Nobody knows better than the Democrats how to turn the moment against them:

For purposes of the longtime right wing agenda– no taxes, no regulations (except against pregnant women and maybe pot smokers), a powerful military, a government that does not coerce anybody to do anything, making any false claims necessary to hide secret plans that disadvantage the vast majority of Americans – this president we have here is fine, better than fine.   He also, conveniently, undermines people’s faith in democracy, even common decency, with his shameless lying and his willingness to attack others and promote even the most indefensible policies.

The current president is the personification of government incompetence, corruption and overreach. A living argument for why you cannot trust your government.  Sure, it’s easy to criticize a man who hasn’t filled a record number of important government jobs in the first 20 months of his administration (like in the agency that oversees our stockpile of nukes), but on the other hand, he’s filled the federal bench with a record number of lifetime federal judges, vetted by the top conservative think tanks for their fealty to a core set of beliefs, he’s slashed taxes dramatically for America’s wealthiest and our corporations, he’s on the inhumane side of every humanitarian situation.   He has thousands of ‘migrant kids’ being moved to open air desert prison camps like the ones Joe Arpaio used to run.  He has expressed concern, in the wake of Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony, that many completely innocent men are being victimized and publicly destroyed by this #metoo movement.

He’s a divider, not a uniter, he honestly doesn’t understand democracy, the idea of it, he loves autocrats wherever he encounters them.  He is, his vulgarity aside, exactly what the Koch brothers and the rest of the best people, the best people, want.  That he knows very little about how our democracy actually works appears to be a plus for the smirking rich winners who are currently riding his donkey ass to their dreamed of land of unlimited liberty free from government tyranny.

He can be excused for insisting, as he did the other day, that the Senate majority, that inviolable 51-49 mandate they have in the Senate, is in charge of what the FBI investigates and what they don’t investigate about a Supreme Court nominee who could be, among other things, colorably charged with perjury [1].  It would probably be a first, a sitting Supreme Court justice hauled into a House investigation for perjury.  There is also the nominee’s reported belligerent drunkeness, strongly hinted at by his belligerent ‘rebuttal’ of Blasey Ford’s allegations, and more than one woman alleging sexual assault by the nominee.  There is, perhaps most importantly for purposes of a Supreme Court justice, the over the top partisan rage he displayed during his testimony to counter Blasey Ford’s detailed story of a stumbling drunk, privileged seventeen year-old trying to rape a fifteen year-old at a gathering of six high school kids when there were no adults in the house.   He appears, based on his childish temper tantrum before the Judiciary Committee, to have a supremely unjudicial temperament.  

I have been before many judges, only an insignificant fraction of whom appeared to lack the ability to rule fairly on what was in front of them.  An even tinier fraction appeared to be bellicose jerks venting about their personal problems, or acting based on anger at their imagined persecutors, in their courtrooms.  There is a Judicial Code of Conduct (naturally not enforceable against the Supreme Court justices) that requires a judge to act in a way that inspires confidence in the integrity of the courts.  So much for that, Brett.   Trump’s tribe might get excited by the belligerent defiance, but it’s not judicial temperament any more than the thin-skinned reflexively attacking Trump is an example of presidential temperament.

The president, with his limited understanding of anything but “winning” and “losing”, grasps only this– we’re winning 51-49.  If this was a game, and it is, we win.   The obstructionist Democrats are losers, everybody not included in that robust 51-49 mandate for whatever he wants, or has been convinced, to do — losers!    

