Freak Out Friday – October 5, 2018

Full disclosure–as of today, Friday, I am no longer part of this mortal coil. Instead I have shuffled off to New York Comic Con where, even now, I am at table E11 in Artist’s Alley. So swing on by.

Consequently I am writing this on Wednesday, October 3, so I will not be current on whatever idiocy has occurred in Trumpworld in the last two days. But it’s still worth writing about what’s happened so far.

1). So what does this mean, exactly?. During the election Trump incessantly bitched about NAFTA, complaining that for some reason I either failed to understand or he failed to explain, it was a terrible deal that was shafting America. I tended to ignore these claims for the same reason I ignored most of his claims: they were all lies. And I never thought he’d get elected and pose a threat to it.

Yet as it turns out he did get elected and he was ready to destroy NAFTA. I have no idea what the consequences of that would have been but I have to assume it wouldn’t be good. Yet apparently the US, Canada and Mexico managed to, at the eleventh hour, carve out a new deal. I know it has another name now, but I honestly don’t want to waste time looking it up again, so I’m simply going to refer to it as the New Administration Stupid Crap Ass Reboot, or NASCAR.

The Trump administration is claiming all sorts of positive things will come of it. Most of it seems to have something to do with Canadian milk. Considering his other policies are annihilating farmers nationwide, I guess it’s good that SOMEone is being helped. But I’ve seen a number of people who actually know about this stuff stating that the changes from NAFTA to NASCAR are going to be minimal. Plus there is a secondary issue. Thanks to Trump’s constant threats and actual dropping out of agreements that the US had signed onto, there is absolutely nothing apparently to stop either the Canadians or Mexicans, especially if there’s a change of government, from stepping forward and announcing they’re out of NASCAR. So Trump has likely laid down the mortality of the agreement he’s so proud of getting in place. It could be a classic example of what goes around comes around.

2). Someone should investigate the investigation.. So thanks to Jeff Flake being guilted into doing the right thing by some angry women in an elevator (and let’s give credit where it’s due; an entire women’s marching band in an auditorium couldn’t guilt Mitch McConnell into doing the right thing because the man has no soul, so at least there’s still hope for Flake) the FBI is spending this week investigating Judge Kavanaugh’s alleged sexual assault of Doctor Ford. Except the “alleged” should really be in front of the word “investigating” because, as of this writing, over a dozen acquaintances of Kavanaugh’s who want to back up Ford’s descriptions of a teen Kavanaugh have not been contacted by the FBI. Indeed, they’ve contacted the Feds and have not heard back. Even Ford hasn’t spoken to them, for God’s sake. To say that thus far it appears not only to be a non-thorough investigation but in fact a non-existent one is to understate it.

Is it possible that Trump has instructed them that way? Of course it is. That’s why he stood there in Mississippi a few days ago and belittled and lampooned Doctor Ford to the hoots and hollers of a bunch of Mississippi assholes.

The fact of the matter is that over the past years, as the GOP did everything they could to block the efforts of every Democratic president to accomplish anything, we’ve lost focus of the United States of America. Instead we have devolved into tribes where everything someone witnesses is done through a polarized set of opinions that guarantees what they’re going to think before they see it. People in Ford’s tribe saw a pained but strong woman reliving one of the worst nights of her life in order to stop him from rising to the highest honor for a juror in this country. People in her tribe understood that of course she was too terrified to report it when she was fifteen. Kavanaugh’s parents were both attorneys. She’d have been shredded in courts, even her parents might not have believed her, her good name would have been destroyed, and her town would have turned against her and shielded the rich kid.

And then there’s Kavanaugh’s tribe. This includes both the rich and powerful, and the dumb ass hicks who adore Trump and believe the white man’s position of strength in America is being threatened by women who can just make shit up and be believed. People who see rage from a man as something strong and rage from a woman a sign of shrill weakness. They dismissed Ford’s testimony as unsupported (because so many sexual assaults happen in public squares) and saw Kavanaugh’s hysterical, utterly unjudicial rant as proof that he was innocent because he wouldn’t have been so angry otherwise.

Yes. He would have. Because he sees himself as a deserving white man who is having something he believes he’s earned snatched away from him (just as, two decades ago, Clarence Thomas saw himself as a deserving black man who was the subject of a lynching because Anita Hill cited his sexual misdeeds, and she was pilloried for it just as Ford is now.).

There are two reasons I am positive Trump helped him with his speech last Thursday: 1). Because it was loaded with Trump talking points, and 2) Kavanaugh made sure to tell people that no one else had seen it. Why in God’s name would anyone make that claim? Seriously. Did Obama ever feel the need to say, “I just want you all to know I wrote this myself?” No, because if he did, every one on Fox News would declare, “Well that’s proof he didn’t write it himself, because who makes that declaration except someone who wants you to THINK it when it’s not really true?” Same thing here.

Yet Trump has the gall to say that it’s tough to be a young white man now? NOW? Why? Because they’re in danger of being held to a code of conduct that doesn’t automatically spin confessions of rape or assault against the woman who had to endure it?

And Doctor Ford even sensed that she may well have been wasting her time vis a vis Kavanaugh, describing herself as being an object in the path of a speeding locomotive. McConnell wants to steam roll right over her, even though Kavanaugh has made plain beyond any question that he is not deserving of a chair on the SCOTUS, and possibly even any judge’s chair.

This is not the opinion of a tribal liberal. This is the opinion of the American Bar Association. There are some excerpts from the ABA Model Code of Judicial Conduct as of February 2007.

CANON 1: A judge shall uphold and promote the independence, integrity, and impartiality of the judiciary and shall avoid impropriety and the appearance of Impropriety.

Rule 1.2, Comment 2: A judge should expect to be the subject of public scrutiny that might be viewed as burdensome if applied to other citizens, and must accept the restrictions imposed by the Code.

Comment 3: Conduct that compromises or appears to compromise the independence, integrity, and impartiality of a judge undermines public confidence in the judiciary.

Comment 5: …The test for appearance of impropriety is whether the conduct would create in reasonable minds a perception that the judge violated this Code or engaged in other conduct that reflects adversely on the judge’s honesty, impartiality, temperament, or fitness to serve as a judge.

By any reasoned viewing of his actions, he is in clear violation of the canon. As he decried Democrats in general and the Clintons in particular, does ANYONE who might have stake in a liberal issue before the SCOTUS have the slightest belief anymore that they might get a fair hearing from Kavanaugh? Of course not. It is clear beyond any measure that Kavanaugh has no place on the SCOTUS.

And yet McConnell and crew insanely still want him on. Why? He was one name on a list of two dozen jurists, all of whom will be happy to undo Roe V. Wade, which is what this is really all about. Why are they still stuck on Kavanaugh?

There is really only one viable reason:

They want to piss off the Democrats.

I mean, God knows I’m used to that attitude. I’ve seen right wing assholes support the most ludicrous challenges to the Constitution purely because they know it’ll piss off liberals. Indeed, that’s the main reason they love Trump. He has no problem pissing off people he doesn’t like, most conspicuously liberals, and they take great glee in that. I understand it because it’s a juvenile and idiotic frame of mind to have, which is why they have it. But at least those maroons weren’t running the country.

Except now they are. That is the only explanation. McConnell and his Zoo Crew take delight in governing in a way that will anger Democrats. That, and holding on to power, are the only things they care about.

Kind of a stupid way to run a country, isn’t it?

PAD