Animal House (of Justice)

Well, that was something...I admit that I watched/listened to chunks of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in which both Dr. Christine Blasey-Ford and Judge Brett Kavanaugh had opportunities to tell their respective stories. Dr. Blasey-Ford's testimony was filled with an incredible combination of raw emotion and scientific precision...a peer reviewed journal article, told with grace from a still-wounded heart. Judge Kavanaugh chose instead to borrow a page out of his patron's, Donald Trump's, play book, and color it in bile and vomit with liberal (can I use that word?) splashes of orangutan orange, rage-filled red, and snot-hued greens, a veritable Picasso of putridness and self-pity.

And that is what white entitlement looks like, smears of bodily effluvia: blood, spunk and chunks of Ralph. And that is what Donald Trump, George Bush (père et fils) and Ronald Reagan have used to decorate the Supreme Court, smearing it with this toxic mix of white supremacy, plutocratic disdain, and savage unrestrained hyper-capitalism. Throw into the mix the stench of skunk beer, a few ripped panties and one-piece swimsuits (and multiple established precedents) and, voilà! The transformation is now complete: what was once the Corinthian-columned heart of U.S. jurisprudence and the rule of law, has now become the Animal House of Justice!

When's pledge week?

Here's the toon:

He Pled the (Twenty-) Fifth

I wonder if Mel Brooks has one more movie left in him, some combination of the Producers, with the  big hit number being "Midterms for Hitler." Probably not, he rightfully deserves to spend his last years on earth just enjoying his health. That means the rest of us schlubs have to pick up the slack.

Here's my contribution. It turns out that Rod Rosenstein, whom Trump and the Republicans would surely love to show the door, might well have been plotting to unseat the Donald. I'm not sure what his motive was - after all, he chose to serve in this administration - but I'm guessing it's because he felt "used" by Trump when Trump used Rosenstein's memo as his justification for firing Comey.

Thins soup, I know, but I just can't see anyone in the Trump cabinet (or in Rosenstein's case, just below) having the intestinal fortitude to chuck the Orange Menace from the White House. Maybe I'm wrong, in which case Rosenstein's days are surely numbered. I guess he's okay for now, since Trump's toadies (you can't spell toadies with "aides") convinced Trump not to jettison anymore high ranking officials for fear it might give the "wrong impression" that the White House really is a chaotic shambles. Wouldn't want anyone getting that idea.

I do miss Mel Brooks. His humor formed/warped my own when I saw his string of hits in the mid-70s as a young kid. And I need that sense of humor - never mind to cartoon - but just to be able to get through each day without plummeting into a deep depression over the sorry state of affairs we're in. But not to despair, the midterms are almost upon us, and hopefully our very own comb over Hitler will be put into a deep freeze.

That's Not What Michelle O Meant

I don't think that's what Michelle Obama meant during her stirring speech at the Democratic Convention a little over two years ago. Talk about appropriation...

And it's only getting uglier - "it" being the battle over the nomination of Brent Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. The Republicans continue to try to railroad it through the judiciary committee, while it becomes increasingly apparent that what we really need to do is to hit the pause button so that an impartial investigative body - i.e., NOT the Republican-controlled judiciary committee - can get to the bottom of exactly what happened 36 years ago. Right, like that's actually going to happen.

Part of me wants to say, "C'mon. It's inevitable. There is no way the GOP will not vote on Kavanaugh before the midterms, so let's just get it over with." But, wait a minute. Make that several minutes, hours, days and weeks. Besides the obvious desire to see some semblance of a fair hearing I also wouldn't mind a delay just to watch the Republicans dig themselves a deeper hole with the electorate. Maybe I'm delusional, but I'd like to believe that the longer they and their misogynistic, authoritarian tendencies are on display, the more voters will be utterly repulsed and vote the Dems in...

Wait...who did we vote into the White House and who is STILL there?

Right. Never mind. Same as it ever was and will be.

It Takes One To Nominate One

OOPS...Looks like Brett "Boy Scout" Kavanaugh turned out to have a few skeletons in the closet after all. Does it matter that his alleged assault of a teenage girl took place 35 plus years ago? I don't know. What I do take issue with is the instinctive denial by his and his patron (President Trump) of the event while immediately launching a campaign to smear the survivor of his alleged assault.

And then, of course, there's the vast majority of the Republican Senators' disingenuous accusations of political hackery by the Democrats, accusations that don't stand up to the cold hard light of day. Of course, sexual assault survivors don't report the assault immediately; they're traumatized. Of course, some survivors take years, decades in this case, to work through that trauma to begin, often piecemeal, to disclose their experiences to others. And, of course, the survivor in this case tried as best she could to protect her privacy, until it was simply no longer possible to do so, which delayed the public release of her story.

