In reading about the various ideas about what Brett Kavanaugh as Republican-fascist vote #5 on the Supreme Court means the increasingly shrill cry that this will be a Constitutional Crisis is the major theme. Well, seeing what normal order consists of I'm ready to try a Constitutional Crisis which ends up with the Supreme Court drastically changed. If we could democratize the Senate and get rid of the electoral college at the same time . . .
Liberals who are watching more than a century of hard-fought for progress falling to the Federalist Society American Enterprise Institute fascists on the Court, them taking every opportunity to destroy the possibility of democracy have got everything to fear from this regular order that we're supposed to revere.
We always have had everything to fear from it, the regular order of the Supreme Court as it has been for most of its history is exactly what we've had to fight against to get every crumb of progress in equality, in equal justice, in the securing of basic necessities of life for those who aren't wealthy, of even clean water, safe food and drugs that won't kill us.
That is a literal truth of American history, of the history of the Supreme Court and the regime that it has established. It took the Civil War and the largest death total in our history to get rid of merely the legal form of slavery, it took enormous struggle costing many lives in the labor movement to get some measure of mitigation of wage slavery, it took the many civil rights struggles with its sacrifice in lives to ensure even a small measure of equality. And all along the way the Supreme Court, the corrupt electoral system, the Senate the Electoral College have been hurdles and blocks to all of that progress toward equality and democracy.
This article by Mark Joseph Sterns bemoans what I have come to hope for, the possibility that liberals will rebel against the Constitutional order due to the spectacle of the Roberts-Kavanaugh court taking a wrecking ball to the progress of the last century as, in fact, they already have been when it was Kennedy regularly supplying them with their fifth vote. Well, why shouldn't we rebel and demand that a court that does that be changed in the drastic ways that would stop them from doing what they're doing or to prevent them from making what they want to do law?
I would be willing to see if a drastically different Court with different rules would be enough since it's unlikely we're going to be able to democratize the Senate or get rid of the goddamned Electoral College. Sterns nightmare scenario certainly sounds better to me than what we've got now.
No matter how courteously Kavanaugh behaves on the court, many Democrats will always see him as the man who blamed “friends of the Clintons” for trying to thwart his confirmation. They will dismiss his votes as the product of political bias. It might not matter much at first: So long as Republicans maintain their grasp on power, they can enforce the court’s decisions through legislation, executive orders, and, if necessary, the National Guard.
But what happens when Democrats take back the legislative and executive branches? What if Democrats pass Medicare for All, and the Supreme Court strikes it down, with Kavanaugh casting the decisive fifth vote? It’s not hard to envision Democrats marching in the streets, demanding that the president and Congress ignore the ruling. And what if they do? What happens if the Department of Health and Human Services just … implements the law anyway? It’s easy to envision the presidential statement: As the chief executive, it is my duty to enact this legislation, passed through the democratic process, and to reject the illegitimate ruling of Donald Trump’s Supreme Court. The federal government, acting on orders of the president, opens enrollment, and Congress appropriates the funds as planned. What can the Supreme Court do? Send its tiny police force to storm the White House?
Considering what the Court would do to the lives, the health, the economic security to tens if not hundreds of millions of Americans with such a ruling, or even just the expected end to the ban on insurance companies refusing to issue policies or to honor ones they wrote on the basis of "preexisting conditions" such a ruling would be a death sentence to many people as, in fact, the ruling that allowed Republicans to block Medicaid expansion has been. WHY SHOULD WE NOT INSIST THAT OUR ELECTED OFFICIALS PROTECT OUR LIVES, OUR FAMILIES, OUR RIGHTS BY TELLING THE AUTOCRATS IN BLACK ROBES NO! Why should a bunch of prep-school-Ivy Leaguer servants of power be allowed to kill us?
Or imagine if the court abolishes affirmative action, and some state—say, New Jersey—refuses to comply. Or what if the court strikes down California’s independent redistricting commission, granting state legislators untrammeled ability to gerrymander congressional districts, and the governor insists on preserving it? The same goes for all manner of progressive reforms that could be on Kavanaugh’s chopping block, such as minimum wage laws and public financing of elections. Blue states may be pressured to disregard his decisions. And the president could decline to compel them to follow the high court’s rulings.
Again, such rulings have clear and obvious harms,
- turning us back to a de-facto American apartheid system NO BLACK AMERICAN SHOULD EVER FIND THAT TOLERABLE AS OTHERS COVERED UNDER AFFIRMATIVE ACTION SHOULDN'T. WHITE WOMEN HAVE A STAKE IN THAT TOO, TOGETHER THEY ACCOUNT FOR THE VAST MAJORITY OF AMERICAN CITIZENS. That alone should cause us to revolt against such judicial tyranny to effectively end it.
- delegitimizing our local state and federal governments on which the legitimacy of any court in the country ultimately depends.
- reinforcing and making wage slavery even more grinding than it is now,
- delivering our government into the hands of billionaire oligarchs,
The argument that we should fear refusing such judicial orders on the basis that segregationists weren't nice and they did so is absurd BECAUSE IT IS THE SEGREGATIONISTS WHO THE REGULAR ORDER HAVE MOSTLY SERVED ALL ALONG. IT IS THE SEGREGATIONISTS WHO HAVE CONTROL OF THE COURT AND WHO PUT KAVANAUGH THERE. The reason that they resisted the Warren Court was because it was about the only time in the history of the corrupt, anti-democratic, radically anti-egalitarian Supreme Court when it hasn't been their servant.
In 2003, Justice Stephen Breyer referred to the “miracle” of national compliance with the court’s edicts, even in the wake of “controversial decisions” like Bush v. Gore. There is nothing inevitable or self-sustaining about this “miracle.” Courts do have some tools to mandate adherence to their orders—namely, their ability to hold individuals in contempt of court. But judges will surely hesitate to hold governors, legislators, and Cabinet secretaries in contempt. The truth is that we haven’t seen massive resistance to the Supreme Court since the segregation battles of the 1950s and ’60s. And despite two presidents’ celebrated efforts to integrate schools with the help of the National Guard, the South’s resistance succeeded in slowing the pace of desegregation.
The motives of the resistance entirely matters in judging the morality of the resistance. There is no reason to allow the enemies of equality and equal justice, the servants of oligarchs and racists to define such a resistance when the goals are, in fact, democracy, equality, economic justice, environmental protection, the protection of the rights and lives of people on an equal basis. To equate those with segregationists is intellectually dishonest and absurd.
This precedent is appalling. But it demonstrates that the playbook can work. Progressives should recognize the danger in adopting the tactics of segregationists. Getting to the point of massive liberal resistance to the court would require a significant psychological shift, since the left has long viewed the Supreme Court as a saving grace. Kavanaugh’s confirmation alone won’t bring Democrats all the way there. But if he leads the court into a frenzy of reactionary jurisprudence, progressives may feel they have no other alternative.
As I have been yelling at liberals at the top of my lungs over the past twenty years, Earl Warren died a long, long time ago. The Court has reverted to its regular order and it is screwing us all
No matter the end result of liberal defiance, it will likely transform the Supreme Court’s legitimacy crisis into a full-blown constitutional crisis. Kavanaugh’s confirmation will have poisoned the foundation of the judiciary’s authority. The Supreme Court derives its power from the belief that it sits above the political fray. Brett Kavanaugh is poised to shatter that illusion.
Bring it on. The illusion should have shattered a long time ago, certainly by Bush v. Gore one of the most bald faced REPUBLICAN PARTISAN power grabs by an anti-democratic court in our history, and it's only gotten worse since then. I'm ready to see radical change. One of the things that Louis Boudin advocated was making it impossible for a Supreme Court to overturn duly adopted laws duly signed by ELECTED OFFICIALS by a 5-4 decision, requiring a unanimous court to do so. If that were the case all of the huge number of electoral reforms adopted to prevent the corruption of our elections would be in place and Trump wouldn't have appointed Kavanaugh, Roberts and Alito would not be there. Neither would Gorsuch.
Saturday, October 6, 2018
Saturday Night Radio Drama - Louise Lewis - Shouting Out Silence
Shouting out Silence, written by Louise Lewis and devised in collaboration with Gorretti Slavin During the last hours of Lizzie's life a haunted past seeps into her consciousness. In this intimate, often heart-wrenching recounting, Lizzie remembers a past she fought hard to forget. From her nameless beginnings to her imminent end will she finally find a voice to tell her story?
"I have no past, but I have lived, I have lived!
Listeners are advised that the play contains adult themes and language some may find disturbing from the start
Written & Performed by Louise Lewis
Sound Supervision by Mark McGrath
devised in collaboration with and directed by Gorretti Slavin
Susan Rice For Maine?
I had no idea that Susan Rice had Maine roots when she suggested she might run against Susan Collins, The Disgrace of Maine. Apparently her mother is a Mainer and she has a home here.
If she does "come from away" that isn't any bar to her holding statewide office in Maine. Two term governor, current Senator Angus King is originally from Virginia, we've had numerous and major state office holders from other states, Libby Mitchell, former speaker of the Maine Legislature was from South Carolina, many knew that as he served as the Senator from Maine, William Cohen didn't actually have a real residence here, living with his wife in Florida as he claimed his father's house as his "official" residence. I used to say that Maine was so broadminded it didn't mind having a Senator from Florida represent it. Even if Susan Rice is a "come from away" Susan Collins the coward from Caribou just told Maine residents to go to hell with her decision to vote for Kavanaugh so it's clear she's not really here anymore. She has contempt for the People of Maine. If we had a mechanism for removing her I'd favor it. She is disgusting in her Republican-partisan hypocrisy.