Into the mix drops the lying New York Times recent piece about the source of Trump’s self-made fortune.  Donald was paid the equivalent of $200,000 current dollars a year starting when he was three years old. Nice work if you can get it!  He was a millionaire by age eight.   An inspiring American diaper to riches story! After dad’s first choice, Fred Jr., turned out to be unsuited to take over his father’s empire, Fred Christ Trump began grooming his second choice, Donald, in earnest.    The details of daddy Trump’s manipulative generosity are sickening, but unsurprising.   We know the president is a lying self-promoter, even his base acknowledges this– they just don’t care.   Still, some of the details of things he lied about, his entire self-made billionaire origin story, are truly sickening.   The luxurious first class safety net provided by his father explains the reckless fearlessness with which Donald has always conducted his many failed businesses and vanity projects.  It emerges that the president’s brother Robert is cut from the same cloth as Donald.    His defensive statement about having the decency to leave their dead, sainted parents to rest in peace, leaves a bit of a stench.   Of course, as David Brooks points out, the tendency to perceive that stench/breath of fresh air is purely tribal.  The president is loved by his tribe, and that is his only concern, to remain beloved of almost 40% of the angriest people in America.

But that New York Times hatchet job is just another distraction.   As far as getting Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, all Trump needs to do is run out the clock to have the game end 51-49.  He’s set an artificial, arbitrary deadline of one week for the FBI to fully investigate multiple allegations against his nominee.   To stack the deck just a bit more toward his beleaguered, unfairly crucified nominee, he ran three days off the clock by saying publicly that the FBI would have “free rein”, while imposing severe restrictions on the definition of free rein.   Then he said that Mitch McConnell must decide the scope of the investigation, then apparently learning that the president alone dictates the scope of any FBI probe he orders, blandly opined that the FBI should talk to anyone they can find, including Kavanaugh.  As long as it’s all done before my inviolable Friday deadline when everybody votes 51-49 and we have this great man, with his spotless record, to rule on all the most important matters of constitutional law.   Because the constitution, you understand, is an inviolable and indisputable blueprint for our highest aspirations as a free democracy and it must be interpreted faithfully by the best people, the very best people.  Especially those who kiss my ass the most passionately, if you know what I’m saying.

[1]  Kavanaugh has been evasive, belligerent and defiant under questioning during the confirmation process.   It also strongly appears he’s been untruthful under oath, deliberately misleading, or both.  His repeated assertions about drinking only beer, beer and nothing but beer included a frank, but tacit admission that he had been drinking beer illegally before he was allowed to do so legally, during his senior year of high school, when he was eighteen.   The use of the word “beer” dozens of times suggests, at least to this beer drinker, an effort to deny drinking anything stronger than beer, just beer and nothing but beer.  The beer drinker doth say “beer” too much, methinks.   Also, it turns out, the legal drinking age in Maryland, in 1983, when Kavanaugh was an 18 year old beer drinker, was actually 21.

Then there is reframing and refuting a question not asked, a classic lawyerly dodge, as when he claims he never blacked out from beer, which he said was the accusation here, but only fell asleep from it.   There was no accusation that Kavanaugh was a black out drunk, only that he had been stumblingly drunk when he and his equally drunk buddy pushed a fifteen year-old girl into an upstairs bedroom, across from the bathroom, and locked the door. 

An example of a more direct Kavanaugh untruth is his stating, emphatically, and more than once, that witnesses had refuted Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony about his attempted rape of her.  He repeated the word “refuted”, with great emphasis, to hammer home his point that only the alleged victim seems to recall that long ago day when he held her down, his friend turned up the music, he covered her mouth when she tried to call for help, etc.   The other four or five people in the house… well, they say it never happened, according to Kavanaugh.  Not only don’t they recall that particular unremarkable early evening — every witness, according to Kavanaugh, REFUTED the vengeful, well-financed partisan lie against him.  

What the witnesses said was that they have no recollection of an ordinary long ago summer late afternoon or evening gathering of six teenagers that was of no significance to anyone but the fifteen year-old who was traumatized that day.  There is a slight difference between “refute” and “don’t recall”, as even a neophyte judge should be able to easily judge.   Repeated assertions of “refute” in place of  “don’t recall” might well be grounds for a perjury charge, particularly if, as here, the repetition is integral to one’s defense.   The only thing not in dispute is that the misleading statement, whether deliberate or in the heat of the moment under great emotional stress, was made under oath.    

