I thought but good political impulses. (I later learned from my smartphone that the store is long gone).

The ferry back was one of the now typical ferries that have no external decks along the sides for good, open air views. The ferry was entirely closed, which was fine with me, it was shitty out, and cold, I was disappointed, and tired, and I sat on a bench hardly noticing that we were traveling over a vast stretch of ocean water. In a little over twenty minutes we were docking at the foot of Manhattan Island. I passed a black lab with a working dog collar on and also the golden lab, who was now barking continuously. It must have been close to quitting time for the golden lab, and her patience was just about done.

A short walk north and west from the ferry station in lower Manhattan, you come to this museum:

On the front door is this sign:

We are stronger than hate, until hate actually murders us. It happens. It has not stopped happening for many years now, though the names of those being murdered by hate keep changing. Genocide continues with horrific consistency, on massive scales and on more limited scales. Four years ago, for example, a few thousand Yazidi men were slaughtered in the Sinjar Massacre, too few for a proper genocide, perhaps, but still very, very horrible. The Rohingya were recently the subjects of persecution and genocide in Myanmar, the nation formerly known as Burma. Everyone in Yemen is catching hell, children are being killed every day, casualties of the brutal Saudi war there, which rages with American support. Protesters and rock throwers are being shot to death in more than one country, threatened with being shot to death here, by the American president. So-called strongmen appear here and there to enforce their will by organized mob violence and with their armies. They use the military to intimidate citizens and perceived enemies, as our president is doing now, having soldiers install concertina wire along the border fence at a cost CBS news reported tonight is perhaps $200,000,000.

Many people feel the world is overdue for its next, and final, world war. Look at the world, it’s in chaos, violent storms and other natural disasters are regularly destroying homes and killing people all over the planet, species are disappearing, violent ideologies are waging ruthless wars against unarmed civilians in many places. Some historians claim that we are living in the most peaceful moment of human history. I think that’s a wonderful thought, probably backed by some kind of very convincing statistical evidence. I also don’t think it’s true. The world is waiting to explode into the next mass murder, many people everywhere are desperate, snarling angrily, we are one big bomb away, and violence is in the air.

So I say, to myself and to people of all faiths and original nationalities who vote in American elections: vote today for the party that is less racist, less xenophobic, less nationalist, less extreme in its divisive rhetoric. Changing one-party control of our democracy is not the answer to all of America’s problems, but it is the start. The other way lies madness.

[1] Wikipedia:

In 2018, Donovan faced a primary challenge from former Rep. Michael Grimm.^[27] During the primary campaign, Grimm accused Donovan of having tried to entice Grimm to drop out of the race by offering to lobby Trump to pardon Grimm.^[27] Grimm pleaded guilty to federal tax evasion charges in 2014 and spent several months in prison.^[27] During the primary, both candidates emphasized their loyalty to Trump, seeking to “out-Trump each other,” according to the Washington Post.^[28] In the 2018 general election Donovan is facing Max Rose.^[29]

Happy Halloween!

Oct31

In honor of this great pagan holiday, a few snippets from the life of our grotesque pumpkin-colored leader, a man who is always dressed, and coiffed, for Halloween.

The president is always poised to counterpunch, as he was taught to do by belatedly disgraced, too-late disbarred gay homophobe Roy Cohn [1]. Cohn impressed on the young Trump that the best thing to do when accused or attacked is to hit back much, much harder. The Department of Justice accuses you of violating the Fair Housing Act by not renting government subsidized apartments to blacks, hispanics and other lowlifes? You countersue the DOJ for defamation: $100,000,000, fuckers! Now watch those sweaty weasels at the DOJ start backpedaling.

Here is the president’s reaction to the pipe bomb sent to CNN:

Screen shot 2018-10-31 at 1.04.47 PM.png

Who is really to blame for this bomb? The fucks at lying fake news deserved it, earned it, and if they don’t stop reporting my lies, FAST! they’re going to get more of what they deserve.

In the blitzkrieg of bullshit that marks the insane Trump/Cohn counterattack strategy, it is quickly on to the next controversy to erase the previous ones — poor families fleeing poverty and death in Honduras constitute a deadly invasion force that must be repelled by the U.S. military!!! His son-in-law is a Jew, his daughter converted, his most loyal and rabid anti-immigration assistant Stephen Miller is a Jew, so how can anyone hold him, an unabashed nationalist, responsible for the murder of Jewish globalists in that synagogue where they didn’t have the good sense to post armed guards as the Second Amendment clearly allows?

The shit bombs fall so prolifically from the president’s mouth that much of it goes unremarked on. His assessment of the brutal Saudi torture and execution of a journalist in their consulate: bad concept, bad execution, terrible cover-up, should have earned him at least a bloody nose. Nothing, as always for this supremely untruthful entitled man made a multi-millionaire as a child by his foolish-risk enabling dad.

