I see that the FBI has started investigating Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
The FBI has begun contacting people as part of an additional background investigation of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, including a second woman who alleges that the Supreme Court nominee sexually assaulted her.
And one can only hope that Kavanaugh is in better shape than he was at last Thursday's Senate hearing.
When he stunned the world with his Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde impersonation.
And with that performance, and even before the FBI renders its verdict, did in the eyes of many disqualify or disrobe himself.
Brett M. Kavanaugh proved himself unfit to serve on the Supreme Court.
It has little to do with his treatment of women. Kavanaugh’s freshman-year roommate at Yale had told the New Yorker that the future Supreme Court nominee could become “aggressive” and “belligerent” when drunk.
But, as millions have now seen with their own eyes, he is aggressive and belligerent when stone-cold sober.
And as Roger Cohen points out, Kavanaugh was so addled he made a serious mistake.
This was a job interview, not a criminal trial. The accusation against Kavanaugh — involving an incident 36 years ago in an undetermined location, uncorroborated by those present — would not currently stand up in a court of law. As a juror, with the available evidence, I could not say “beyond a reasonable doubt” that he committed this assault.
But Kavanaugh’s bleating about due process and presumption of innocence — his rage at a supposed “national disgrace” — misses the point. He failed the job interview. Who would want this spoiled man pieced together on a foundation of repressed anger and circumscribed privilege — this man who quite plausibly was the teenage drunk near-suffocating Christine Blasey Ford as he ground his body against hers, this man who may now have perjured himself — occupying a place for life on the highest court in the land?
He confused a job interview with a criminal trial, and failed it...
Badly.
The morally corrupt Republicans may still approve his tainted nomination...
But it could cost them their control of Congress.
Millions and millions of women in America, and the men who support them, have decided that enough is enough.
The popular verdict is in...
They are laughing at him all over America...
Now it’s time to hear from Judge Brett Kavanaugh (Matt Damon). #SNLPremiere pic.twitter.com/dvu1VgJZt5— Saturday Night Live - SNL (@nbcsnl) September 30, 2018
And of course, as you may know, I delivered my verdict yesterday...
Brett Kavanaugh is a beast and a bully, and almost certainly a mean drunk.
He is unfit to judge a dog or pony show.
And his nomination should be tossed into the garbage where it belongs, in the name of human decency...
The level of assumed privilege in this man is just stunning. Sexual assaults aside, this behaviour in a sane America would have seen Grassley asking him to step down and leave the room as the hearing was over. Not so though. We saw the very worst of America on display from Kavanaugh and no doubt he will win, because this stench is well established and enough people just don't care. And what Donald Trump wants, Donald Trump gets. We are in the age of the bully wins.
ReplyDeleteHi bcwaterboy...I agree, Kavanaugh's performance was so appalling it should have disqualified him right there and then. The idea of a person like him on the Supreme Court is an absolute abomination, and can only discredit the court in the eyes of most Americans. But the good news is that if Kavanaugh is nominated the Republicans may pay a heavy price. Millions of women in the U.S. have been mobilized like never before, and hopefully they will neuter Trump in the mid terms and mark the beginning of the end of his foul regime...
DeleteGood article in The Guardian that hits the nail on the head about what this is all about. (Written by a decent man who's horrified by what others in his gender are doing.) Money, aggressiveness, power -- "the man's world" and the white man's world at that, on the revenge march against those it deems "feminine," and thus "inferior" and deserving to be "conquered." The U.S. is leading the way of a globally destructive "Masculinist International" manifesting itself in Trump's id, Kavanaugh's entitlement, Putin's military might, and... Boris' Johnson, I suppose.
ReplyDeleteBrett Kavanaugh has revealed the insidious force in global politics: toxic masculinity
Brett Kavanaugh’s astonishing performance, and that of the Republican senators at Thursday’s hearing, shone a light on a phenomenon that Trump both feeds and exemplifies: a sense of male entitlement so extreme it resents any restraint. It is a swaggering machismo that believes rules are for limp-wristed wimps; that in its most radical form places itself above the law. This phenomenon stretches beyond the partisan battles of Washington DC, beyond even the battlefield of sexual harassment: it is instead a core, if underplayed, aspect of the populist wave currently upending the politics of Asia, continental Europe and Britain.