When Brett Kavanuagh was vetting material for the Bush/Cheney White House for hearings about judicial appointees, (prior to his own appointment to the federal bench, obviously) he disclosed the contents of hacked, (illegally obtained) emails with classified background memos prepared by Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee.   He denied this charge, denies ever seeing the hacked emails, let alone unethically forwarding them to parties who should not have seen them, but the author of some of the memos improperly obtained and passed on to the nominees (think debate questions obtained before the debate), former Judiciary Committee staffer Lisa Graves,  saw whole paragraphs of her 4,000 word report cut and pasted into emails that Kavanaugh sent and received.   This could easily be resolved by a subpoena for the emails, although the emails Lisa Graves cites are already part of the small percentage of Kavanaugh-related documents the Senate Judiciary Committees has allowed to become part of the record.

There is another answer by Kavanaugh that could be proved or disproved as perjury by a subpoena for related emails.   The truth or falsity of the statement is a question of fact that could easily be determined by seeing some of the disputed emails.   Kavanaugh denied knowledge of the conduct and sexually off-color email listserve of his disgraced friend and former mentor, Alex Kozinsky, the federal judge who resigned recently amid multiple allegations of sexual harassment over a span of many years.  This denial appears to have been another lie, told to keep the shine on his choir boy image.    It’s hard to believe this longtime confidant of Judge Kozinsky’s could be unaware of the well-known reputation of his disgraced friend, a reputation for doing things every one of Kozinsky’s former clerks who has spoken on the issue has confirmed he did.  Common knowledge that Kavanaugh insisted he knew nothing about.  Why open that door, you know?

There is also evidence that team Kavanaugh contacted Yale classmates as soon as he heard that Debbie Ramirez’s claim that he’d drunkenly exposed himself to her when they were freshmen at Yale were going to be published in the New Yorker.  Potential witnesses were contacted by team Kavanaugh before the New Yorker article that broke the story was published.  At the hearing last Thursday Kavanaugh swore to Orin Hatch that the first he learned of the allegations from the New Yorker article, though there is an argument about whether this meant the publication date or when he got advance knowledge that Debbie Rodriguez’s charges were about to be published.  

If this were a criminal trial, these attempts to get witnesses to line up behind him and say things on his behalf so that he could be confirmed to a high appointment would be seen as a clear case of witness tampering.   Since it is not a criminal trial, nothing to see here, yo, except a naughty bit of standard corrupt practice that any powerful person routinely engages in.  The appearance of impropriety is only that, an appearance.  The answer to that is 51-49, suck it.

We can, of course, count on the character and integrity of President Trump in this and congratulate him for the “free rein” he’s generously given to the FBI to investigate multiple allegations against Brett Kavanaugh.   Our peerless leader has demonstrated these qualities endlessly, as that Great Wall of China on our southern border, the only thing that will save America, is being speedily built and paid for by Mexican rapists.   Faith in the president’s strong sense of justice is what caused Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley to bang the gavel as soon as they had the party line 11-10 vote for Kavanaugh in his committee.  “Two hour rule,” he said as he gaveled the session closed, using a never used antique procedural rule to cut off discussion of the “limited scope” of the “maximum one week FBI investigation” that Jeff Flake, weakly but with principle, had insisted on as the condition of his vote.

