The Brett Kavanaugh senate testimony

I watched the Brett Kavanaugh hearings where he began with a long 45 minute opening statement. The challenge for Kavanaugh was to be more credible than Christine Blasey Ford. He gave a Trump-like political speech, coming out with guns blazing and attacking Democrats as engaging in a political witch hunt, though he did not use the term. His opening statement was very angry. He was red faced and scowling and he choked up at times, almost in tears, and denied everything. He took a leaf out of Clarence Thomas’s hearings and accused all who opposed him of a a vast left-wing, Democratic conspiracy against him that made false accusations to take him down as part of a political agenda. All that was missing was to use the Thomas language of a ‘high-tech lynching’. He seemed almost out of control. If Ford had talked like Kavanaugh, she would have been described as hysterical.
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Christine Blasey Ford senate hearings

I watched the hearings this morning. As the hearings began, Ford looked nervous, vulnerable, and scared and began speaking with a quavering voice. She got a little better with time but throughout she looked credible and, for want of a better word, natural. She was almost in tears when Blumenthal praised her courage in coming forward despite the trauma. I cringed to hear, when asked about what was her most indelible memory of the event, how Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge laughed during the assault, that they were having fun assaulting her. She said that she had met Kavanaugh many times before the assault so there was no question of her confusing him with someone else. Although I believed her even before the hearings, I can only say that she showed the entire nation what an honest person she is.
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The Kavanaugh saga continues

As Thursday, the day when the senate has currently scheduled testimony about the allegations made against US Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh approaches, more information keeps coming out, and most of it is not in his favor. It now appears that his second accuser Deborah Ramirez may also give testimony to the senate judiciary committee and the lawyer for the third accuser (who may go public today) has been in touch with a staff member of the committee about giving her testimony. And of course, there is the possible fourth accuser, not to mention Kavanaugh’s notorious close friend Mark Judge whose published descriptions of drunken debauchery during high school paint an all-too vivid and ugly picture that is consistent with the allegations.
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In other Washington chaos news …

… the media were abuzz over the story that deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, who overseas the Mueller investigation, had gone to the White House today to either offer his resignation or be fired in the wake of reports that he had doubted the president’s competence and even suggested that people wear a wire when talking to him, though that has been characterized as facetious. That report turns out to be premature and any decision has been postponed until at least Thursday. The whole non-event may have been orchestrated to create a distraction from the Kavanaugh debacle.

Marty Lederman, a professor of law at Georgetown University, lays out the complex series of succession options that would come into play if Rosenstein were be fired or resign because of the recusal of attorney general Jeff Sessions and other key players. It is a mess.

In this White House, the only thing that is straightforward is the transfer of money to the already wealthy from the rest of us.

The dam breaks on Kavanaugh [UPDATED]

[UPDATE: There are reports that a fourth woman has come forward with fresh allegations against Kavanaugh.]

As with most cases of accusations of sexual abuse by powerful men, once one accuser comes forward, others feel emboldened to tell their stories too. This is because sexual abusers rarely stop after one experience. If they get away with one act of abuse, they feel they can do so again. This pattern is being repeated with US Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Late last night there was a major news story about another woman Deborah Ramirez who has accused Kavanaugh of really gross behavior at a party while they were first year undergraduates at Yale University.
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Lindsey Graham is a sanctimonious weasel

I have long had a deep contempt for senator Lindsey Graham. He is like the late John McCain, an extreme warmonger who pretends to be an independent person but when it comes to actions is an utterly dependable, extreme rightwing Republican party apparatchik. He is matched only by former senator Joe Lieberman in the ability to get favorable media attention by uttering sanctimonious pieties while advancing odious policies. No wonder the three of them were such close friends.
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