I didn’t get a chance to comment on this wonderful bit of drollery from the normally reserved New York Times. The Times exploded Trump’s self-made billionaire lie by showing, in excruciating detail, the long pattern of his father Fred’s lawless manipulations to avoid tax laws and the lifetime gifts totaling about $400,000,000 to his idiotic, preening, serially failing son.

Nobody cares, those who dislike him already now have the facts about his perhaps most massive lie and his base knows he lies, but so does the NY TIMES! The failing, lying New York Times!!! The Times report is the result of massive research, based on 100,000 documents, every detail examined, vetted and every claim, no doubt, combed through by a careful legal team.

The Times describes a company the Trumps set up, one of many, to pass Fred’s fortune on to his children tax free. This particular company was created to grossly inflate Fred Trump’s expenses for building supplies and pass the “profits” on to his children. It was a relatively simple scam, if a boiler cost Fred Trump $5,000, this company would charge Fred’s company twice that and his kids would keep the difference. In the middle of the section describing this fraudulent business, the Grey Lady drops this:

Then the article simply continues describing the fraudulent company, without any comment on this bullshit threat by one of the president’s army of aggressive lawyers. To those who love the president this threat vindicates them, like the strong denials by Saudi murderers or the president’s problematic extremist Supreme Court nominee. See — the lying NY Times is lying!!! To those with even the slightest critical ability, the failure of the president to sue the Lying New York Times (also known by many of his staunchest supporters as the Jew York Times) means the lawyer’s threat was as empty as many of the threats and promises the lawyer’s supremely litigious client has made over the years.

Happy Halloween, y’all!

[1] Because when I have any doubt about a factual assertion I make here I do a quick and easy fact check, I asked google “was Roy Cohn a homophobe?” He was, many sources agree. Here is one of the results that came up in about one second, a marvelous little summary of the career of this malevolent creature, a career I highlighted in a footnote scroll to the bottom of this one for two excellent treatments of this evil fuck:

Roy Cohn – RationalWiki

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roy_Cohn

Sep 5, 2018 – Roy Marcus Cohn (1927–1986) was a lawyer, a rabid anti-communist, a closeted homosexual and homophobe, a Jewish anti-Semite, …

‎Anti-communist crusader · ‎Mob lawyer · ‎Downfall

How A Consistent Asshole Responds

Oct29

At the risk of stirring a simmering caldron of shit among the handful who will read these words, I must quote part of our president’s reaction to a maniac with a gun killing eleven of the people who had gathered for a religious service in Pittsburgh.

President Donald Trump: “If they had protection inside, the results would have been far better. This is a dispute that will always exist, I suspect, but if they had some kind of a protection inside the temple, maybe it could have been a very much different situation, but they didn’t.” source

If you have one answer to every question, and only one thought every time you open your mouth (winning, I need to win, I cannot lose, I will not lose!), you will utter NRA talking point drivel like this when the country needs a steadying hand after another explosion of murderous racist hatred. The president did call for the death penalty for the mass shooter. That’s consistent. You kill killers, that’s just common sense for a guy like Trump. He advocated the same for the guys eventually exonerated in the brutal attack and rape of that jogger in Central Park.

If you support the president he’s absolutely right. He said kill the killer, which is right. He said if those Jews had armed guards in the temple they could have only lost a few before their guards shot this guy to death. Presumably that would have been fine, you know, or, if not fine, a far better result. Unfortunately, you know, these liberals didn’t have armed guards, because they’re against the Second Amendment, so they died. SAD!

Also, of course, this latest outburst of prejudice-fueled deadly violence by another one of his more fevered supporters has nothing to do with the president’s steady stream of vile hatred enflaming rhetoric. The uncle of presidential advisor Stephen Miler, the nephew being the suspected author of much of the president’s most virulent anti-immigrant rhetoric, (I’ll get to this Nazi another time), had this to say about the president’s steady incitement of hatred against the “other”:

Mr. Trump has made it his policy to vilify and dehumanize Hispanics, Muslims, nonwhites, calling them subhuman animals that are infesting our country like so many insects or rats. Make no mistake about it: This is the same kind of propaganda that is identical to the racist rants at Nazi Party rallies in Germany in the 1930s. Now Trump spews the same poisonous messages to his supporters and claims innocence when this inflammatory vitriol is sprayed over society. He claims innocence now that this political gasoline catches fire and people get hurt and killed. [1] source

Trump, a self-made millionaire by the age of nine, has cunningly branded himself a man of the common people, a man of the finest people, the very best of America. Make no mistake about it.

With such a steady and powerful fire hose of bullshit pumping out emotionally charged distraction 24/7 it’s easy enough not to dwell on the president’s cold-bloodedly evil assessment of the Saudi torture and dismemberment of the still complaining (even as they worked on him with the bone saw) journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The president’s eventual conclusion about the murder, after weeks of publicly weighing Saudi billions for American munitions against their right to dismember political opponents, was that “they had a very bad original concept, it was carried out poorly and the cover-up was the worst in the history of cover-ups.”