I would rather have someone like Susan Rice run than another Democrat from the Cumberland-Kennebec county stronghold who the establishment figures is due the nomination but who can't win an election. It's dim in my memory but I believe some of the stupidest ideas such as the ridiculously open ballot access that plagues the Democratic Party also originated in that establishment, or, rather, their parents generation of the same. Though what I want more than anything is someone who can beat her or whoever else the Republican-fascists put up. And in Maine, believe me, the redolently putrid Susan Collins is the least putrid Republican who's likely to be nominated.
If she does "come from away" that isn't any bar to her holding statewide office in Maine. Two term governor, current Senator Angus King is originally from Virginia, we've had numerous and major state office holders from other states, Libby Mitchell, former speaker of the Maine Legislature was from South Carolina, many knew that as he served as the Senator from Maine, William Cohen didn't actually have a real residence here, living with his wife in Florida as he claimed his father's house as his "official" residence. I used to say that Maine was so broadminded it didn't mind having a Senator from Florida represent it. Even if Susan Rice is a "come from away" Susan Collins the coward from Caribou just told Maine residents to go to hell with her decision to vote for Kavanaugh so it's clear she's not really here anymore. She has contempt for the People of Maine. If we had a mechanism for removing her I'd favor it. She is disgusting in her Republican-partisan hypocrisy.
I would rather have someone like Susan Rice run than another Democrat from the Cumberland-Kennebec county stronghold who the establishment figures is due the nomination but who can't win an election. It's dim in my memory but I believe some of the stupidest ideas such as the ridiculously open ballot access that plagues the Democratic Party also originated in that establishment, or, rather, their parents generation of the same. Though what I want more than anything is someone who can beat her or whoever else the Republican-fascists put up. And in Maine, believe me, the redolently putrid Susan Collins is the least putrid Republican who's likely to be nominated.
" too much harm has already been done with irresponsible words of bitterness and selfish political opportunism" Susan Collins' Attack On Christine Blasey Ford And Her Supporters
It is strange that we can verbally attack anyone else without restraint and with full protection and yet we hold ourselves above the same type of criticism here on the Senate Floor. Surely the United States Senate is big enough to take self-criticism and self-appraisal. Surely we should be able to take the same kind of character attacks that we dish out to outsiders.
Margaret Chase Smith - Declaration of Conscience Speech
Susan Collins didn't exercise conscience in departing from the current orthodoxy of the Republican Party, the party of Donald Trump and FOX as even then Chase Smith feared it was becoming the party of Senator Joseph McCarthy and Red Channels, Susan Collins, at length, said she was all in with Trump and FOX. Here's the beginning of what made Chase Smith famous in case you heard Collins and think there wasn't every difference in the world:
Mr. President:
I would like to speak briefly and simply about a serious national condition. It is a national feeling of fear and frustration that could result in national suicide and the end of everything that we Americans hold dear. It is a condition that comes from the lack of effective leadership in either the Legislative Branch or the Executive Branch of our Government.
That leadership is so lacking that serious and responsible proposals are being made that national advisory commissions be appointed to provide such critically needed leadership.
I speak as briefly as possible because too much harm has already been done with irresponsible words of bitterness and selfish political opportunism. I speak as simply as possible because the issue is too great to be obscured by eloquence. I speak simply and briefly in the hope that my words will be taken to heart.
I speak as a Republican, I speak as a woman. I speak as a United States Senator. I speak as an American.
The United States Senate has long enjoyed worldwide respect as the greatest deliberative body in the world. But recently that deliberative character has too often been debased to the level of a forum of hate and character assassination sheltered by the shield of congressional immunity.
Yesterday that last description fit the words of Susan Collins against Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and those who opposed the man who attacked her and assaulted Deborah Ramirez and very well may have done the things Julie Swetnick said he and his buddy, Mark Judge, did. Susan Collins attacked her own constituents who passionately opposed putting a demonstrable perjurer, liar, political opportunist hack AND A VERY CREDIBLY ACCUSED PERPETRATOR OF MULTIPLE SEXUAL ATTACKS ON WOMEN on the Supreme Court where Susan Collins knows as well as everyone else does that he will vote to remove the most basic rights of women to control their own bodies and who can predict how many other basic rights of women and all manner of other powerless people. Susan Collins did that while whining about how outraged she was by the shattering of the "shield of congressional immunity" by people whose rights are put in the most obvious danger by Brett Kavanaugh.
What Susan Collins did was not a display of conscience, it was to provide her with ass cover as she did what she knew was an act of unprincipled, partisan, power, of going along with Donald Trump's opportunistic placement of a far-right, partisan hack who has spent his entire career in enhancing the power of Republican presidents - switching his intellectual line to go with which party controlled the White House - and to do so by now attacking the very victim of an attempted rape by Brett Kavanaugh who she had previously pretended to take seriously and sympathize with as the impact of Dr. Ford's testimony was fresh.
Susan Collins showed the world what she always has been in no uncertain terms over the course of this and she doesn't like the result of her act being blown. She has been used to the courtly deference that she has always been shown by the Maine media (almost uniformly in control of partisan Republicans for most of that time, the electronic media still is, including the alleged public broadcaster). She has been used to the national media peddling her as some kind of principled moderate when she only resorted to that when she had to to maintain her con-job on her constituents.
Collins' latest ploy is to play sucker when Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump promise her an ass-covering vote on protecting the Affordable Care Act only to have him and Trump pull it away as soon as the vote was taken to give who knows how many billions to billionaires and, now, to pretend she doesn't know how Brett Kavanaugh will vote on womens' rights ON HIS SAY SO when she knows as well as anyone that he is under no obligation to keep his word. The pose of judicial impartiality is the perfect cover because he can always claim, in the unlikely circumstance anyone questions him on his blatantly empty promise to Collins, that he decided it on the merits of the individual case. Anyone who was fooled by that should know it for the lame pantomime it has been. He knew he was giving Susan Collins what she wanted, a ruse to use when he does what everyone knows he is going to do, either in one blanket overturning of Roe or, more likely by killing it one ruling at a time. No doubt John Roberts will be looking to do that as Roberts doesn't want the overall veil covering the shame of his court to go up in flames.
Susan Collins is a disgrace and a fraud, she always has been. It's just that now that she can deliver what she, "as a Republican, as a woman . . . as a United States Senator" has always wanted, the absolute empowerment of her party even as they rig the system to gain that power undemocratically using Supreme Court fiat to thwart such things as one-person, one vote, basic voting rights and equal rights. With her disgusting speech of yesterday, she should have her shameful vote and her shameless speech thrown in her face for the rest of her life, letting her know that this will mark her name just as Margaret Chase Smith's famous speech at the beginning of her career marks hers.
Update: Going over Collin's speech again, it's interesting to consider how she and her fellow Kavanaugh supporters used the class difference between Dr. Ford and Julie Swetnick to dismiss the blue-collar, public school girl's account out of hand. That has been something that should resonate with Collins' largely blue-collar class constituents but which probably will not because the media won't bring it up.
Update: Going over Collin's speech again, it's interesting to consider how she and her fellow Kavanaugh supporters used the class difference between Dr. Ford and Julie Swetnick to dismiss the blue-collar, public school girl's account out of hand. That has been something that should resonate with Collins' largely blue-collar class constituents but which probably will not because the media won't bring it up.
Friday, October 5, 2018
Told You, I've Been Telling Them In Maine For Decades
Susan Collins will play her Susan the Sucker act as soon as Kavanaugh votes to overturn Roe, either immediately or piecemeal. Not to mention everything else he does. If Democrats win either or both houses they should do the investigation that the FBI wasn't allowed to do and discredit him if they can't impeach his ass off the court.
In the meantime
SUSAN COLLINS SHOULD NEVER BE ABLE TO GO ANYWHERE IN PUBLIC WITHOUT THIS BEING THROWN IN HER FACE. She is a disgrace to my state.
In the meantime
SUSAN COLLINS SHOULD NEVER BE ABLE TO GO ANYWHERE IN PUBLIC WITHOUT THIS BEING THROWN IN HER FACE. She is a disgrace to my state.
What Remains? Gore Vidal's Lit'rary Legacy
Other than his rambling, melodramatic, seriously dated, oddly anti-queer, dirty book "The City And The Pillar" that did for him what he hoped it would, make him famous as a daring writer, his script for the disastrous dirty movie "Myra Breckenridge" and his pseudo-historical novel, "Lincoln" I'll bet even most allegedly literate fans of his writing couldn't name anything off the top of their heads.
It was the controversy around "Lincoln" that pretty well shattered the Vidal illusion for me. When I read real historians critique of his book as a hodge-podge of discredited semi-sensational debunkings of Lincoln and, worse, the TV mini-series they made of it (I watched the beginning and couldn't watch anymore of it) I saw that what Vidal was was a Hollywood-NYC style dilettante bull shit artist whose alleged historical erudition was a mix of him telling show biz interviewers things while posing as a scholar of the highest discernment. His entire act depended on people not knowing better and never fact checking him. When I looked at what some of his critics said it was clear his entire career - in so far as it impinged on real life instead of his pure invention - was pretty much dependent on other peoples' ignorance and his ability to bull shit his way through informed refutation.
That doesn't mean that I didn't take the same side he did when he warred with William F. Buckley or other fascists - mostly rather obvious and easy targets - or that we didn't come close to being on the same side, generally, in politics. But that's not the same thing as respecting him. Lots of people on the leftish side of things were utter and complete liars and assholes and in total, what influence they had on the left turned out to carry, at best, a real price to be paid, sometimes a huge price. I think that Gore Vidal would be disappointed because I think he was of such ephemeral effect that the price to be paid for him wasn't even very high. I looked at one of his Nation pieces online the other day, one in which he goes after the Podhoretz-Decter crowd and found two glaring historical misstatements in that one piece alone. He was not careful with the truth. I doubt anyone at The Nation ever fact checked anything he wrote, certainly nothing he said about those safely dead and incapable of litigation. I suspect they, also not knowing any better, bought his Roman-Republican aristocratic intellectual as American aristocratic rebel act as much as any other non-sales resistant schmuck.
