Christine Blasey Ford proved to be an excellent witness. Nobody could lay a finger on her. All of the smarmy tactics employed by the Republicans failed.
Please accept my apologies for relapsing into hyper-paranoia early this morning. Whenever Trump says something human or reasonable, as he did yesterday, my natural reaction is to suspect that some Machiavellian scheme is a-brewing.
If such a scheme exists, Blasey Ford was not party to it. She was superb. Her testimony may have converted the few convertible Republicans. The Democrats who hail from red states -- Joe Manchin being the ultimate example -- can now easily explain why they voted "no" on Kavanaugh.
As of this writing, the nominee himself has not yet testified. Based his his silly and unconvincing Fox interview, I do not expect him to reverse the damage.
Lindsey Graham dismissed the two men who "confessed" that they were the ones who assaulted Blasey Ford. One of the men, said Graham, appeared to be insane, while the other lacked all credibility. Sounds like something really weird happened behind the scenes. Will we ever learn the story?
Bottom line: Hope is starting to creep into my dark and stent-ridden heart. I dislike hope. Hope is the foundational condition for all disappointment, just as pessimism is the foundational condition for all happy surprises.
Yet here we are. Stuck like dopes with a thing called hope.
I was right on a couple of points. In the preceding post, I predicted that the Republican smear machine would counter the Kavanaugh accusers by trotting out the familiar canards about False Memory Syndrome. On cue, National Review did just that. Of course, rightwingers never mention the FMS mythos when discussing (for example) the Al Franken case. Memory becomes suspect only when the accused is a Republican; if the accused is a Democrat, anything goes -- up to and including completely anonymous accusations. As the Europeans say: "Left eye open, right eye blind."
Also, it appears that one of the five accusations against Kavanaugh was, in fact, false -- though not the one I thought would be false. The boat story has been sunk.
8 comments:
Oh My Gawd! He just boasted that all his law clerks were female.
http://fortune.com/2018/09/20/brett-kavanaugh-law-clerks-yale-amy-chua-husband/
A Russian asset is our President. It's not wrong to be paranoid even if it sometimes leads to the wrong conclusion.
Speaking of bad witnesses Koathanger Kavanaugh bluster baby losing it. Then the faux republican outrage is Oscar worthy.
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Bill Palmer thinks Dr. Blast Ford will file charges against Koathanger Kavanaugh in Maryland. I'm not seeing it unless he's confirmed.
Anon 5:38 pm
Good old reactionary Eliot.
Tried to claim that what was in his poems was only what he intended to put in them.
Proving that he was simultaneously a genius (for his great poetry) and a moron (for not recognizing that the language system is so much richer than appears in a given intended moment).
Tom
Kavanaugh seemed really really angry. There is an opportunity here to explore what life was like for Kavanaugh growing up. Since he offered his calendars up for exhibit, and they were strategically placed to cover up most of each calendar while making it look like he had nothing to hide, it would be interesting to see how he spent all of his days. My calendars when I was in college and right after were all about phone numbers of people to call back. Kavanaugh's seems to be about where he was going. To have that much freedom and privilege and be a social butterfly, just can't be a good signf or a beer swilling kid who seemed to have a lot of time for fun. Kids who got together inevitably did stupid things. Add in drinking beer and I just don't believe he never got into serious mischief. Did he donate any of his free time to anything of note?
Kavanaugh spent so much time trying to prove he didn't do something that maybe there are other things that could be gained from studying his calendars.
Alessandro, it was clear to me that the guy was an unendurable snot. Was and is.
Post a Comment