Bad original concept, carried out poorly, the cover-up sucked. Now they have to quickly try and execute a bunch of people to prove they are innocent, you know, a better concept, to actually execute those responsible, though not, of course, themselves — they strongly denied responsibility so we have to presume they are completely innocent and the people they execute are guilty — PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE, you vicious bastards! We’ll never know who came up with the original bad concept, carried it out so poorly, were so stupid about the cover-up. We can never know, which is SAD! At least the killers can be killed, so there’s some justice for the accidentally killed journalist’s family.

One of the few truthful things this man has said since rearing his artfully concealed bald head as a presidential candidate was that his followers are so angry, so easily manipulated in their rage, so unconcerned with their candidate’s transparent lying, that he could go out on Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and they wouldn’t care. They wouldn’t care. Am I right? Am I right?

[1] Jewish SS man Stephen Miller’s uncle also said this:

I regard Mr. Trump as a hopeless moral imbecile, indifferent to the deadly consequences of his inflammatory conduct.

and this:

So, I am particularly horrified and angry about the cynical political exploitation of poor people trying to escape from oppression. We can’t solve all the problems in the world, but we can certainly—the United States is a large, powerful, wealthy country, very good at absorbing immigrants, as you can determine just by going out in the street and asking anybody you see, where did their family come from originally. We’re great at absorbing immigrants. And we need to do our duty to help people who are desperately fleeing from horrible conditions, as my family did a hundred years ago.

Facts Actually Exist

Oct24

For example, these reasonable questions from the autocratic leader of Turkey all reference facts, things that actually exist or don’t exist. These questions seek important details about things that happened in the real world, things that can be examined, things that will determine which story about the events is more true than the others:

“Why did 15 people gather in Istanbul the day of the murder? Who did these people receive orders from?” he asked. “Why was the consulate opened not immediately, but days later, for investigation? When the murder was obvious, why were inconsistent explanations given?”

“Why is the body still not found?” source

These are all things that can be investigated and verified — did fifteen security men arrive in Turkey at 3 a.m. and leave for Saudi Arabia again at the end of the same day, after the murder? Who gave the order to kill a prominent Saudi citizen who had been critical of the young Crown Prince, to kill him in the consulate? Why was the consulate closed for days after the hit? Were inconsistent stories told by the Saudis? Where is the body of the man accidentally and tragically killed after he allegedly started a fist fight against the fifteen security men in the consulate?

Not surprisingly, our leader had a different spin on the apparent guilt of the Saudi Crown Prince. In a curiously framed paragraph in the Washington Post (where Khashoggi worked for the last year) he is quoted as describing the Saudi hit as a bungled job:

Speaking in the Oval Office, Trump skewered the Saudis, saying, “They had a very bad original concept, it was carried out poorly, and the coverup was the worst in the history of coverups.” He added, “In terms of what we ultimately do, I’m going to leave it very much — in conjunction with me — I’m going to leave it up to Congress.” source

Nice skewer job, sir. Now we are led to a series of alternative thoughts, taking us away from what appears to be a brutal premeditated murder ordered from on high and into the realm of pure imagination. A very bad original concept– they should never have killed that traitor in the consulate, that was just stupid, an ill-conceived idea. You kill him elsewhere, any mobster’s preschool grandson could tell you that you don’t kill him in your own house! Carried out poorly — you don’t leave a blood spattered consulate that takes days to clean before investigators can be let in, you don’t saw up the body there, for Christ’s sake! You drive a car in and secretly take the body out intact, wrapped in plastic, in the trunk, even if you have to wait until dark. You certainly cut him up somewhere else. Sheesh… The coverup was the worst, the worst! You don’t wait weeks to make up a story that is not a bit credible, you do that immediately and you tell it over and over and over, as many times as necessary. Then you say “I’ve told you this a hundred times, that’s it. Now you treacherous fake news vampires are just being deliberately disrespectful. You want what that Saudi big mouth got? LOL!”

I don’t know what happened in Istanbul, outside of the fact that a man from the wealthy and powerful elite of Saudi society, banned from writing in Saudi Arabia by the new Crown Prince, was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. I also know that his body has not been found. Bad concept, bad execution (bad pun intended), bad coverup.

I also don’t know what happened in a house in a wealthy Washington D.C. suburb more than thirty years ago, between a drunk prep school junior and a freshman girl, out of her depth at that little impromptu gathering nobody else even recalls. I believe the sickening detail of the laughter of the drunken preppies after one of them held her down and the other later piled on. It makes sense that this moment would be indelibly imprinted on the hippocampus of the traumatized young woman.

Applying Judge Martha Kavanaugh’s famous rule for judges– ‘use your common sense, what has the ring of truth? what rings false?’ it appears that a premeditated murder of a critical journalist was committed on behalf of the young medieval crown prince of Saudi Arabia and that the trauma the woman remembers happened pretty much as she told it. Her explanation of why she was certain of the identity of her attacker rang true.