Reading about his last years when he either fell into or drank himself into dementia was sad. I've seen and heard others say that when someone become demented that often their basic personality persists longer than their ability to recognize their family and intimates did and from what I've read he was a total asshole in his dementia. He revised his will to leave his 37 million dollar legacy to the already entirely obscenely, grotesquely endowed Harvard University, out of snobbery, their flattery, and a real regard for the elite he pretended to disdain. He left his long-time Filipino housekeeper-cook with only a meager pension, though people attested to his devoted care for Vidal over what must have been a terrible ordeal for someone in that position. No. He was not the kind of leftist I'd have ever expected any better of. Neither are those who hold a tiny little cigarette lighter sized flame for him. To be turned off as they ever more dimly remember him, from time to time.
It was the controversy around "Lincoln" that pretty well shattered the Vidal illusion for me. When I read real historians critique of his book as a hodge-podge of discredited semi-sensational debunkings of Lincoln and, worse, the TV mini-series they made of it (I watched the beginning and couldn't watch anymore of it) I saw that what Vidal was was a Hollywood-NYC style dilettante bull shit artist whose alleged historical erudition was a mix of him telling show biz interviewers things while posing as a scholar of the highest discernment. His entire act depended on people not knowing better and never fact checking him. When I looked at what some of his critics said it was clear his entire career - in so far as it impinged on real life instead of his pure invention - was pretty much dependent on other peoples' ignorance and his ability to bull shit his way through informed refutation.
That doesn't mean that I didn't take the same side he did when he warred with William F. Buckley or other fascists - mostly rather obvious and easy targets - or that we didn't come close to being on the same side, generally, in politics. But that's not the same thing as respecting him. Lots of people on the leftish side of things were utter and complete liars and assholes and in total, what influence they had on the left turned out to carry, at best, a real price to be paid, sometimes a huge price. I think that Gore Vidal would be disappointed because I think he was of such ephemeral effect that the price to be paid for him wasn't even very high. I looked at one of his Nation pieces online the other day, one in which he goes after the Podhoretz-Decter crowd and found two glaring historical misstatements in that one piece alone. He was not careful with the truth. I doubt anyone at The Nation ever fact checked anything he wrote, certainly nothing he said about those safely dead and incapable of litigation. I suspect they, also not knowing any better, bought his Roman-Republican aristocratic intellectual as American aristocratic rebel act as much as any other non-sales resistant schmuck.
Reading about his last years when he either fell into or drank himself into dementia was sad. I've seen and heard others say that when someone become demented that often their basic personality persists longer than their ability to recognize their family and intimates did and from what I've read he was a total asshole in his dementia. He revised his will to leave his 37 million dollar legacy to the already entirely obscenely, grotesquely endowed Harvard University, out of snobbery, their flattery, and a real regard for the elite he pretended to disdain. He left his long-time Filipino housekeeper-cook with only a meager pension, though people attested to his devoted care for Vidal over what must have been a terrible ordeal for someone in that position. No. He was not the kind of leftist I'd have ever expected any better of. Neither are those who hold a tiny little cigarette lighter sized flame for him. To be turned off as they ever more dimly remember him, from time to time.
Thursday, October 4, 2018
Stupid Mail - Oh, You Didn't Like What I Said About Norm Midge and Their Asshole Son, Let Me Elaborate
The New York City neo-cons were mostly Jewish atheist play-lefties who went to City College or some place like Cornel or Columbia who were generally stylish Trotskyites instead of their rivals, the Stalinists of the Communist Party. When Trotsky got the ice axe and they realized their guy wasn't going to regain power in the Soviet Union (where I have no doubt he'd have rivaled Stalin in murdering and other forms of oppression) they cut bait and went American fascist - after Hitler had been safely disposed of. Part of it was graduating and, like so many college age play-lefties, "growing up" and going right.
Some of the Stalinists did, too, but the definitive neo-cons are the lower end of the God That Failed phenomenon as they realized their guys weren't going to get them anything they went with the fascists who had a chance of getting them money or something like power or what they really wanted, to be published and paid attention to. Being materialists and snobs they, like materialists and snobs in general, have no use for democracy.
Their second and third generations just took over the family business, they're all-American fascists generally with the typical American fascist racism and other bigotries, as far as I'm concerned. A lot of them like the idea of Israel but not enough to have ever put their own sweet fat in harms way, preferring others do that so they can write about it while their fat asses are safely on North America. There are lots of "liberal" (really neo-liberal) Zionists who are marginally different from them. As recently as the 1980s a lot of them were the intellectual wing of gay-haters - as read in magazines like The New Republican and Commentary. That is until their kiddies and grandkiddies started coming out.
Update: If I'd meant it to be serious I'd have been more accurate with the chronology, I wrote it to piss off the troll.
Update 2: No, I got over Gore Vidal a long, long time ago. He wasn't a great writer, he wrote for a moment, not even for the ages. I doubt much of anyone reads him anymore. He might as well have been a blogger, though I'd rather read Digby.
Update 3: I thought Simps would get pissed off over this but what got him in a lather is me wondering if he's really a good buddy with Lewis Black. He apparently is claiming to have been at Lewis's wedding as if I should know that. Well, I'm not claiming to have been there, how would I know? Either way?
Some of the Stalinists did, too, but the definitive neo-cons are the lower end of the God That Failed phenomenon as they realized their guys weren't going to get them anything they went with the fascists who had a chance of getting them money or something like power or what they really wanted, to be published and paid attention to. Being materialists and snobs they, like materialists and snobs in general, have no use for democracy.
Their second and third generations just took over the family business, they're all-American fascists generally with the typical American fascist racism and other bigotries, as far as I'm concerned. A lot of them like the idea of Israel but not enough to have ever put their own sweet fat in harms way, preferring others do that so they can write about it while their fat asses are safely on North America. There are lots of "liberal" (really neo-liberal) Zionists who are marginally different from them. As recently as the 1980s a lot of them were the intellectual wing of gay-haters - as read in magazines like The New Republican and Commentary. That is until their kiddies and grandkiddies started coming out.
Update: If I'd meant it to be serious I'd have been more accurate with the chronology, I wrote it to piss off the troll.
Update 2: No, I got over Gore Vidal a long, long time ago. He wasn't a great writer, he wrote for a moment, not even for the ages. I doubt much of anyone reads him anymore. He might as well have been a blogger, though I'd rather read Digby.
Update 3: I thought Simps would get pissed off over this but what got him in a lather is me wondering if he's really a good buddy with Lewis Black. He apparently is claiming to have been at Lewis's wedding as if I should know that. Well, I'm not claiming to have been there, how would I know? Either way?
Lie The Benighted Country
Susan Collins is going to do exactly what I was sure she was going to do a week ago and vote for Kavanaugh. As of a minute ago when I looked she hadn't said that but she has declared the sham FBI investigation, rigged by the Trump regime and the Republican leadership to not talk to corroborating witnesses who could back up the credible accusations of Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez was "very thorough". Though the same report says she has yet to read the FBI report so one wonders how she could conclude that.
I hope that there is one good thing that comes out of this and that is that there is now no reason for anyone to pretend there is a difference between Trumpian fascists and "moderate" or even quasi anti-fascist Republicans. Susan Collins, as Olympia Snowe before and during her, were always Republicans who had to con the voters of a less conservative state, Maine, in order to stay in DC and enable Republicans in the 9 out of 10 or so times they could without blowing their cover. I don't think there have been any Republicans of any other kind in decades, now.
If they retain control of the Senate, the Supreme Court will revert to the worst days of its history, which is most of the days of its history. It almost certainly already has. It might also count as progress if we can get rid of the Anthony Lewis, Nina Totenberg romantic, bull shit about the Court, bullshittery which is rivaled in American culture only by the kind of weepy sentimentality over football that Kavanaugh resorted to in his disgusting display of last week. If we could get rid of that and realize the Supreme Court was and has been the foremost inhibition on democracy, the foremost engine of the empowerment and enrichment of oligarchs and racists, slave owners and their allies in the financial industry, maybe that will be progress too. Progress bought at an enormous price.
Who knows, maybe we can overcome the Federalist Society style cult of the founders, maybe even the lying bullshit of Lin Manuel Miranda based on the kind of bullshit bios of them. Maybe we'll even realize that we have to struggle against the Constitution, including the formulation of the Bill of Rights which has been hijacked by the fascists and, under Trump-McConnell and Ryan, Nazis. Every bit of progress made in this country has had to be made against the well-made protections of inequality set up in the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights that is mostly a guarantee of insuring a media that lies on behalf of the rich and powerful and racist and the arming of a militia of fascists in the American tradition of the slave patrols.
I hope that there is one good thing that comes out of this and that is that there is now no reason for anyone to pretend there is a difference between Trumpian fascists and "moderate" or even quasi anti-fascist Republicans. Susan Collins, as Olympia Snowe before and during her, were always Republicans who had to con the voters of a less conservative state, Maine, in order to stay in DC and enable Republicans in the 9 out of 10 or so times they could without blowing their cover. I don't think there have been any Republicans of any other kind in decades, now.
If they retain control of the Senate, the Supreme Court will revert to the worst days of its history, which is most of the days of its history. It almost certainly already has. It might also count as progress if we can get rid of the Anthony Lewis, Nina Totenberg romantic, bull shit about the Court, bullshittery which is rivaled in American culture only by the kind of weepy sentimentality over football that Kavanaugh resorted to in his disgusting display of last week. If we could get rid of that and realize the Supreme Court was and has been the foremost inhibition on democracy, the foremost engine of the empowerment and enrichment of oligarchs and racists, slave owners and their allies in the financial industry, maybe that will be progress too. Progress bought at an enormous price.