As it turned out, partisan Democrats and people of the left had nothing to worry about.   The president assured everybody by tweet that he’d instructed the FBI to do a full and unrestricted investigation.   He placed only a few minimal conditions:  nobody can talk to Kavanaugh, he did very well at the hearing, beautifully, really, and no reason to follow up on anything, very unfair and upsetting to put him through anything more; nobody can talk to Blasey Ford, she said everything she has to say and it was very damaging, she really said more than enough; no interview with Julie Swetnick, she’s clearly a bitter gang rape survivor trying to take it out on Kavanaugh who she has no idea if he was in the train or not because she was passed out while being gang-raped, allegedly, allegedly=-and you know how women love to play the victim card about “rape’, so, no, not her.   Just a few other minor guidelines:

Each of these minor conditions makes perfect sense, in Trumpworld.   Whether or not Kavanaugh was a mean drunk in high school is irrelevant, it has nothing to do with the accusation that he tried to rape her while drunk.    So, no, the FBI can’t ask any of his former classmates about how he behaved when he had had too many beers– and let us say once more for the record, he never drank anything stronger than beer.  The FBI, in conducting any investigation that is not a total witch hunt, must investigate only exactly what the White House decides is relevant.   After all, who better to decide how to investigate something fairly than the president who has been trying to just get this fine man’s confirmation done?    The FBI does not assess credibility, and if it does, it has no right to judge a man as wonderful and well-qualified as federal judge for life Brett Kavanaugh.   The White House is the only power impartial enough to make a fair assessment of what, if anything the FBI finds.   Don’t forget, the FBI and CIA behave like Nazis and are not very loyal to the president.

Six female Republican senators will vote yes or no to confirm Brett Kavanaugh based on the most heavily redacted record of any candidate for the Supreme Court.   The votes of four of those women are never mentioned, as though, because they come from Republican strongholds in the former Confederacy, they would NEVER vote against the party.   If they voted against the party line they’d be primaried out of office quicker than you could say “Jackie Roosevelt Robinson”, yes suh.   Such is the bawdy house of current American democracy.  The two female senators from states that do not always vote straight Republican are supposed to be the votes in play.   We don’t hear much from them yet, they’re probably waiting for the results of the White House’s scrupulously fair limited FBI investigation.

Reagan’s nominee Douglas Ginsberg smoked marijuana (Ronnie was bitterly surprised to learn this) and withdrew his name when it came out, rather than lie about it, pout, fight, hiss, bluster, threaten, make sarcastic remarks, yell, glare, conjure vast conspiracies against him and curse the millions spent to make him look like he smoked pot which he never DID, NEVER– YOU SMOKED POT!

Brett Kavanaugh, accused of something much less serious, of course, than smoking a joint, is made of sterner stuff.  He’s like Trump.   He’s a fighter who lashes out when cornered.  In fact, he’ll scratch your fucking eyes out before he’ll even think about backing down, he has amply demonstrated his fighting judicial spirit to the pussies who tried to make him look bad at the eleventh hour, after he already did OK enough that he would actually get confirmed.   That fighting spirit makes him, according to Trump, the ideal impartial-imsmartial deciding vote on the Supreme Court for, insha’Allah, many years to come.

Speaking of rigid, studiously reasonable sounding political hacks, Brooks, predictably, viewed the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford and the fierce rebuttal by Brett Kavanaugh as basically a wash, one’s opinion of who was the victim breaking down 100% along tribal lines.  

Along tribal lines, of course.  Nothing to see here, boys and girls.   Alan Dershowitz had the same observation, as did so many others in their tribe. There is no such thing as truth to a tribe who believes that outraged impudence is a wholly appropriate substitute for candidly answering questions at a hearing.  Good people on many sides, on many sides, no doubt, no doubt.  

The angry man is an outraged victim of a vast conspiracy, the woman, although credible and reasonable and refusing to speculate about things beyond the details of the traumatic experience she was relating — well, your opinion of who was more credible and who testified more compellingly will break down along tribal lines.

“Truth before justice” is David Brooks’ motto [1] — and there is truth on both sides, there appears to be, according to David Brooks.  None of us can know who is more truthful, and therefore who we believe must break down along tribal lines.  If you supported Clinton, you hate Kavanaugh.  If you hated Clinton, you love Kavanaugh.  There is no way, at present, that any of us can know which of the two was actually more truthful, or even who demonstrated better character.  Thus Spake David Brooks. 