Of course, the president is excellent at answering these questions, he does it effortlessly. The Saudis did a full investigation of their badly planned, terribly covered up murder of a very disloyal guy who had it coming. The Supreme Court justice gave a very strong denial, very strong, and it turns out nobody could confirm anything that woman said, which proves she was lying.

In each case, one question remains above all others when trying to discern the ring of truth from the ring of falsity. Who stands to gain the most from the story being told the way it is? Who has the weightier motive to tell the particular story they tell? Who has the more convincing concept, execution and cover-up, to put it in the president’s purely transactional terms?

Storytelling 101 — part six

Oct23

Stories, we humans need them for many reasons. They make us feel better about contradictions that are otherwise impossible to reconcile. They bolster our ideals, confirm our worst doubts, or clinch the deal on the things we already know. They cause us to walk forward, united with brothers and sisters, millions of them, not alone in a terrifyingly cold universe. We do not live random, meaningless lives that end in inevitable death, we are part of a larger story, connected to our ancestors, our living loved ones, our lives nurturing the lives of those who come after us. There is great comfort in a good story.

It was a bit of a shock to hear the story today, three weeks after the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, told by the dictatorial leader of Turkey, speaking to his parliament and the world beyond. Erdogan announced unequivocally that the journalist had been the victim of premeditated murder in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. He asked pointedly where the body of the murdered man is.

Our president has been very coy about this whole affair involving our cherished Saudi allies, telling Americans that we have to wait for the Saudi investigation into the alleged murder to be complete, so that we have all the facts. Meanwhile, he dispatched the U.S. Secretary of State, and more recently the Secretary of the Treasury, to Riyadh and CIA Director Gina Haspel to Istanbul.

It may be an odd thing, to some of us, that the president was waiting for the alleged murderer to finish investigating whether they had committed a murder, but in the rush of ongoing chaotic events, there hasn’t been much time for most people to even consider this troubling story. Besides, POTUS reminded us, the sacred democratic presumption of innocence was once again being discarded by people rushing to find someone they don’t like guilty until proven innocent. Very unfair! It’s not like the Saudi royal family is in any way comparable to the hoards of Mexican rapists surging toward our own borders.

The president compared this lynch mob mentality of those who feel the Saudis should be accountable for their crimes (including, of course, massive war crimes against the poorest nation in the Middle East) to the people who insisted there should be a full investigation into the multiple terrible allegations against innocent choir boy Brett Kavanaugh, or at least into the most credibly detailed of them. A mob, a violent angry mob, motivated by tribal bloodlust, satisfied with nothing but the fatal lynching of a good man, a good tribal monarchy, presumed guilty until proven innocent, in the president’s telling.

The president was not wrong to make the connection between the aftermaths of the murder of Khashoggi and the allegations against Kavanaugh. There were credible stories in both cases to check out and investigations to be concluded. In Kavanaugh’s case a quick investigation proved he was innocent, at least to the satisfaction of these who mattered in the 51-49 vote. In the murder of Khashoggi, after a few weeks of thorough investigation, the Saudi story was that the chubby sixty year-old journalist and critic of the thirty-three year old Crown Prince got pugnacious and decided to take on the fifteen armed men who were tasked with merely ‘interrogating’ him. He resisted, starting a fist fight, and was, unfortunately, well, he died during the altercation.

Subtle, but valuable, that passive voice. In law school we were actually instructed about the only proper situation for a lawyer to use the passive voice. If your client’s knife, in your client’s hand, was plunged into the heart of the now dead man, you can’t deny it, exactly, but you can soften it with the passive voice. The knife, admittedly belonging to my client, was plunged into the heart of the victim. Sounds so much better than the active voice since it highlights not the act itself, but facts that are not in dispute, facts that appear to damn your client. So in the belated Saudi spin on Khashoggi’s last moments alive, it’s not that he was killed, so much, as that he, unfortunately, died. Why wait more than two weeks to admit that the journalist was dead? We had to investigate everything very, very thoroughly. Where is the body? No fucking idea.

Stories rule, in every situation we can think of. Whose story do we believe? Which story makes more sense? Which story moves us more? I was practicing my writing with a new nib last night and decided to copy Lincoln’s famous 272 word Gettysburg Address. The poor Irish immigrants who were drafted into the slaughter to reluctantly fight for the Union — and die gruesome deaths, by the thousands– were transformed in Lincoln’s immortal rhetoric into ‘honored dead’ devoted to that cause ‘to which they gave the last full measure of their devotion’. That their sacrifice not be in vain, Lincoln said in his marvelous short speech, should be our work going forward as we pursue Liberty in the nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

He gave that moving speech, appealing to the better angels of our nature [1], almost 155 years ago (it’ll be 155 years exactly on November 19th). We have come very far since then in becoming a land honestly and tirelessly devoted to true liberty and equality for all. Or we have come a few halting steps, and taken many more steps backwards. Which is the more inspiring story? Not much of a contest, I’d say.