Who knows, maybe we can overcome the Federalist Society style cult of the founders, maybe even the lying bullshit of Lin Manuel Miranda based on the kind of bullshit bios of them. Maybe we'll even realize that we have to struggle against the Constitution, including the formulation of the Bill of Rights which has been hijacked by the fascists and, under Trump-McConnell and Ryan, Nazis. Every bit of progress made in this country has had to be made against the well-made protections of inequality set up in the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights that is mostly a guarantee of insuring a media that lies on behalf of the rich and powerful and racist and the arming of a militia of fascists in the American tradition of the slave patrols.
Meritocracy Is A Joke, Kavanaugh Is The Punchline
It was the first thing that set the guy who daily trolls me off, sometime in about 2009, in response to Obama and his Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's "merit" based "Race To The Top" bullshit, I committed the sin of saying that Democrats should demand that there be no more prep-Ivy(equivalent) appointments as Sec. of Education who have never set foot in a public school as a student and who have never sent their children to a public school as a student. Simps went ballistic and said that I wanted them to appoint "graduates of community colleges" to those positions. I suppose when I answered that I knew graduates of community colleges who would probably do better than Barack and Arne because they weren't elitist snobs and jocks who knew real people AND WHO UNDERSTOOD THAT MOST PEOPLE WILL NEVER GET TO "THE TOP" BUT THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS WERE THERE TO SERVE THEM, it pissed off Simps even more. The Baby Blue type is a true believer in educational elitism. I sinned against that dumb-fuck, play-lefty item of piety.
I liked most everything I heard in this extended exchange between Majority Report's Michael Brooks and Meagan Day, considering my skepticism of the typical Jacobin magazine writer and the magazine, itself, that's not what I expected when I clicked on it.
Update: Listening a second time, Meagan Day's point that the mythology that the prep-Ivy class is superior is not limited to the members of that class, it's also the pious belief of people lower down in the class structure. It's my experience of the college-educated who came from the blue collar, lower professional level class that they are especially prone to fall for that crap. The extent to which American education has become a means of economic advancement might have something to do with that, it being just barely possible that their great-grandchildren might marry into the upper class or might get into an Ivy League school.
I liked most everything I heard in this extended exchange between Majority Report's Michael Brooks and Meagan Day, considering my skepticism of the typical Jacobin magazine writer and the magazine, itself, that's not what I expected when I clicked on it.
Update: Listening a second time, Meagan Day's point that the mythology that the prep-Ivy class is superior is not limited to the members of that class, it's also the pious belief of people lower down in the class structure. It's my experience of the college-educated who came from the blue collar, lower professional level class that they are especially prone to fall for that crap. The extent to which American education has become a means of economic advancement might have something to do with that, it being just barely possible that their great-grandchildren might marry into the upper class or might get into an Ivy League school.
Some Night Thoughts As The Republicans Try To End Democracy Through The Supreme Court
So, now that the Trump regime's hemmed in FBI has conducted what will be called an investigation is complete and the Senate Republicans have allowed all one hundred Senators to have what they claim is one copy of it (and who knows if what is there will be exactly what the FBI has sent?) to review before the ridiculous schedule of putting Brett Kavanaugy, the liar, perjurer and sex criminal-sot on the Court we will know just how bad things are.
If Jeff Flake, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski - not to mention all of the other Senators who have gassed in high tones about what is required for them to fulfill their duty - are honest, they will take the fact that the Trump regime working with Mitch McConnell, Chuck Grassley and Lindsay Graham to keep the FBI from so much as talking to Christine Blasey Ford and interviewing Brett Kavanaugh as an even better reason for not voting to confirm him. But I doubt that is what they are going to do. I'm prepared to be pleasantly surprised but, I'm Irish, I don't trust that kind of hope.
The Senate Republican leadership and the Trump regime have taken what Flake and Coons and the others who called for the FBI to do the honest, thorough background check they should have, and tried to turn it into an opportunity to pretend that's what has happened. The fact that they didn't talk to myriads of witnesses who could have provided corroboration or refutation of the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford and the largely evasive speeches of Brett Kavanaugh proves they ordered up something like that. It remains to be seen if it works.
About the only chance I can see for this to not be the whitewash ordered by McConnel, Grassley, Graham and the Trump regime is if Mark Judge spilled his guts to the FBI admitting that he and Kavanaugh did what they did because unless something that dramatic and simple happened, their not talking to many other witnesses would result in a phony botch of a report. And I highly doubt that Mark Judge has done that. And that doesn't even get to the assault on Deborah Ramirez whose account doesn't sound as if it was looked at much. Of course, the working-class townie Julie Swetnick, the victim of a largely class-based smear campaign hasn't figured into it at all. Though some of the people whose world brushed up against the Georgetown Prep boys have had some interesting things about their abuse of public school girls that could really open some eyes.
So I'm not holding out much hope as to the honesty of the investigation. We should know fairly early in the day. If Judge did flip on Kavanaugh, I would expect he would be withdrawn or remove himself. If that doesn't happen fairly early, my second guess is that Mitch McConnell either has the entire Republican delegation in his pocket and Kavanaugh will be put on the court. My third one is that McConnell knows it's not going to happen and he will try to use the failed nomination to its maximum political effect in calling out the Rent-a-Trumpers of the media and online trolling community to try to rally the Trump true believers to save the Republican majority in the Senate.
The reported pro-male backlash that is being whipped up by the Republicans relies on lots of people not valuing their daughters as much as their sons, the ridiculous notion that white boys, especially those of privilege, are at greater risk of being falsely accused of sexual assault than their daughters who are at actual far greater risk of being assaulted. Of the estimated one out of three or four girls who are assaulted, a minority of them report it and of those reports of sexual assault which do get reported, about seven out of a hundred are exaggerated or false. Daughters, grand-daughters, nieces, wives, girlfriends, friends who are women WOMEN THEMSELVES are far, far, far, more likely to be the victim of a Brett Kavanaugh or a Mark Judge than someone's boy is likely to be the victim of a false accusation. That is something the Republicans, their liars in the media and the degenerate Trump base are counting on Women AND Men of not realizing or caring about.
If Jeff Flake, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski - not to mention all of the other Senators who have gassed in high tones about what is required for them to fulfill their duty - are honest, they will take the fact that the Trump regime working with Mitch McConnell, Chuck Grassley and Lindsay Graham to keep the FBI from so much as talking to Christine Blasey Ford and interviewing Brett Kavanaugh as an even better reason for not voting to confirm him. But I doubt that is what they are going to do. I'm prepared to be pleasantly surprised but, I'm Irish, I don't trust that kind of hope.
The Senate Republican leadership and the Trump regime have taken what Flake and Coons and the others who called for the FBI to do the honest, thorough background check they should have, and tried to turn it into an opportunity to pretend that's what has happened. The fact that they didn't talk to myriads of witnesses who could have provided corroboration or refutation of the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford and the largely evasive speeches of Brett Kavanaugh proves they ordered up something like that. It remains to be seen if it works.
About the only chance I can see for this to not be the whitewash ordered by McConnel, Grassley, Graham and the Trump regime is if Mark Judge spilled his guts to the FBI admitting that he and Kavanaugh did what they did because unless something that dramatic and simple happened, their not talking to many other witnesses would result in a phony botch of a report. And I highly doubt that Mark Judge has done that. And that doesn't even get to the assault on Deborah Ramirez whose account doesn't sound as if it was looked at much. Of course, the working-class townie Julie Swetnick, the victim of a largely class-based smear campaign hasn't figured into it at all. Though some of the people whose world brushed up against the Georgetown Prep boys have had some interesting things about their abuse of public school girls that could really open some eyes.
So I'm not holding out much hope as to the honesty of the investigation. We should know fairly early in the day. If Judge did flip on Kavanaugh, I would expect he would be withdrawn or remove himself. If that doesn't happen fairly early, my second guess is that Mitch McConnell either has the entire Republican delegation in his pocket and Kavanaugh will be put on the court. My third one is that McConnell knows it's not going to happen and he will try to use the failed nomination to its maximum political effect in calling out the Rent-a-Trumpers of the media and online trolling community to try to rally the Trump true believers to save the Republican majority in the Senate.
The reported pro-male backlash that is being whipped up by the Republicans relies on lots of people not valuing their daughters as much as their sons, the ridiculous notion that white boys, especially those of privilege, are at greater risk of being falsely accused of sexual assault than their daughters who are at actual far greater risk of being assaulted. Of the estimated one out of three or four girls who are assaulted, a minority of them report it and of those reports of sexual assault which do get reported, about seven out of a hundred are exaggerated or false. Daughters, grand-daughters, nieces, wives, girlfriends, friends who are women WOMEN THEMSELVES are far, far, far, more likely to be the victim of a Brett Kavanaugh or a Mark Judge than someone's boy is likely to be the victim of a false accusation. That is something the Republicans, their liars in the media and the degenerate Trump base are counting on Women AND Men of not realizing or caring about.
Wednesday, October 3, 2018
Mail About Stupy
I offended Simps by noticing the Nazis killed gentiles, too. He and the Podhoretzes have that in common, you're an antisemite if you think genocide against other people matters. That and I read more about it than he skimmed in Shirer's Berlin Diary, the only book he's ever skimmed on the topic. He didn't notice that Shirer mentions one of those groups murdered by the Nazis who I offended him by mentioning, the disabled, in that book. I don't think that interested him enough to notice it.
Stupid Mail
Simps is outraged that I wasn't a fanboy of UB40 back when he and Brett Kavanaugh's boys were grooving to a bunch of white guys playing reggae. Simps is pretty much a white bread kind of music guy.