Unless of course, you impartially apply Judge Martha Kavanaugh’s famous test:    ‘Use your common sense. What rings true? What rings false?’

If you apply this test, Brooks, and compare the ring of Blasey Ford’s meek but firm description of events and the ring of Kavanaugh’s raging contempt for the very accusation and still conclude it all depends on your tribal allegiance, I must conclude that your tribe, the assholes, is finally beyond redemption.  But, of course, that only confirms my membership in the enemy tribe, proving your point.  Don’t give me that smug smile, Brooks, go wash your ass instead, eh?

I would be fascinated to hear Judge Martha Kavanaugh’s unguarded opinion on the application of her now famous test to the testimony of her son and his accuser.

[1]  Though to understand exactly what that dramatic-sounding credo actually means you’d need a mind as deep as David Brooks’ finely tuned, elegant thinking machine.   

There are people, born into the right families, who will always, always get a pass for fuck ups.  Fair is fair, you dig, if you are among the best of the best, that’s what privilege is all about.  

Brett Kavanaugh, with his $40,000 a year prep school and Ivy League education, is one of these, the best of the best.  They call it the Boy’s Club, the people you meet at the finest schools become important connections who will introduce you, hire you, promote you, protect you when you fuck up.   You can be a liar, it’s not a vice if you lie for a really principled reason, if you are privileged and have other privileged people to vouch for you.   Who among us is perfect, after all?  

Kavanaugh told Fox the other night that he was a virgin throughout high school and therefore, somehow, it followed he could not have committed the sexual assault he is accused of.   He had previously bragged to his high school classmates, other wealthy boys, on his year book page, that he was a “Renate Alumnius” (sic), a boys will be boys reference to having had sex with one of the girls who’d grow up to sign a letter defending his character. [1]    Reminds me of that old Andrew Dice Clay throwaway:  Mother Goose?  I fucked her.  Like many contradictory claims liars make they can’t both be true.   Either you fucked Mother Goose or you were a virgin.

We don’t know whether Christine Blasey Ford, no matter how credibly and sympathetically she testified, was correct in identifying Kavanaugh as her attacker.   It seems very likely, otherwise why would she have faced the nightmare she did to bring the accusation to the public?   On the other hand, we know that Kavanaugh did not do what an innocent man with nothing to hide would have done, asked for a full investigation to clear his good name.   He was evasive, he was angry, he was belligerent and entitled.

As his mother, Judge Martha Kavanaugh always told him, according to Brett: “Her trademark line was: ‘Use your common sense. What rings true? What rings false?'”

If we use our common sense, and weigh what rings true and what rings false, if we compare their demeanors and their candor/lack of candor, put the two versions side by side, Blasey Ford’s very detailed and precise, Kavanaugh’s merely an angry categorical denial of something he said never happened, blaming the Clintons for this vengeful ordeal he was being put through, it would seem Judge Kavanaugh is, sadly for him, kind of fucked.  

Fortunately for him, perhaps, none of that should matter, since he, like the man who nominated him, has never been held responsible for anything in his life, has a glib, angry answer, or a sullen evasion, for all of it.  And his team holds a 51-49 majority and unlimited money to deploy against disloyal Senators when they face re-election.    If it was put to a public vote he’d probably get around the same 30 something percent that supports the leader of his party, a similarly unfairly besieged, privileged victim.   Lucky for Brett Kavanaugh, such things are kept out of the hands of the rabble, left in the hands of his powerful peers.    

By the way, this Guardian editorial made some excellent points.   Worth a look just to see the collage of Kavanaugh facial expressions as he tried to defend his ruined name during the rebuttal phase of the trial of Christine Blasey Ford.

AP/Getty images

[1]   Renate herself, now an adult and mother, was outraged, horrified to learn that those prep school boys bragged about having sex with her (Kavanaugh explained the reference was about dancing– Dance YOU, you transparently lying asshole), almost said she regretted signing the letter with 64 other wealthy women from Montgomery County.   But  I’ll say this for them, they stick do together, usually.   Here’s a bit about the adult Renate’s reaction to the yearbook page.  