It is, of course, like this in personal life too. A man who has a long history of lying, stealing and committing fraud, a man who made death threats against his own wife and children in a moment of rage– well, your view of him will depend on which story you believe, based on your relationship to him. He has a warm, loving side too, is a supremely sensitive reader of the moods and needs of everyone around him, he has a good heart. He is a loving father, the death threats were a one time thing, he was very desperate! The story becomes tricky only if you try to reconcile the two indisputable yet jarringly contradictory sides of this fellow. For his part, the man will never admit he did anything wrong. Either you have love in your heart or you’re a vicious asshole, is his position.

The facts, we often think, matter. This turns out to be a quaint belief. The story is the only thing that matters. Was Lincoln lying about the heroic dead who so nobly gave their lives that we might have a more just nation? He was telling the story that needed to be told so that we did not conclude the massive number of American dead and dismembered had been merely a sickening instance of the intransigent, inhuman greed of a powerful few unleashing a river of American blood to protect their right to have complete control of their way of making a living, a way that makes most of us shudder today.

Likewise, if you put your friend in an unfair, untenable, even vicious situation, forcing him to convince you that he did not deliberately, or thoughtlessly, jeopardize your most sacred relationship, there is a way to put it that sounds infinitely better than that. “That thing in the car” you can call it, if you confronted him in a car. Now then, it was referred to directly. It was a thing, like many other things. Then you fucking overreacted and blew it up into this huge justification of why you can never fucking forgive me, you judgmental fucking piece of shit! You’re dead! You’re fucking dead!!!

As always, it’s all in how the story is told, my friends.

[1] “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” source

Impartially disproving an accuser’s lies

Oct17

If you are confronted with an accusation about yourself that makes you look really bad, there is a way out. The first thing to remember is that if you apologize, it’s over. You’re guilty. Done. So, rule number one, never apologize for anything, even if they have videotape. You can always argue the tape was an extremely well-financed forgery, a complete fake.

That goes to rule number two of what are sometimes called Roy Cohn’s rules or Roger Stone’s rules. These are the rules the president lives by as well, he imbibed them at the breasts of these two father figures. Rule one is admit nothing/never apologize. Rule number two is counterattack twice as hard.

You do this by going on the offensive. Two women testify that you did aggressive, sexually fucked up things to them when you were drunk. It goes without saying that they are liars, so there is no reason to dignify those infuriating charges. Say something like this, as you snort in righteous, barely containable anger, the women peddling these vicious lies are part of:

Once you have established this new story line, everybody on your team merely has to double down. You have fired up your base, they will begin swinging their clubs for you. The skeptics and critics will always cavil, try to show illogic, etc., but if you have the money and the votes– fuck them, seriously.

The third thing you have to do, after doubling down, is keep repeating your talking point. The Democrats have no shame, they made a circus of the hearings, they denied the nominee the presumption of innocence that every accused criminal is entitled to under our system of law. They hate the presumption of innocence, they are a lynch mob, an enraged out of control mob. A mob of ruthless, lying haters!

Justice Kavanaugh said he wrote this opening statement himself, a powerful refutation of all the many false charges that he’d ever done anything wrong while drunk as a teenager. I take that claim, like many of his other statements, as worthy of skepticism. In fact, I can affirm under the penalty of perjury that I wrote the above words. You can see they are in my handwriting.

Seriously, though, Stephen Miller seems to have had a hand in its composition, as does the philosopher Sean Hannity. Rush Limbaugh may also have given some editorial input.

The president is very generous with the presumption of innocence, for those who publicly kiss his ass, as well as for those whose power he respects. A strong, powerful denial is as good as a full investigation, a trial in a court and full exoneration, if you’re someone he loves. The inadvertent murder of a Saudi journalist, dismembered in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul? According to the AP, the president had this to say: “You know, here we go again with, you know, you’re guilty until proven innocent. We just went through that with Justice Kavanaugh. And he was innocent all the way.” Again, another witch hunt, like with the unconscionable Democrat torture of Brett Kavanaugh who also forcefully and strongly denied everything. Hey, he fucking denied it! The Saudi’s completely denied it. So what if they accidentally did murder a critical journalist working for the Washington Post? So? What don’t you get about a strong, powerful denial?

Oh, yeah, now I can go after Horseface. A loser. I’m not a baby. No baby! No puppet. You’re the puppets, you’re the puppets!

Unfortunately, you can’t make this shit up, boys and girls.

can you spot the typo in this second version of the statement I wrote?

Et tu, Fox News?

Oct15

So much for fair and balanced, sheesh. What’t the world coming to? It’s like they’re deliberately ignoring the detailed instructions media gets for photographing the president. These instructions go back decades, a friend in news once had a copy of them. They were quite specific. Lighting is key, as is shooting him from the side where he has a full, thick head of hair and never, NEVER, shooting him from the bald side! FOX? Really? This is how you have the president’s back?