Reggae, without the politics, it's a music that interested me for about the first twenty minutes, then I realized the rhythm wasn't going to change and I lost interest. It took a little longer for Eschaton to have that effect on me but eventually the interesting people dropped out as they realized it was useless.
Update: Stupy thinks The Harder They Fall was an apolitical expression of Pat Boone style white reggae, or something like that. Stupes doesn't read so it's no wonder he doesn't think.
Update 2: Stupy is in a lather because, not googling like he does, I misremembered the title of the movie, which I'd guess it's been about forty-three or so years ago I saw it. He's such a provincial boob that he doesn't know people in the Boston area (where I was at the time) would probably have known the movie before he did, sitting in his room grooving to the Beach Boys and looking in the mirror.
Update 3: Oh, now he's going all Duchess on me, expressing outrage that I claim I achieved his idea of the highest of cultural achievements, watching a movie. Being your typical New York City area hick, he figures anyone North of the suburbs grew up without electricity. There is no one more ignorant of American life than his type of provincial NYC area white-boy snob.
Reggae, without the politics, it's a music that interested me for about the first twenty minutes, then I realized the rhythm wasn't going to change and I lost interest. It took a little longer for Eschaton to have that effect on me but eventually the interesting people dropped out as they realized it was useless.
Update: Stupy thinks The Harder They Fall was an apolitical expression of Pat Boone style white reggae, or something like that. Stupes doesn't read so it's no wonder he doesn't think.
Update 2: Stupy is in a lather because, not googling like he does, I misremembered the title of the movie, which I'd guess it's been about forty-three or so years ago I saw it. He's such a provincial boob that he doesn't know people in the Boston area (where I was at the time) would probably have known the movie before he did, sitting in his room grooving to the Beach Boys and looking in the mirror.
Update 3: Oh, now he's going all Duchess on me, expressing outrage that I claim I achieved his idea of the highest of cultural achievements, watching a movie. Being your typical New York City area hick, he figures anyone North of the suburbs grew up without electricity. There is no one more ignorant of American life than his type of provincial NYC area white-boy snob.
Oh Hearing The Spewage Coming Out Of John Podhoretz This Morning
Someone sent me a clip of Ben Wittes on Morning Joe (a show I generally avoid hearing) which also included John Podhoretz, the putrid son of the putrid Norman Podhoretz and the putrid Midge Decter. What a scumball. As are his parents. John Podhoretz is the father of daughters. I hope they would know better than to depend on him if what happened to Christine Blasey Ford happened to them because they really shouldn't be under any illusions. That is assuming someone attacking them was a high-placed Republican. God knows what his son is like.
The day after finding out about the depths of the criminality of the Trump crime family, hearing the son of those to scumballs . . . It's almost enough to make me look up Gore Vidal's take-down of them again. Almost. New York has produced more than its fair share of that kind of scum.
The day after finding out about the depths of the criminality of the Trump crime family, hearing the son of those to scumballs . . . It's almost enough to make me look up Gore Vidal's take-down of them again. Almost. New York has produced more than its fair share of that kind of scum.
The Republican Party Today Is The Dirtiest Thing In The History Of American Politics
My guess as to what's going on with the faux-investigation that is reportedly about to be wrapped up into Brett Kavanaugh's history of drunken attacks on girls and women is that Mitch McConnell is trying to force through his confirmation by the Republican Senate and if not that then to try to gin up a campaign issue to try to scrounge a Republican majority on the Senate after the mid-terms. And the piece of shit doesn't care who he destroys and what he does to the country in order to do it.
Clearly that's what the Trump regime is doing in handcuffing the FBI so they don't even interview Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, if the director is part of that effort or not, I have no idea.
The overall strategy of the Republicans has been to get Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court knowing it's a practical impossibility to remove someone through the Constitutional myth of impeachment of a Supreme Court member (it's as imaginary as removing a president by impeachment) where he will sit as shamelessly as any of the other criminal degenerates who sat on the court for decades, Clarence Thomas being there to greet him, the 5th vote in the Federalist fascist majority on that already tainted court.
I am sure there will be more to say before the end of the day. What can be said is that the Republican Party is a symptom of a country with a fatal disease, one brought to us by the corporate media which has fed and fueled the ever worsening Republican Party and their grab on power over the past three decades.
The New York Times is being praised for so belatedly revealing the crime family that the Trumps have been but, as even their reporting has to admit, it was part of their cover up as they presented Trump as a glamorous youngish tycoon over the last several decades. That even as it was clear he was a vulgarian fraud and even as they, during the election campaign, aided him by running false and sensational stories about a woman, the only person who could have prevented this entire fiasco, Hillary Clinton about whom no one has found any indictable or illegal activity, despite the Republicans, including Kavanaugh, spending tens of millions of dollars to try to find one single thing she could have been arrested for. The New York Times doesn't undo that with this story they broke yesterday. They have decades of such enabling to answer for. And they're only one media outlet that can be said of.
What the FBI is doing by what's being reported about the investigation? Maybe doing such an obvious botch of an investigation that Flake, Collins, Merkowski et al won't be able to hide behind it? Maybe as a protest against being prevented from doing their job? Maybe trying to get him on the court? I don't know but whatever it is, if the investigation isn't even asking Dr. Ford questions it is a white-wash and an obvious and intentional botch.
Clearly that's what the Trump regime is doing in handcuffing the FBI so they don't even interview Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, if the director is part of that effort or not, I have no idea.
The overall strategy of the Republicans has been to get Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court knowing it's a practical impossibility to remove someone through the Constitutional myth of impeachment of a Supreme Court member (it's as imaginary as removing a president by impeachment) where he will sit as shamelessly as any of the other criminal degenerates who sat on the court for decades, Clarence Thomas being there to greet him, the 5th vote in the Federalist fascist majority on that already tainted court.
I am sure there will be more to say before the end of the day. What can be said is that the Republican Party is a symptom of a country with a fatal disease, one brought to us by the corporate media which has fed and fueled the ever worsening Republican Party and their grab on power over the past three decades.
The New York Times is being praised for so belatedly revealing the crime family that the Trumps have been but, as even their reporting has to admit, it was part of their cover up as they presented Trump as a glamorous youngish tycoon over the last several decades. That even as it was clear he was a vulgarian fraud and even as they, during the election campaign, aided him by running false and sensational stories about a woman, the only person who could have prevented this entire fiasco, Hillary Clinton about whom no one has found any indictable or illegal activity, despite the Republicans, including Kavanaugh, spending tens of millions of dollars to try to find one single thing she could have been arrested for. The New York Times doesn't undo that with this story they broke yesterday. They have decades of such enabling to answer for. And they're only one media outlet that can be said of.
What the FBI is doing by what's being reported about the investigation? Maybe doing such an obvious botch of an investigation that Flake, Collins, Merkowski et al won't be able to hide behind it? Maybe as a protest against being prevented from doing their job? Maybe trying to get him on the court? I don't know but whatever it is, if the investigation isn't even asking Dr. Ford questions it is a white-wash and an obvious and intentional botch.
Stupid Mail - Simps Lies - Water Is Wet - Dogs Bark - Gravity Makes Things Fall
Everything that Steve Simels has said about what I've said is a lie which will be no surprise to anyone who reads my blog or is familiar with him. I have never slammed Prokofiev, I like his music, I've taught his music, he was a fine composer and a great pianist. He was a victim of Stalinism, which I wrote about in a paper in college, though, unlike Simps and Kavanaugh, I don't keep track of my juvenilia. I'm not even sure I kept the paper and doubt my teacher or his heirs kept a copy. I didn't even keep copies of the major papers I wrote as an undergrad. Simps, no doubt, has everything he ever produced. I've heard one of his garage band tapes, he's that much of an egomaniac.
You can read everything pretty much everything I've said online about Prokofiev by looking at the archive of this blog. Despite my distaste for giving him attention, you can compare that, including my posting complete pieces by Prokofiev here, with what Simps has put up about Prokofiev at his blog.
Update: I never heard of Gerry Divine And the Hi-Beams before, I'd heard everything they did in that bit of tripe by about 1968. It bored me then, it's as boring now. Aural wallpaper is a generous comment. UB40 is another group I'd never heard of before yesterday, I mildly wish I hadn't listened to find out what they did for similar reasons. Music that fails the test of time on first hearing, within two minutes. A modern convenience and annoyance all in one package.
You can read everything pretty much everything I've said online about Prokofiev by looking at the archive of this blog. Despite my distaste for giving him attention, you can compare that, including my posting complete pieces by Prokofiev here, with what Simps has put up about Prokofiev at his blog.
Update: I never heard of Gerry Divine And the Hi-Beams before, I'd heard everything they did in that bit of tripe by about 1968. It bored me then, it's as boring now. Aural wallpaper is a generous comment. UB40 is another group I'd never heard of before yesterday, I mildly wish I hadn't listened to find out what they did for similar reasons. Music that fails the test of time on first hearing, within two minutes. A modern convenience and annoyance all in one package.
And Everyone Knows About Mississippi Goddamn
I know you could find an audience in any state who would do what the Trump thugs did in Mississippi last night, rise to Trump's lying, mocking slander against the rape victim Christine Blasey Ford, mocking her at the age of 15 when Georgetown Prep degenerate Brett Kavanaugh raped her with the help of his buddy Mark Judge - two football players ganging up to rape the much smaller, younger girl. You could find an audience in any state in the country who did what they did when they yelled "lock her up" on Trump's cue demanding that they lock up a rape victim when she finally, decades after, feels a sense of moral, of civic duty to expose him so he won't be put on the Supreme Court where he can propagate his entitled depravity on behalf of Donald Trump and Kavanaugh's rich, entitled, white male cohort and the billionaires they serve for the crumbs that fall their way, the payment that the billionaire boys club pays them off with.