And to underscore that the above is not from some Clinton-Soros-Oprah fake news liberal hatchet job publication, here’s the pop-up ad that popped up when I tried to read the article linked above.   You might not want to miss this summit!

Amy Goodman reports today on Democracy Now!

I remind everyone, and myself, that in spite of living in a rape culture where the denials of powerful, privileged men still work just fine in cases of doubt, where the indiscretions of the inebriated privileged are weighed on a different scale, there are two rounds of voting before even the elite partisan Brett Kavanaugh can get on to the Supreme Court.   The Republicans should really kill this one in committee, rather than brazening it out in the full Senate for a confirmation vote.   Not likely because Republicans are now ideologically against abortion in all cases, even in the case of an extreme monstrosity.

The first vote will apparently be tomorrow morning, in the Judiciary Committee composed of 11 Republicans and 10 Democrats, expected to be a straight 11-10 vote to put Kavanaugh’s name up for a vote by the full Senate where Republicans appear to be doubling down in hopes of brazening out a robust 51-49 confirmation.   If Jeff Flake, or perhaps the high-minded Ben Sasse, has a moment of conscience over night, Kavanaugh goes down in the committee, crying, by that same 11-10 margin.  It’s anybody’s guess right now, though one presumes Grassley made sure he had the 11 votes before committing to the full committee vote tomorrow at 9:30 a.m..

If it gets to the full Senate it will be fascinating to watch those six female Republicans, (though most come from locked down right wing Republican strongholds) and picture their moral dilemmas as the 51-49 majority is being whipped into shape by the Whip.  The Whip says even if Kavanaugh is less than 100% truthful, even if he is, as said by his Yale roommate, a mean, aggressive drunk, even if he did once, but only once, when he was really, really fucked up.., never mind… nobody can prove that.  

It didn’t happen, it never happened, nothing happened, but if it did happen it was nothing, really, really nothing, even if it did happen to happen that one time, decades ago, a time I have no recollection of because I used to get that drunk when I was really happy back in the Jesuit school.  As I had them print on my yearbook page, I don’t recall who won that Orioles game or who the other team was.  Who cares?

Christine Blasey Ford testified, credibly, sympathetically and without any doubt, about a sexual assault and the identity of the man who tried to rape her one long ago summer evening in high school.   Dr. Ford even quickly explained the science of how photographic memories of traumatic moments are indelibly frozen in the hippocampus.   The most traumatic single thing she can’t get out of her head from that evening was the uproarious laughter of Kavanaugh and football teammate and fellow Renate Alumnius [sic], toxic buddy Mark Judge as they stumbled back downstairs after Kavanaugh’s ballsy rape attempt gone awry.   No reason to hear from Judge, the other guy in the room during the attempted rape, he’s already sworn that Blasey Ford is a liar.

The man she’d identified as one of the two drunken boys, President Trump’s nominee for Associate Supreme Court Justice, came into the hearing angry, defiant, prissy, insisting that he was the victim, he was the one under attack, that it was his good name being destroyed, his dreams they were trying to crush, his life being ruined, and the lives of his family, and the lives of every American who believes in democracy.    He put on a tour de force of judicial character, lashing out at everybody, imagining vicious partisan conspiracies like the ones he’s taken part in, acting like a drunk prep school asshole for the international TV audience.

Judicial character, yo.   He bullied everyone in the room who suggested he didn’t want the fair process he’d called for, tried to stare them down, with that smug, supremely punchable face.   He looked, whenever he felt cornered, every bit the entitled, intemperate, belligerent handsy drunk he’s been depicted as.  The kind of stupid drunk who would hold his hand over a squirming girl’s mouth and drunkenly struggle to get her one piece bathing suit off.   Looking at his poorly restrained anger, it was easy to picture him saying “no means yes and yes means anal,” and laughing mirthlessly about it with the macho little turds he got drunk with in prep school.  It’s what the football team at an elite all-boys school does, perform rituals of toxic masculinity for each other.

