That's it

Brett's in. The fix is in.

There's no point in playing the "maybe perhaps if" game. The Trumpers would not issue this statement without knowing the outcome. As near as I can tell, it all (well, mostly) came down to Mark Judge: If he held firm, Brett would get in. If he cracked, Brett would be out.

Right now, it looks like he didn't crack. The FBI didn't want to crack him.

This humble blog warned that there is a pro-Trump faction within the FBI, a faction which engineered his election. The bogus nature of the FBI investigation into Kavanaugh bodes ill for the Mueller probe. This New York Magazine piece investigates the investigators:

The FBI has only briefly looked into the other allegations against Kavanaugh. While an interview was conducted with Deborah Ramirez, who said Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at Yale, investigators did not, as far as Ramirez’s legal team knew, speak to any of the 20 people she said may be able to corroborate her story. Julie Swetnick, who implicated Kavanaugh in a pattern of sexual assaults, was also not interviewed.

There’s more: Several people who reached out to investigators to offer information said they were also left hanging. NBC News says dozens have potential witnesses have come forward to FBI field offices, “but agents have not been permitted to talk to many of them.” The New Yorker spoke to several people who were also unable to get an audience with the FBI despite their ability to corroborate Ramirez’s story and information refuting claims Kavanaugh made during last week’s testimony.

Any other president would have replaced Kavanaugh with another conservative. In all likelihood, Trump needs Kavanaugh in order to "legalize" some forthcoming grab for extra-Constitutional power. Note that the QAnon fascists have been primed for just such a move and are fully prepared to step forward as Trump's SS.

Would Kavanaugh go along with such a plan? Yes. He demonstrated his true nature in his work for Ken Starr and in his efforts to impede the 2000 Florida recount (thereby insuring the election of Dubya and the disastrous Iraq invasion).

Jeb Bush’s brother, George, then president, nominated Kavanaugh in 2003 for the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit — a move that didn’t sit well with Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin.

Durbin, during Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings, called him the “Forrest Gump of Republican politics … whether it’s Elian Gonzalez or the Starr Report, you are there.”

There's a reason for that: Kavanaugh is not a jurist; he's a cultist. He should have have been investigated, impeached and disbarred for the perjuries he demonstrably committed before the Blasey Ford claims were made known.

Far too late in the game, Senator Patrick Leahy has contributed a must-read thread which proves the point. Even if Blasey Ford and the other accusers had never come forward, Kavanaugh has proven himself to be contemptible, corrupt and probably compromised.

The man testified under oath that he never received stolen materials prepared by the Democrats. He provably did. Thousands of confidential pages -- clearly marked as such -- were pilfered by Kavanaugh's associate Manny Miranda and handed over the Kavanaugh. It was all hideously unethical and illegal.

And now he will sit on the Supreme Court.

Worse, millions of Americans believe that this Republican conspiracy to install a corrupt Justice was actually an insidious Democratic plot. A shockingly large number of few right-wingers have bought into the insane theory that Christine Blasey Ford is some sort of MKULTRA robot. (Or perhaps a maker of robots: The propagandists are unclear on this point.)

In fact, the right is now demanding that Dr. Blasey Ford be put in prison.

Fox News guest Joe diGenova: Ford “should be investigated and if necessary charged with the crime of submitting a false statement to the Senate.”

Turning Point USA’s Candace Owens: “I would like to be among the first to say that I want Christine Blasey Ford to serve time in PRISON.”

With Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, Trump comes closer to the day when he, like Putin or Stalin, can imprison anyone who inconveniences him.

On this day, let's not hear any Bill Palmer-esque cockeyed optimism. Let's not hear any speeches about how all is not lost and we must redouble our efforts. Time enough for such words tomorrow, or several tomorrows from now -- but for this one day, just give it a rest.

Allow us cynics to stew in our infuriating triumph.

The virtues of pessimism. If this blog were as widely read as it once was, I might heed those voices who insist that pessimism can demoralize the troops. A writer with a small audience has greater freedom to be himself, and I've been an opponent of Dr. Pangloss since -- well, since long before I discovered Candide. Even in childhood, I could sense the doctor's existence, and knew him to be the immortal foe.

My original intent was to fill this column with darkly humorous quotations justifying the pessmimist's outlook. Here are a few:

I will be the first to admit that I am a pessimist by nature. It is, after all, the wisest way to be. We pessimists have everything to gain, whereas optimists have a fifty-fifty chance of being disappointed.”
― Tamar Myers, As the World Churns

In a fallen world, the chance is better than fifty-fifty.

“If you expect the worst, you'll never be disappointed.”
― Sarah Dessen, Lock and Key

Same idea, more wisely put.

“Most pessimists are blinded by darkness.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

No. We've simply learned to see better in the dark.

“The optimist sees the glass half full. The pessimist sees the glass half empty. The chemist sees the glass completely full, half in liquid state and half in gaseous, both of which is probably poisonous.”
― Weike Wang, Chemistry

A pessimist is a person who has had to listen to too many optimists.
-- Don Marquis

In closing, let me clear up a misconception:

I've never seen a monument erected to a pessimist.
-- Will Harvey

What about the Lincoln memorial? Anyone who considers Lincoln an optimist should read a damned book. There's a movement to create a monument to John Adams, the most pessimistic of the founders. There are plenty of memorials to Winston Churchill, given to severe fits of depression.

Here in Baltimore, there's a kind of memorial to H.L. Mencken, noted cynic. His work is another kind of monument -- and it is monumentally pessimistic. (But funny.)

Here's a monument to Mark Twain, inarguably a pessimist. He once wrote (privately) that the only truly good person who ever lived with Joan of Arc.

Come to think of it, there are plenty of monuments and memorials dedicated to St. Joan, who told her judges (with admirable pessimism) that "Men are often hanged for telling the truth."

A true pessimist will scoff at the need for monuments and memorials. What's the point? They'll all be gone when the sun dies.