You could find that audience anywhere but with last night's depravity on top of the reputation that Mississippi earned over decades and centuries of depravity and evil, if they want to not have that define Mississippi and residents of that state, they're going to have to earn it by a massive wave of different, of excellent behavior. Though I would't expect that's going to happen soon. I'm not going to ever think of Mississippi and the White residents of that state without remembering that was the place where Mississippians yelled for locking up Christine Blasey Ford when she was facing death threats from their fellow thugs, of terrorizing her family because she told the truth about Brett Kavanaugh.
I know calling Christine Blasey Ford a rape victim will be rejected because the law doesn't call what Brett Kavanaugh did to her "rape" because he didn't succeed in penetrating his victim but listening to her describe the enduring results of it there is no reason for us to not admit that she is a victim of rape. An incomplete rape can clearly succeed in producing a victim of rape. It's an act that for normal life we don't need to bother with the legalistic definition of the act. The ongoing damage to its victims is what we should let define the word, not the gratification of the rapist. We know that Brett Kavanaugh produced a rape victim who became a rape survivor when she courageously told her story though she knew that the Republicans in the Senate, in the Congress, in the Trump regime, in the media and Rachel Mitchell, the woman who volunteered to act as the skirt they would hide behind were going to try to tear her apart.
You could find that audience anywhere but with last night's depravity on top of the reputation that Mississippi earned over decades and centuries of depravity and evil, if they want to not have that define Mississippi and residents of that state, they're going to have to earn it by a massive wave of different, of excellent behavior. Though I would't expect that's going to happen soon. I'm not going to ever think of Mississippi and the White residents of that state without remembering that was the place where Mississippians yelled for locking up Christine Blasey Ford when she was facing death threats from their fellow thugs, of terrorizing her family because she told the truth about Brett Kavanaugh.
I know calling Christine Blasey Ford a rape victim will be rejected because the law doesn't call what Brett Kavanaugh did to her "rape" because he didn't succeed in penetrating his victim but listening to her describe the enduring results of it there is no reason for us to not admit that she is a victim of rape. An incomplete rape can clearly succeed in producing a victim of rape. It's an act that for normal life we don't need to bother with the legalistic definition of the act. The ongoing damage to its victims is what we should let define the word, not the gratification of the rapist. We know that Brett Kavanaugh produced a rape victim who became a rape survivor when she courageously told her story though she knew that the Republicans in the Senate, in the Congress, in the Trump regime, in the media and Rachel Mitchell, the woman who volunteered to act as the skirt they would hide behind were going to try to tear her apart.
Tuesday, October 2, 2018
Stupid Mail
Why would Stupy think a cartoon that stated that atheism is empty and meaningless and makes about as much sense as a pamphlet of blank pages would piss me off?
Maybe he didn't understand it before he posted it. It wouldn't have been the first time that happened, or the 190,437,582nd time it did.
Maybe he didn't understand it before he posted it. It wouldn't have been the first time that happened, or the 190,437,582nd time it did.
Stupid Mail - This Is A Musical Brawl To Warn Those Who Aren't Interested In One
It's not something I take any pride in because it's not something I accomplished by work, it just has been that way, but I've got a good memory. I remember that it was Erin PDX who, when I recounted an anecdote about Gary Burton being furious with two of his musicians for hanging out behind his improvisation with a lazy-assed back beat, she was the one who called Burton a snob and declared that the back-beat "is my life". Which is the most I've got to work with in imagining the kind of music she makes. I have never posted any of my playing online so she has no idea what my music is like. Not to mention my composition. I don't do what her good buddy, Simels does and reissue moldy tapes of a garage band. As if the world needs more d or rather s-list pop shit.
Her accusation that I'm a piano major who "never learned to improvise" is inaccurate, my degrees are a B. A. in Music and I have an M. A. in Theory and Composition. My masters adviser wanted me to go on to become a PhD, but I'd grown disenchanted with university life by then and I didn't want to end up as one of the bitter, alcoholic neurotics too many of the faculty were. I'd have liked to have more access to the resources of a university but not enough to go through a doctoral program or working at one on a daily basis.
When I say I don't improvise I mean something different than what I suspect Erin does. I suspect that when she says "improvising" she means doodling on pentatonic or diatonic patterns with a few well-worn chord progressions in the background. Hell, I can do that but if I want to zone out I'd rather not do it at a keyboard in a way that it would impact my playing. I don't play on automatic or with cruise control. When I say I don't improvise, I mean that I don't do what one of the great improvising organists do or what the great jazz players or even the good ones do, the kind of stuff that Lukas Foss's legendary improvisation group did. I mean the music of the kind of players who might get pissed off if their band members start toodling instead of paying attention, the kind she dismissed as a snob. I've got too much respect for the art of improvisation to call anything less than that by that word. I've got too much interest in music to turn out the kind of aural wall-paper I suspect she does and I know her buddy Simps does.
Her accusation that I'm a piano major who "never learned to improvise" is inaccurate, my degrees are a B. A. in Music and I have an M. A. in Theory and Composition. My masters adviser wanted me to go on to become a PhD, but I'd grown disenchanted with university life by then and I didn't want to end up as one of the bitter, alcoholic neurotics too many of the faculty were. I'd have liked to have more access to the resources of a university but not enough to go through a doctoral program or working at one on a daily basis.
When I say I don't improvise I mean something different than what I suspect Erin does. I suspect that when she says "improvising" she means doodling on pentatonic or diatonic patterns with a few well-worn chord progressions in the background. Hell, I can do that but if I want to zone out I'd rather not do it at a keyboard in a way that it would impact my playing. I don't play on automatic or with cruise control. When I say I don't improvise, I mean that I don't do what one of the great improvising organists do or what the great jazz players or even the good ones do, the kind of stuff that Lukas Foss's legendary improvisation group did. I mean the music of the kind of players who might get pissed off if their band members start toodling instead of paying attention, the kind she dismissed as a snob. I've got too much respect for the art of improvisation to call anything less than that by that word. I've got too much interest in music to turn out the kind of aural wall-paper I suspect she does and I know her buddy Simps does.
Is Brett Burnt Toast Due To Him Making His FOX Interview The Equivalent Of Sworn Testimony?
Unless Flake and Collins and Murkowski go back on everything they said about what it would take to get them to vote "no" on Kavanaugh, I think he'll probably be withdrawn as a nominee. If the text messages that show he was witness tampering among his buddies to try to get them to back him up over his assault of Deborah Ramirez BEFORE THE NEW YORKER ARTICLE WAS PUBLISHED hold up, he'll probably withdraw himself. He claimed, under oath, that he didn't even know about her accusation before Ronan Farrow's article came out.
In the tumultuous news of yesterday, I hadn't seen the piece in Rolling Stone that points out that Kavanaugh, in his non-public testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee retrospectively entered his FOX interview of last week as evidence in the record, in effect putting his questioning by Martha MacCallum under oath and the lies he told during making him guilty of perjury. I think we can see one thing from that, no Supreme Court nominee of the future will be so reckless and irresponsible as to give a FOX interview while they are up for nomination but I doubt any will be as in need of the methods of vulgar PR as Kavanaugh has been. He was a thoroughly wrong person to have ever been appointed as a judge and he's among the most obviously unqualified person to sit on the Supreme Court, though several of those sitting there now show that, in itself, hasn't been a bar to their appointment.
Brett Kavanaugh's record in public life has been as a partisan Republican hack with Yale Law School credentials. There are many who you could say that about. He has been a devoted servant of the privileged class he came from and which answers only to the even more privileged on whose behalf they work and from whom their rewards come. That is one of the most serious defects in our politics and our political system, that it doesn't only not discourage that, it has clearly encouraged it, especially in the judiciary and legal branch of the government.
I am not predicting that they won't put him on the court, anyway, though I would expect if he goes on it, the Court will become as corrupt as it was at any period in its long and largely unreported history of corruption. That goes back to the beginning when slave-owning Supreme Court Justices ruled to enhance their own morally depraved form of wealth. It continued as the Supreme Court was the primary enabler of the continuation of a merely modified de facto slave system in the Gilded Age Plessy v. Ferguson - lynch-law period. Now after the brief interruption of that which can be thought of as the Brown v. Board of Education era, the Rehnquist-Roberts Courts are tearing down the hard won corrections of the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act and other laws and rulings from the 1950s and 60s. Some of those whose job it is to piously talk in the media about the Supreme Court as if it were a principled and moral priesthood have, hedging their bets, said that Kavanaugh is out of the mainstream of the Court. Well, that's objectively not true, he would fit in with probably the majority of the members of the court since its beginning, even many of those considered among its greatest members, it's just that he got caught and was stupid enough to rely on the style of privilege he's enjoyed his entire life to see him through.
In the tumultuous news of yesterday, I hadn't seen the piece in Rolling Stone that points out that Kavanaugh, in his non-public testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee retrospectively entered his FOX interview of last week as evidence in the record, in effect putting his questioning by Martha MacCallum under oath and the lies he told during making him guilty of perjury. I think we can see one thing from that, no Supreme Court nominee of the future will be so reckless and irresponsible as to give a FOX interview while they are up for nomination but I doubt any will be as in need of the methods of vulgar PR as Kavanaugh has been. He was a thoroughly wrong person to have ever been appointed as a judge and he's among the most obviously unqualified person to sit on the Supreme Court, though several of those sitting there now show that, in itself, hasn't been a bar to their appointment.
Brett Kavanaugh's record in public life has been as a partisan Republican hack with Yale Law School credentials. There are many who you could say that about. He has been a devoted servant of the privileged class he came from and which answers only to the even more privileged on whose behalf they work and from whom their rewards come. That is one of the most serious defects in our politics and our political system, that it doesn't only not discourage that, it has clearly encouraged it, especially in the judiciary and legal branch of the government.