Screen shot 2018-10-15 at 4.15.10 PM.png Screen shot 2018-10-15 at 4.20.33 PM.png

A Fair Hearing — by a lynch mob

Oct15

The worst part to a summary trial by a lynch mob has got to be the superior, mocking good cheer of everybody present in the moments before your inevitable death sentence, which has already been decided. The sick feeling you have looking around at the smiles of the people about to cheer your execution must be what a tiny prey animal feels like when it’s being batted playfully between a cat’s paws. Imagine that feeling of powerlessness seared into you by the satisfied smiles of the assembled sadists and voyeurs, before the actual sadism of the deliberately painful execution starts, as the leaders of the lynch mob make their cruel jokes at your expense. What the fuck are they laughing about? you must think, as they begin cutting your fingers off in preparation for the fiery grand finale of the lynching. What indeed are they laughing about?

I have had many opportunities to ponder this lately. SAD! I keep thinking of Judge Martha Kavanaugh’s now famous rule for a judge, the one she taught her choir boy son: use your common sense, what rings true? what rings false? If you apply this rule, most of what passes as legitimate process in Trump’s Washington D.C. doesn’t pass the smell test. Of course, this is a partisan statement, made by a hater, a loser, someone jealous that a young genius could be given a tiny million dollar loan from his father and parlay that into countless billions in personal wealth and then the world’s most powerful office. OK, perhaps he exaggerated a little, maybe the small loan was more like $60,000,000 (his lawyers are poring over the scandal rag NY Times hit piece that laid out their detailed lies about their client’s mere puffery, there must be some grounds to sue those fucks…) but that’s fake news for you, folks. The failing NY Times, am I right? Am I right?

I have to say, applying Martha Kavanaugh’s test– a very unfair test, by the way, very unfair– the woman sent by Bill and Hillary Clinton, Oprah and George Soros to destroy a good man, a pious and even saintly man, rang a little bell of truth when she said that she clearly remembers the laughter of the two drunken older boys who had locked her in that upstairs bedroom and turned the music up when she started protesting. That particular detail rings true (which is undoubtedly why Soros and the Clintons wrote the line for her). Two drunken prep schools boys would laugh after one of them forced himself on to a young woman, held his hand over her mouth, to scare the crap out of her, at minimum.

When you get a trial from a lynch mob it’s got to be quick. That’s the main feature, the extremely speedy trial. The speed of that trial is blinding because there is no need for cross-examination, testimony, investigation, motions, objections, evidence, doubt, remarks from the judge, pointless discussions about so-called justice. Justice is we get to kill this guilty fuck. Or, in other cases, justice is we have a 51-49 majority so we win– whatever you might think, whatever millions in the streets might think, whatever the mothers and fathers of every fifteen year-old girl in the country might think.

But here’s the funny part about all that, if we can take a brief break for a bit of levity and a raspy laugh, the mothers and fathers of at least 40% of the millions of American fifteen year-old girls believe that their daughters would never, under any circumstances, drink a beer in a house where the adults were gone, with a bunch of already drunk seventeen year-old guys and only one other girl there. Inconceivable, you understand? Our daughter is not a little slut! If we ever found out she is, we’d beat the fuck out of her– with sanctions I mean, sanctions: we’d ground her, take away her allowance, force her to come to church with us every Sunday. If this supposed assault really happened, why didn’t the girl tell her parents and take her punishment like a man? You see? You see how we know she’s a fucking liar!

The beauty of a quick trial, from the point of view of a lynch mob, is that so-called good Samaritans don’t get a chance to self-righteously ride up on their white horses and call time out. Even the people in the crowd, laughing and smirking, if their blood had a chance to cool down, and an appeal was made to their consciences, if other facts were brought out, might not be cheering when we took this sick bastard to pieces before we hung him over a fire and roasted his guilty ass. Do you see the point of a speedy trial? It’s in the Constitution!

I heard a discussion between investigative journalists recently, talking about their investigations. They all agreed that the most important single element of an investigation is time. The kiss of death, as far as truth emerging fully, is an arbitrary time limit imposed on the investigation. It takes time to talk to enough people, to find enough corroborating evidence, to come to publishable conclusions. If you write an investigative piece you need to have multiple sources for your reporting. Finding and interviewing them, and carefully checking out their stories, takes time. Before the investigative report is published it will be critically read by a team, including lawyers, who will challenge every detail, make sure the piece contains no uncorroborated speculation that could lead to a lawsuit for defamation. All of these things, the investigation, the vetting of every source, confirming the accuracy of the report based on the sources and other evidence, take time to do properly.

Which is exactly why a lynch mob has to act quickly, while they have the moral hot hand. We’re going to give this fuck a fair trial and then, before any bleeding heart bullshit artist outside troublemakers can start making a stink, we’re going to lift him up by his neck and watch his feet kick, which is exactly what he deserves, good ladies and gentlemen of the jury.