He missed Canada, where pretty much everything the Cons are doing is an apeshit reaction to Trudeau. Doug Ford is simply a clone of Trump if not an even dumber copy of a copy, who is positioning his wrecking-ball destruction of the country's second-largest and most populated province that happens to house the nation's capital as being more "muscular" than the prime minister who has to observe the rule of law (and would anyway because that's what real leaders are supposed to do). Scheer's gross misogyny and Kenney's homophobia. Jordan Peterson's conspiracy theories that Trudeau is trying to "erase gender" and socially engineer an "unnatural" female-first hierarchy. The Ontario Proud and Rebel Media meme dumps calling him a "mama's boy" and a "fairy prince," and making up nonsense that he wears false eyelashes and has male lovers on the side. The Postmedia hacks spreading rumors that he's a cross-dresser and making fun of him for getting emotional at Pierre's funeral. Trump's own derogatory messaging that he is "meek and mild," coupled with Junior's insinuation that he is transgender (and further insult to actual transgender people) by calling him an "it." The online harassment of his female cabinet members (Catherine McKenna as "Climate Barbie" and Chrystia Freeland's negotiation of NAFTA now being called the "Molotov-Muffintop Pact"), and the Hillary-esque heckling of Rachel Notley and Kathy Wynne. And on and on and on.
It's Lord of the Flies, just like you pointed out in an earlier post, Simon. Donald Trump, the maggot-infested pig's head as god of a pack of bloodthirsty, hormonal savages whose baser instincts have taken over and pose a threat to us all. Oh, but he loves Kim now. Well, that's a bromance made in some old boys' circle of hell...
Hi Jackie...thanks for linking to Jonathan Freedland's excellent article. Everybody should read it. Toxic masculinity has been the bane of my existence, it's the nexus of bullying, and there is nothing I despise more. The good news is that the roar of those ugly beasts has only made women and the many men who support them only more determined to resist and defeat them. All of my male friends, straight or gay, have only contempt for those toxic old men who would threaten women and drag us all back to the past. So we will eventually defeat those ghastly reactionaries and build a better world...
DeleteThis blatantly partisan piece of shit should NEVER be allowed to sit as a judge at any level.
ReplyDeleteHi anon...I agree, his partisanship alone should disqualify him. He's nothing more than a Republican operative, who can only damage the reputation of the Supreme Court....
DeleteA stunning Jekyll and Hyde performance, I pity anyone looking for a little compassion or understanding in his court room. Although not specific to Kavanaugh the following article describes how privileged and protected some of these fraternities actually are. So much for draining the swamp by replacing it with domestic thugs and foreign oligarchs. https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/death-at-delta-sig-heiress-wages-a-million-dollar-war-on-frats/ar-BBNL2nD
ReplyDeleteRT
HI RT...It was indeed a Jekyll and Hyde performance, and coming from a man who aspires to be a Supreme Court justice couldn't be more bizarre or terrifying. And you're right, Kavanaugh is a typical product of fraternities where that kind of animal behaviour is not only not condemned it's encouraged. I never had any time for frat boys, and anyone who tried to recruit me ended up beating a hasty retreat with their ears burning, and their tail between my legs...đŸ˜‡
DeleteBruce McKinnon of the Halifax Chronicle-Herald has the best cartoon on the sexual assault on Lady Justice: https://twitter.com/CH_Cartoon
ReplyDeleteSo we learn that the candidate is a creep drunk or sober, and doesn't even have good taste in beer!
Hi Lagatta...I agree with you, that is the best and most powerful cartoon I have yet seen. And it accurately reflects the behaviour of the toxic old boy's club. I thought we had won the war for women's liberation years ago, but we clearly still have a long way to go....
DeleteWell, that is like the war for racial equality or the combat for rights and respect of LGBTQ2+ people and communities. A great deal of progress has been made in law and in daily life, but a deep morass of toxic bigotry remains. And in this case, the old (straight, white) boys' club.
DeleteThe problem is he still could be appointed. The GOP are desperate for a judge that promises to protect them against the fallout of Trump's involvement with Russian interference in the election.
ReplyDeleteHi Unknown...you're absolutely right. The FBI has not been given enough time to do a proper investigation, and I fear it may be used as a fig leaf to cover up the obvious fact that he is clearly unstable and unfit to be a judge. And his apparent indifference to Trump's involvement with the Russians is probably the main reason the GOP wants him approved...
DeleteThe "angry man" routine is what they most likely had Kav. practising those days he was at the W.H. However, all it clearly demonstrated was he is a political hack unfit for any court. He clearly won't be able to be impartial in cases dealing with Clinton, their supporters, Democrats, liberals, women, etc.
ReplyDeleteIf the allegations of sexual assault don't do him in, his performance at the hearings certainly ought to. He is unfit.