I am not predicting that they won't put him on the court, anyway, though I would expect if he goes on it, the Court will become as corrupt as it was at any period in its long and largely unreported history of corruption. That goes back to the beginning when slave-owning Supreme Court Justices ruled to enhance their own morally depraved form of wealth. It continued as the Supreme Court was the primary enabler of the continuation of a merely modified de facto slave system in the Gilded Age Plessy v. Ferguson - lynch-law period. Now after the brief interruption of that which can be thought of as the Brown v. Board of Education era, the Rehnquist-Roberts Courts are tearing down the hard won corrections of the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act and other laws and rulings from the 1950s and 60s. Some of those whose job it is to piously talk in the media about the Supreme Court as if it were a principled and moral priesthood have, hedging their bets, said that Kavanaugh is out of the mainstream of the Court. Well, that's objectively not true, he would fit in with probably the majority of the members of the court since its beginning, even many of those considered among its greatest members, it's just that he got caught and was stupid enough to rely on the style of privilege he's enjoyed his entire life to see him through.
Monday, October 1, 2018
Stupid Mail
Apart from a small handful of people who should know better but who slum there ever less often, Eschaton regulars are mostly bored mid-brow dolts of various levels of relative affluence who never question what they thought, what they were told in late adolescence and are about as interested in evidence as the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Steve Simels a. doesn't understand anything I've ever said, b. is incapable of understanding anything more nuanced than than that well known pounded thumb (perhaps originally due to laziness, but now it's become a kind of habitual functional dementia), c. is a Brett Kavanaugh level liar. Right now he's pissed off because I'm not posting his stuff here. "peterboy" isn't part of that small handful mentioned above, so I'm not surprised that he liked what Simps said.
What lazy and foolish play-lefties say isn't interesting or important.
Update: Simels' method is like that of Brett Kavanaugh last Thursday when he pretended the Democrats who asked about Mark Judge were making fun of him for his drug addiction when they didn't go close to that. Simps pretends I said something that isn't what I said all the time, it's probably his most common tactic in smearing.
Update 2: Of course it helps because Simps does most of his smearing at Duncan's blog and the people there never, ever check to see that he's lying. Like I said, they're too lazy to fact check.
Update 3: Erin PDX is the dimwit who once declared that the Catholic Church banned thirds in music.
I notice none of the Eschatots have bothered to read what I did say to see that Simps is lying about what I said. It doesn't surprise me. Duncan doesn't bother writing much because he knows the regular community that accumulated at his place aren't readers or researchers. It must have been discouraging to the boy who once aspired to something like journalism but I think he got over his disappointment about a decade or twelve years ago. It's a cash cow for him.
Steve Simels a. doesn't understand anything I've ever said, b. is incapable of understanding anything more nuanced than than that well known pounded thumb (perhaps originally due to laziness, but now it's become a kind of habitual functional dementia), c. is a Brett Kavanaugh level liar. Right now he's pissed off because I'm not posting his stuff here. "peterboy" isn't part of that small handful mentioned above, so I'm not surprised that he liked what Simps said.
What lazy and foolish play-lefties say isn't interesting or important.
Update: Simels' method is like that of Brett Kavanaugh last Thursday when he pretended the Democrats who asked about Mark Judge were making fun of him for his drug addiction when they didn't go close to that. Simps pretends I said something that isn't what I said all the time, it's probably his most common tactic in smearing.
Update 2: Of course it helps because Simps does most of his smearing at Duncan's blog and the people there never, ever check to see that he's lying. Like I said, they're too lazy to fact check.
Update 3: Erin PDX is the dimwit who once declared that the Catholic Church banned thirds in music.
I notice none of the Eschatots have bothered to read what I did say to see that Simps is lying about what I said. It doesn't surprise me. Duncan doesn't bother writing much because he knows the regular community that accumulated at his place aren't readers or researchers. It must have been discouraging to the boy who once aspired to something like journalism but I think he got over his disappointment about a decade or twelve years ago. It's a cash cow for him.
Susan Collins et al, This Will Be Your Life
Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Jeff Flake, Joe Manchin, etc. should look at that footage of the two heroic women cornering Flake in the elevator and berating him because if they put Kavanaugh on the court after the phony one week investigation being turned into a white-wash by the Trump regime and Mitch McConnell, I'm going to encourage people to do the same to them, in office or in retirement the rest of their lives.
The Supreme Court should give people frequent reminders as to what Collins and her colleagues did to the country by putting a liar, a perjurer, a partisan hack, servant of oligarchy and enemy of equality - not to mention a drunken rapist - on the Supreme Court.
Brett Kavanaugh Demonstrated His Disqualifying Partisan Bias And Entitled Rage And His Dishonesty And The "Career Prosecutor" Says His Accuser Who Didn't Isn't Credible
The best impeachment of Rachel Mitchell's credibility to judge the farcical hearing she participated in last Thursday is that her employers, the Republicans supporting Brett Kavanaugh, disposed of her suddenly and publicly during the hearing. It might have been the most public display of No Confidence by employers given since . . . Well, I was going to mention Arthur Godfrey firing Julius La Rosa but there was this program I heard about called "Celebrity Apprentice," though I never watched it. Donald Trump was on it and he's awful.
As I would have predicted before I laid eyes on Rachel Mitchell, she would issue a report ritually and meaninglessly discrediting Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, filling her employers understood order, no doubt.
As some are pointing out, her irrelevant assessment is made even more irrelevant by the fact that Dr. Ford isn't the one who is asking for the promotion to the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh who lied and evaded repeatedly in front of her is.
She certainly deserves to suffer professionally, as a "sex crimes prosecutor" for the role she played in the Grassley-Graham production. If I had a child who was sexually abused or raped in her district, I'd ask to have a different person investigate it. I wouldn't trust her to not side with the perpetrator, especially if he were a Republican.
As I would have predicted before I laid eyes on Rachel Mitchell, she would issue a report ritually and meaninglessly discrediting Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, filling her employers understood order, no doubt.
As some are pointing out, her irrelevant assessment is made even more irrelevant by the fact that Dr. Ford isn't the one who is asking for the promotion to the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh who lied and evaded repeatedly in front of her is.
She certainly deserves to suffer professionally, as a "sex crimes prosecutor" for the role she played in the Grassley-Graham production. If I had a child who was sexually abused or raped in her district, I'd ask to have a different person investigate it. I wouldn't trust her to not side with the perpetrator, especially if he were a Republican.
Lindsay Graham Is The Roy Cohn Trump Has Longed For In Every Way
Lindsay the liar should always be identified as the hypocritical gay Senator from South Carolina, certainly by gay men such as myself who can't be accused of some kind of anti-gay bias. He is one of that group of putrid Republican and conservative gay men whose public life of power is based on doing damage to other LGBT people and others while being granted a privilege of hypocritically living a private life within the protective bubble of privilege they buy for themselves by being part of the anti-gay Republican establishment. Listening to his fat little lying face on TV only convinces me that the convention that people who know people like him are gay hypocrites but must not talk about it is as bad as the people like Lindsay Graham it protects.
It has been revealed that one of the things Trump whines about Jeff Sessions is that he's not his "Roy Cohn," referring to the thuggish and corrupt lawyer who mentored the young Trump in how to be a total and absolute sleaze and crook while remaining above the law. Roy Cohn was another Republican faggot who regularly worked with right-wing groups to thwart the equality of gay men, Lesbians and other members of the LGBT world. Reports are that after the mid-terms that Trump will fire Sessions and appoint Lindsay Graham as Attorney General where the fat little faggot will shut down or cripple the Mueller investigation into the treason of Trump and other Republicans and otherwise destroy American democracy. If you don't like me pointing out everything he has in common with the putrid Roy Cohn - may he be roasting in purgatory as I type this - come up with a better reason than it's not nice by the polite, elite NYC-DC standards that the privileged grant to each other.
It has been revealed that one of the things Trump whines about Jeff Sessions is that he's not his "Roy Cohn," referring to the thuggish and corrupt lawyer who mentored the young Trump in how to be a total and absolute sleaze and crook while remaining above the law. Roy Cohn was another Republican faggot who regularly worked with right-wing groups to thwart the equality of gay men, Lesbians and other members of the LGBT world. Reports are that after the mid-terms that Trump will fire Sessions and appoint Lindsay Graham as Attorney General where the fat little faggot will shut down or cripple the Mueller investigation into the treason of Trump and other Republicans and otherwise destroy American democracy. If you don't like me pointing out everything he has in common with the putrid Roy Cohn - may he be roasting in purgatory as I type this - come up with a better reason than it's not nice by the polite, elite NYC-DC standards that the privileged grant to each other.
Sunday, September 30, 2018
I Will Never Apologize For Calling Lindsay Graham Out For Being A Hypocritical, Lying Little Faggot - Stupid Mail
I'm a gay man who has never in my adult life lied about being a gay man, Lindsay Graham is a gay man who has lied his entire adult life about being a gay man while supporting Republican-fascist politics which are viciously anti-LGBT, I will never apologize for pointing out he's a totally hypocritical lying faggot who is put into office by people who hate gay men but who have no problem with one who lies about it. He is a lying little faggot who has gained power and benefited himself by promoting the hatred of LGBT people. He's the most despicable gay man alive, he's no different from Roy Cohn who he resembles in so many ways.
Dusan Bogdanovic - Six Ricercars
Dusan Bogdanovic, Six Ricercars première, Yurika Takayama, piano, HEM (Haute école de musique de Genève). 2018,
1. Appasionato 0:10
2. Adagio trasparente 2:24
3. Moderato 5:15
4. Ragatime, Ad lib. 7:05
5. Webern-ing 10:08
6. Spirito 11:10
These are a major addition to the piano literature.
Score available for purchase here
Eames Chair Bach - A Congregation Has Rights
Lady In A Box:
Oh, Mr. Webb Mr. Webb, is there any culture or love of beauty in Grover's Corners?