As far as the president being a liar– well, everyone knew that when he was running for office. He’s honest about the fact that he’s a liar– he makes no attempt to hide it, which makes him very truthful, in a way. He’s lying because he’s up against liars, you understand, he’s lying for us! His lawyers threatened to sue the NY Times for their vicious hit piece on him and they are going to sue the lying NY Times and put them out of business, watch. Just because he’s lying doesn’t mean they are not much worse liars than him, much worse liars.

You’re giving me a headache.

As for me, I have just one question– where are the people who are supposed to have the president’s back about his hair? They’re photographing him from his bald side now, those lying fucks?

Working out the puzzle

Oct13

An idea popped up last night as I was trying to improve my handwriting in the little drawing book I always keep in my back pocket.

20181012_042601 (1).jpg

We Americans have been locked in an endless argument, as we so often are, about who is the victim and who is the perpetrator. Cops, in cheap novels, always call the alleged perpetrator “the perp” as when they walk him, handcuffed and awkwardly trying to hide his face, past a phalanx of news photographers. While the shame of the perp walk is deliberately inflicted, because that’s what you do to a stinkin’ skel, the identity of the victim (or “vic” in these same dime store books) is often protected, because every protector naturally has sympathy and protectiveness for the vic.

All the vic did was be someplace where the perp showed up. The vic just provided a vulnerable target for the perp, a malefactor who in most cases would have done the same to just about anyone who could serve the same need. The vic just happened to be the one this time. Sucks to be the vic. Walk into the wrong room and — boom! Traumatized for life by a scumbag.

This argument rages in public and in private. I myself have been, it appears, recently turned from vic to perp because of my stubborn refusal to pretend I wasn’t treated badly several times by an old friend. The actual crime is not forgiving the old friend. The guy said sorry, even if he did the same thing again a couple of times afterwards. Actually, he also defended why he was right in the first place and said he had only apologized because I seemed hurt and mad. He is currently the deeply wounded, vulnerable party and I am the arrogant, unforgiving hypocrite, so you might want to take the rest of this, as always, with a few large grains of coarse salt.

We saw this hoary debate about who is the perpetrator and who is the victim raging throughout the recent horror show of our latest Supreme Court confirmation hearings. The only thing both sides agree about regarding the hearings is that they were a despicable circus and a national disgrace. Men of great discernment and integrity, respected intellectuals like David Brooks and Alan Dershowitz, told us after hearing the testimony of the two alleged victims, Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh, that our opinion of who was more truthful depended entirely on which tribe we belong to.

There was apparently nothing more at issue during the hearings as far as the judge’s qualifications for a lifetime appointment to the nation’s highest court aside from whether he drunkenly committed sexual assault on a girl two years younger than him while they were both in high school. An insignificant younger girl none of the other teenagers at the home where they were drinking during an impromptu gathering while the parents were away even recall, apparently. Sometimes history narrows to a point like this one.

Let’s assume for a moment that Kavanaugh was an innocent man and the victim of a vicious coordinated political hit, as he angrily insisted he was. Some people get righteously angry when they’re accused of shameful things, we all can understand that, it proves nothing about a person’s innocence or guilt that he reacts with rage instead of humility to a terrible accusation. If this inflammatory accusation of atrocious behavior (and a criminal act) was concocted out of thin air by George Soros and the Clintons for nakedly political reasons, Kavanaugh had every right (if not every reason) to be outraged. So let’s put his rage about the accusations to the side now, shall we?

Not every innocent person calls for a full investigation of the facts to prove their innocence, to clear their good name. One reason an innocent person may not want to undergo an FBI investigation into specific allegations of something he never did is because you never know what other unfortunate facts a deep investigation into a specific, long ago time in your life might uncover. Suppose you had been nothing more than a clandestine (to your parents and teachers) heavy drinker back in your high school days— would you want that made public as you were about to be confirmed for a seat on the highest court in the land? Of course not.

Accepting those two scenarios about Kavanaugh’s righteous anger at the accusation and his, and his Party’s, resistance to a full FBI investigation to clear his name, it is possible to understand both reactions as guiltless displays of human feeling. Construed this way they constitute no proof that he was hiding anything, or had anything to hide, or had ever hid, or continues to hide, anything. For the sake of argument, let’s give Kavanaugh the benefit of the doubt on his demeanor under pressure, the “presumption of innocence” his defenders get so worked up about when it was rudely denied him during the rush toward a quick FBI probe.

Next we come to the substance of Mr. Kavanaugh’s actual defense, which was submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee in writing the day before Blasey Ford testified. You can read his complete written denial here, as it was submitted to the Committee the day before both victims testified. The most muscular and effective allegations about how he was the one being victimized were left out of the first draft of his statement. He wisely omitted them from the written statement he gave to the Committee, why give your determined enemies a chance to organize themselves against your best attack? He added these powerful touches to the statement he passionately delivered on national TV:

This has destroyed my family and my good name. A good name built up through decades of very hard work and public service at the highest levels of the American government.