He was very sorry about the woman, Dr. Blasey Ford, he said, and held nothing against her, it was the evil Democrats sneakily and viciously trying to get revenge against him for things like his zeal in the Clinton sex impeachment, his role in stopping the Florida recount in 2000, his advising Bush and Cheney on the legality of the torture program, and extrajudicial killing by drone, the classification of 90% of his writings, the whole sick well-funded Democrat partisan attack machine, but he had never tried to rape her, not even one time, or anyone else, even after he’d had several beers.  He liked beer, still does, beer, just beer, nothing stronger than a good old American beer, like everybody in America likes to drink.

She might think that she was 100% sure it is his leering face indelibly implanted in her hippocampus, but she was wrong.  It 100% was not him, 100%.  He might have had a lot of beer on some of those high school nights (too drunk to remember scores of several sporting events he attended while at Georgetown Prep, as he fondly recalled on his yearbook page), but it wasn’t him, no way, no fucking way you goddamned godless fucking fucks!   He was 100% sure that it could not possibly have been him who tried to rape this woman, and would subject himself to absolutely any investigation Republican committee chairman Chuck Grassely would call for.  

He didn’t blame Blasey Ford, a well-meaning but sadly mistaken tool of bitter, lying partisans, maliciously lying in wait until the very last minute, their hearts filled with hatred, thirsting for injustice, intent on a personal vendetta against him, upon decency itself.

“These are last-minute smears, pure and simple. They debase our public discourse. And the consequences extend beyond any one nomination. Such grotesque and obvious character assassination — if allowed to succeed — will dissuade competent and good people of all political persuasions from serving our country.”

That’s Trump fucking nominee there all right.  No doubt.  The president is very proud of the angry, brazenly lying bitch, can see a lot of himself in the boy.   You can practically see Trump nodding along as his nominee indignantly expresses how personally aggrieved he is by the unbearable unfairness that is being perpetrated against him.   Then he defiantly stated that he will not back down, never, will fight to the end to protect our great democracy by taking his place on the Supreme Court, the job he was born and bred to have for the rest of his lifetime.

I texted my sister “the partisan doth protest too much, methinks,” and then he started crying.   He was literally crying, that frustrated, entitled boy being so unfairly, and so falsely, challenged by such a compelling witness, and so close to the lifelong prize he’d been groomed for since before his prep school days!   Frustrating!    In front of this nation he loves, in front of his wife and his parents (present live in the room as he defended his good name), the emotion of the moment overcame him and he began to sob as he told a story about his Christlike ten year-old daughter.   He had to pause while he cried, gather himself.  

I thought the tears were a nice touch, especially considering that Christine Blasey Ford, the actual victim of his drunken piggishness, had put on such a brave yet meek face and held it together so admirably, spoke with such humility as she faced a hostile committee of ossified white men too intimidated by the optics of the situation to ask her anything, but pressing on with a female prosecutor.

That Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony was completely credible is beyond dispute.   Kavanaugh’s crying didn’t make his bullying, self-pitying act any easier to watch, I have to say.   He lied some more, very indignantly.   He blurted a false claim during his opening rant, trying to discredit Dr. Ford by claiming that her friend had said she was wrong, that there never was a gathering like the one she remembers:

…Kavanaugh claimed that Christine Blasey Ford’s friend, Leland Keyser, “refuted” her account of the party she was assaulted at by Brett Kavanaugh. In fact, Keyser has only said that she does not recall the event but believes Ford’s allegation.    source

He said, she said, now it’s time to vote.  