Mr. Webb:
Well, ma'am, there ain't much - not in the sense you mean. Come to think of it, there's some girls that play the piano at High School Commencement; but they ain't happy about it. No, ma'am, there isn't much culture; but maybe this is the place to tell you that we've got a lot of pleasures of a kind here; we like the sun comin' up over the mountain in the morning, and we notice a good deal about the birds. We pay a lot of attention to them. And we watch the change of the seasons; yes, everybody knows about them. But those other things - you're right, ma'am, - there ain't much. - Robinson Crusoe and the Bible; and Handel's "Largo," we all know that; and Whistler's "Mother" - those are just about as far as we go.
Thornton Wilder: Our Town
Apparently some of the Eschatots are still fuming at what I (and many other professional musicians) have said about GG, their official sacred icon of classical music. I've noticed, his fans are pretty uniformly enraged when someone makes even the most obvious criticism of his excesses. Replace the items on Mr. Webb's list with the typical icons of the cocktail party college educated geezers and it serves the same function. GG is one of those items on such an updated list.
Hey, they'd self-congratulatingly mock Webb's humble list or other lists that might be drawn up for that social milieu today. But I wouldn't mock it, nor would I consider it out of condescending nostalgia the way Wilder did.* Why shouldn't I find their updated version of it mixed with conceit more amusing. It's the conceit and pretense that makes it worthy of mocking, not the list, itself. I'm perfectly happy to leave those who like their Mozart and Beethoven renovated in mid-20th century mid-brow commercial style to their preference. But I'm not going to pretend that's not what it is.
* If I had time I'd look up the passage in Essays Before A Sonata where Charles Ives showed a far deeper, more profound appreciation of the cultural life of common people than Wilder did. He managed to appreciate it and infinitely more importantly The People, the only reason any of it is important, without condescension or nostalgia. I'll give what he said when he retired his post as an organist and choirmaster at the Central Presbyterian Church, that the congregation had the right to the kind of music for worship that was most meaningful to them. Even as he composed some of his greatest works, his Psalm settings, then. When he explained why he resigned his post he said:
"I seem to have worked with more natural freedom, when I knew that the music was not going to be played before the public, or rather before people who couldn't get out from under, as in the case of a church congregation . . . To a body of people who come together for worship-how far has a man to do what he wants, if he knows that by so doing he is interfering with the state of mind of the listeners, who have to listen regardless. . . . A congregation has some rights"
I'd think composers do, too. One is to have their instructions about how to play their music respected.
I have said that I find things to admire in GG's tape pieces he did for the CBC. I wish he'd done more of that than some of the more embarrassing things he did there.
Oh, Mr. Webb Mr. Webb, is there any culture or love of beauty in Grover's Corners?
Mr. Webb:
Well, ma'am, there ain't much - not in the sense you mean. Come to think of it, there's some girls that play the piano at High School Commencement; but they ain't happy about it. No, ma'am, there isn't much culture; but maybe this is the place to tell you that we've got a lot of pleasures of a kind here; we like the sun comin' up over the mountain in the morning, and we notice a good deal about the birds. We pay a lot of attention to them. And we watch the change of the seasons; yes, everybody knows about them. But those other things - you're right, ma'am, - there ain't much. - Robinson Crusoe and the Bible; and Handel's "Largo," we all know that; and Whistler's "Mother" - those are just about as far as we go.
Thornton Wilder: Our Town
Apparently some of the Eschatots are still fuming at what I (and many other professional musicians) have said about GG, their official sacred icon of classical music. I've noticed, his fans are pretty uniformly enraged when someone makes even the most obvious criticism of his excesses. Replace the items on Mr. Webb's list with the typical icons of the cocktail party college educated geezers and it serves the same function. GG is one of those items on such an updated list.
Hey, they'd self-congratulatingly mock Webb's humble list or other lists that might be drawn up for that social milieu today. But I wouldn't mock it, nor would I consider it out of condescending nostalgia the way Wilder did.* Why shouldn't I find their updated version of it mixed with conceit more amusing. It's the conceit and pretense that makes it worthy of mocking, not the list, itself. I'm perfectly happy to leave those who like their Mozart and Beethoven renovated in mid-20th century mid-brow commercial style to their preference. But I'm not going to pretend that's not what it is.
* If I had time I'd look up the passage in Essays Before A Sonata where Charles Ives showed a far deeper, more profound appreciation of the cultural life of common people than Wilder did. He managed to appreciate it and infinitely more importantly The People, the only reason any of it is important, without condescension or nostalgia. I'll give what he said when he retired his post as an organist and choirmaster at the Central Presbyterian Church, that the congregation had the right to the kind of music for worship that was most meaningful to them. Even as he composed some of his greatest works, his Psalm settings, then. When he explained why he resigned his post he said:
"I seem to have worked with more natural freedom, when I knew that the music was not going to be played before the public, or rather before people who couldn't get out from under, as in the case of a church congregation . . . To a body of people who come together for worship-how far has a man to do what he wants, if he knows that by so doing he is interfering with the state of mind of the listeners, who have to listen regardless. . . . A congregation has some rights"
I'd think composers do, too. One is to have their instructions about how to play their music respected.
I have said that I find things to admire in GG's tape pieces he did for the CBC. I wish he'd done more of that than some of the more embarrassing things he did there.
Innocent People Don't Try To Cover Up: We Know They're Trying To Hide Something And It Must Be Worse Than What's Already Come Out
The Trump regime is trying to thwart the FBI investigation into the accusations against Brett Kavanaugh by restricting who the FBI is allowed to interview.
Just hours before President Trump authorized the new inquiry, the FBI had reached out to Deborah Ramirez, the second woman to come forward with recollections of alleged sexual misconduct by Kavanaugh.
But on Saturday afternoon, NBC News reported that the White House was limiting the scope of the probe to cover only Ford and Ramirez — not Julie Swetnick, the third woman to come forward with allegations of misconduct against Kavanaugh. “Instead of investigating Swetnick’s claims,” according to NBC, “the White House counsel’s office has given the FBI a list of witnesses they are permitted to interview, according to several people who discussed the parameters on the condition of anonymity.” NBC also reported that certain other areas of investigation would also be off limits. For instance, the agency cannot request employment records from a supermarket where key witness Mark Judge worked, which might help corroborate Ford’s account of running into him after her alleged assault. And it cannot look into discrepancies between Kavanaugh’s account of only drinking moderately in college and that of at least one classmate, who has said he was lying.
Trump may have issued what looks like an FBI investigation but this investigation, like the one conducted by Grassley's staff is a sham that is designed as a cover up.
With this it is clear that at least some of the accusations against Brett Kavanaugh are true, that the Republicans in the Senate know that they are true and that the Trump regime knows it they are true and they are covering them up. They know Brett Kavanaugh has a history of alcohol fueled assault on women and most likely those assaults sometimes succeeded in becoming rape.
I don't know if Julie Swetnick, Michael Avenatti's client, and her corroborating witnesses will now take it to the press. I'd notify the FBI they have exactly six hours to include them in the interviews or I'd go full public with what they can bring to this. If I were someone intentionally left off of the witness list I'd immediately get into contact with the Senate Democrats and Christine Blasey Ford's lawyers.
The Republicans posing on the fence, Collins Murkowski, Flake, and the two Democrats, too, shouldn't be allowed to get away with hiding a yes vote for Kavanaugh behind a sham investigation remote controlled by the Trump regime. If they will is something we will know in a week. But Kavanaugh doesn't get to just have it end there. He apparently is having this one rigged for him in the kind of privilege he's accustomed to getting. It was his rage at not having it totally rigged for him that was on display last Thursday. Time should be up on that, too.
Just hours before President Trump authorized the new inquiry, the FBI had reached out to Deborah Ramirez, the second woman to come forward with recollections of alleged sexual misconduct by Kavanaugh.
But on Saturday afternoon, NBC News reported that the White House was limiting the scope of the probe to cover only Ford and Ramirez — not Julie Swetnick, the third woman to come forward with allegations of misconduct against Kavanaugh. “Instead of investigating Swetnick’s claims,” according to NBC, “the White House counsel’s office has given the FBI a list of witnesses they are permitted to interview, according to several people who discussed the parameters on the condition of anonymity.” NBC also reported that certain other areas of investigation would also be off limits. For instance, the agency cannot request employment records from a supermarket where key witness Mark Judge worked, which might help corroborate Ford’s account of running into him after her alleged assault. And it cannot look into discrepancies between Kavanaugh’s account of only drinking moderately in college and that of at least one classmate, who has said he was lying.
Trump may have issued what looks like an FBI investigation but this investigation, like the one conducted by Grassley's staff is a sham that is designed as a cover up.
With this it is clear that at least some of the accusations against Brett Kavanaugh are true, that the Republicans in the Senate know that they are true and that the Trump regime knows it they are true and they are covering them up. They know Brett Kavanaugh has a history of alcohol fueled assault on women and most likely those assaults sometimes succeeded in becoming rape.
I don't know if Julie Swetnick, Michael Avenatti's client, and her corroborating witnesses will now take it to the press. I'd notify the FBI they have exactly six hours to include them in the interviews or I'd go full public with what they can bring to this. If I were someone intentionally left off of the witness list I'd immediately get into contact with the Senate Democrats and Christine Blasey Ford's lawyers.
The Republicans posing on the fence, Collins Murkowski, Flake, and the two Democrats, too, shouldn't be allowed to get away with hiding a yes vote for Kavanaugh behind a sham investigation remote controlled by the Trump regime. If they will is something we will know in a week. But Kavanaugh doesn't get to just have it end there. He apparently is having this one rigged for him in the kind of privilege he's accustomed to getting. It was his rage at not having it totally rigged for him that was on display last Thursday. Time should be up on that, too.