This whole two-week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election. Fear that has been unfairly stoked about my judicial record. Revenge on behalf of the Clintons. and millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups.

This is a circus. The consequences will extend long past my nomination. The consequences will be with us for decades. This grotesque and coordinated character assassination will dissuade competent and good people of all political persuasions, from serving our country.

And as we all know, in the United States political system of the early 2000s, what goes around comes around. I am an optimistic guy. I always try to be on the sunrise side of the mountain, to be optimistic about the day that is coming.

But today, I have to say that I fear for the future. Last time I was here, I told this committee that a federal judge must be independent, not swayed by public or political pressure.

I said I was such a judge, and I am. I will not be intimidated into withdrawing from this process. You’ve tried hard. You’ve given it your all. No one can question your effort, but your coordinated and well-funded effort to destroy my good name and to destroy my family will not drive me out. The vile threats of violence against my family will not drive me out.

You may defeat me in the final vote, but you’ll never get me to quit. Never.

source

If you are a Republican partisan, or even a right wing radical with no allegiance to any particular political party who is simply eager to have a reliable Supreme Court vote for your views, you were roused by these words. An innocent man, attacked by vicious, well-funded partisan enemies, forced to defend a spotlessly good name forever besmirched by a godless conspiracy of people without honor, shame or any sort of morals. Good for him! To someone impressed by him these lines will sound like a kind of sweet, infinitely just music:

People worried about your long record as a Republican operative, your troubling and heavily redacted partisan past, your consistent twelve year judicial record, your evasiveness and surliness during the hearings, the many misleading and false answers you gave, the haste of your controversial appointment, will not be reassured by these words, of course. The words you spoke in portraying yourself as a saintly victim make you sound like an angry partisan and the farthest thing from the impartial, independent arbiter you claim to be, but that’s not the point. Fuck those people!

Just one thing troubles me. Are the American Bar Association, the dean of Yale Law School, retired Supreme Court justice and lifelong Republican John Paul Stevens, the many classmates coming forward to corroborate stories of your heavy drinking and occasional abusiveness while drunk all also part of this vast, vindictive well-funded left wing conspiracy?

Even more ominously, what in God’s name could have possibly possessed the Jesuits, the famously fair-minded and intellectually rigorous Catholic sect that founded and run the elite prep school you attended, to take part in this calculated and orchestrated political hit by outside left-wing opposition groups? For the love of God, Brett, how could these defenders of the faith have so treacherously, so faithlessly, abandoned you? How did the left-wing conspirators recruit even the politically nonpartisan Jesuits? A truly devilish bit of partisan treachery. I read about it in this AP account:

The Jesuits took an even stronger stance. Following Thursday’s testimony by Kavanaugh and his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, the magazine of the Jesuit religious order in the United States publicly withdrew its endorsement of Kavanaugh. An editorial in America Magazine declared that “this nomination is no longer in the best interests of the country.”

Kavanaugh was a student at Georgetown Preparatory School, a Jesuit high school, when the alleged assault took place.

The editorial doesn’t attempt to parse whether Kavanaugh’s or Ford’s testimony was more credible. But it concluded that “in a world that is finally learning to take reports of harassment, assault and abuse seriously,” the nomination must be abandoned.

“If Senate Republicans proceed with his nomination, they will be prioritizing policy aims over a woman’s report of an assault,” it states. “Were he to be confirmed without this allegation being firmly disproved, it would hang over his future decisions on the Supreme Court for decades and further divide the country.” [emphasis mine, ed.]

The magazine had previously given Kavanaugh a full-throated endorsement, stating that his addition to the Supreme Court may furnish the fifth vote needed to overrule Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationwide. The Catholic Church firmly opposes abortion.

That original endorsement editorial concluded that “anyone who recognizes the humanity of the unborn should support” Kavanaugh’s nomination.

The reversal is significant given that Kavanaugh has cited his Catholic faith and Jesuit education in defending himself against Ford’s accusations. In his opening statement Thursday, Kavanaugh twice referenced his years as a student at Georgetown Prep.

source

The Jesuits’ editorial stated that unless Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations were firmly disproved doubts would hang over Kavanaugh’s future decisions and further divide the country. Fortunately for Judge Kavanuagh he was nominated by a man who doesn’t know how to lose. As far as firmly disproving all doubts, the FBI did it in less than five days. Disproved by all nine witnesses who didn’t recall anything bad about the nominee! Give the man his robe. Next case! Suck on that, Jesuits!

Jesus, it is so hard to keep your faith in a world as corrupt as this cruel place!

gratuitousblahg

warning: gratuitous fucking f-word & (c) E. Widaen 2012-2026

Category Archives: current events