The Republican men of the Judicial Committee are cowards, hiding behind the skirts of a woman they brought in to speak for them, for the optics, the optics, we must do the opposite of Biden with Anita Hill.   We don’t talk at all, we get a female mouthpiece, for the optics, the optics.   The female prosecutor in the end was hard-pressed to impeach the credibility of an extremely candid witness.   Blasey Ford was an extremely sympathetic witness, by the end of her testimony every fair minded person in the world believed her story, including, it seemed, the sympathetic sex crimes prosecutor herself.

 To state the obvious once more — Christine Blasey Ford had nothing to gain and has already lost a good deal by coming forward.   The Republican men of the committee apparently gathered during the long recess to coordinate their hissy fit for the afternoon session when the nominee would deny all this uncorroborated testimony and they would rally around him like the fucking blindly partisan pussies they are. The Republican men exploded in indignation after Kavanaugh went into brainlock when Dick Durbin pressed him about sitting for an FBI investigation.   Kavanaugh was literally slack-jawed when challenged about why he won’t ask for an FBI investigation.   Angry Republican men began snarling on his behalf.  The female prosecutor, their mouthpiece, didn’t utter another word the rest of the way.

The Democrats aren’t much better than the Republicans, of course, though not quite as vicious, organized or implacable when it comes to how they wage war.   Republicans will do anything, they’re not concerned with grace, or looking bad, not afraid to look clumsy, desperate, tone deaf, immoral, they will pay any short term price (usually make others, the Takers, pay the price) for the final victory.  Individually they may be fine people, very fine people, the finest people and some very classy people, very classy ladies and gentlemen.   As a pack, the extreme right, our current Republican party, tend to run in lockstep, disciplined, following their leader without condition, unconstrained by ethics, conscience, moral qualms, the appearance of fairness, decency and many other things most good people take for granted.   Soldiers of their cause, power to the people, that small sliver of the very best people who deserve it most, the best of the best.   People like Brett Kavanaugh.

A friend told me the other day he thinks radical Republicans (the only kind we have at the moment) are mentally ill.   I didn’t have any good arguments against this proposition.   The best we can say is that they care only about themselves and that their elected representatives are acutely self-interested and not ashamed to march in a parade of powerfully stinking, bullying clowns, as long as they retain power.   

The stench of this confirmation farce to get the most extreme partisan hack yet quickly put up, for life, on the nation’s highest court, is powerful.   It’s not like anyone is accusing the man of smoking pot!   That guy, Douglas Ginsberg, Ronald Reagan’s nominee, stepped down when it came out he’d smoked marijuana. Nothing that serious has been alleged against good Christian Brett Kavanaugh.  Therefore, it was up to the eleven angry men to speak up for what is right, and true, and fuck you!  Lindsay Graham, a hissy douche-bag who finally couldn’t contain himself, after being so fair and listening so fairly to everything, finally had heard enough, eventually went berserk.

These middle aged and old white guys are the victims, always, and they are so fucking sick of being nice guys about it.  Goddamn it!  Jesus Christ himself wouldn’t sit still for this kind of fucking bullshit!

The 11-10 Republican Committee plans to vote first thing tomorrow, brazen it out full stink, shoot the moon, fuck the bitches and their credible sympathetic fucking testimony.  A fair process, now, a fair process, immediately!   Before any more of these lying jezebels come forward, claiming more lies against this most excellent, most deserving man. 

Will be interesting to see, assuming he makes it out of the committee, and then somehow makes it to a full vote, if any of the 51 Republicans will find a spine, or a modicum of shame, if the women in the Senate, the six Republicans, between them will find a pair of ovaries.  

If this asshole gets an up and down vote next week,and somehow gets to 51 votes, it will be quite a triumph for rape culture.  Hopefully its last triumph before a united front of decent people sweep these scumbags out of power.    Either way, this jerk-off will have a lot of time, in his old age, to cry over the fate his pathetic behavior has already ensured for the little girl, now ten, who made him cry today, for love of her gentle little soul, in that moment of human frailty in front of a live audience of many millions.