All of these details are in consequential to Republicans who are hellbent to ram through Kavanaugh's nomination for the judiciary committee's and full Senate vote's. Setting bogus deadlines and rushing the process are all needed so that they can install a multigenerational conservative majority in the Supreme Court. What about justice for the survivor of Kavanaugh's alleged assault? Justice, in any meaningful sense of the word, has nothing to do with it. Rather, the reassertion of fully institutionalized white supremacist plutocracy is the real objective here. Speaking of which, once they've done the deed, they'll have to change the name of the court back to its original name:

The White Supremacy Court.

Fore Play

I'm looking out of my study window and it's blue sky and sunshine. A few hundred miles south, and the good people of North and South Carolina are facing some of the worst flooding and landslides they have seen in years. I cannot even imagine how horrific it must be. I've seen in the news examples of real grit and resilience as communities come together to take care of the most vulnerable to pull through this disaster.

Good thing, too, because I wouldn't want to wait around for Trump and the Traveling Clown Show to come to my rescue. The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency is currently under investigation for misusing official cars. Nothing like the irony of a disaster of a public administrator trying "manage" this disaster. At least he didn't fly down first class in a private jet to the scene of the disaster or engage in insider trading. I guess we should all be thankful that there are many shades of slime when it comes to corruption in the Trump administration.

Still, if you're a Carolinian, it has to be anxiety-provoking to wonder if you'll get the Harvey or the Maria treatment. My guess is that individuals and communities of color will get the latter, while whites and predominantly white communities will get the former, since institutional racism has always influenced the quality of public services delivered in general and, sadly, even and particularly in the U.S. Government's response to disasters.

Meanwhile, you can be rest assured that Trump is on top of all of this...in between rounds of golf...

Gone With the Norms

Gone With the Wind had to be one of the most horribly racist films ever made, never mind held up as a "classic" of American film making. It glorified the all aspects of the antebellum South and the Confederacy, including the vicious, dehumanizing and brutal violence embodied by slavery.

Kind of like Brett Kavanaugh and the Republican-controlled Senate's judiciary committee's consideration of his nomination.

Norms be damned, frankly, because there was never any intent by the GOP to have a serious examination of Kavanaugh's views, writing or record. They were all too busy licking their chops for the day when they could usher in another 30 years of control of the Supreme Court by a solid block of right-wing white supremacists. Yes, that includes Clarence Thomas, too, who reminds me of Clayton Bigsby, the black Klansman on the Chappelle Show. I guess that justice really is blind.

Anyway, I won't recap the clown show that passed for a proper vetting of Kavanaugh. All he had to do was emulate his patron, Donald Trump, and lie, lie, lie and lie some more. Nobody, certainly nobody with any kind of real political power, was going to do anything about it. I read somewhere that the Republicans felt justified in carrying out this travesty because they considered it revenge for the way the Democrats treated (and defeated the nomination of ) Robert Bork over 30 years ago. Really? WTF? Bork was one of Nixon's willing executioners, sticking the sword right in the back of Lady Justice to help his overlord try to escape accountability for the Watergate break-in. If anyone was patently unqualified to be appointed to the Supreme Court it was him. Now, Kavanaugh is very ably filling the same mold, albeit a bit more photogenically, trading Bork's evil professor look for that of a prep school rowing team captain.

But, at this point, intellectual dishonesty is probably the least of the Republican faults, considering what's on tap once Kavanaugh is confirmed, and let there be no doubt, he will be confirmed. Get ready for further dismantling of women's rights - both in general and reproductive rights in particular; destruction of voting rights - to safeguard the rule by a white minority for the foreseeable future; removal of environmental protections and worker safeguards - to allow unfettered pollution and exploitation of workers; and the elimination of structures to maintain church-state separation - to enshrine the Christian doctrine of deport thy neighbor.

Makes me want to curl up and escape by watching old movies. And why fool around with Gone with the Wind when you can cut right to the chase. Triumph of the Will, anyone?

You've Done a Heckuva job, Donnie!

Over the past week or so, a report was released, updating the death toll figures for last summer's hurricane Maria. It has now climbed to close to 3,000 people with some saying it is likely to climb even higher. I'm not at all surprised. What has surprised me is that it took this long for such figures to finally come out. I'm not sure it would have made much difference anyway even if they had been announced while our bloated combover gasbag "presidente" was huffing and puffing while taking his premature victory lap. He would have simply said or done something equally if not more heinous to distract us, and all of our ears and eyeballs would have quickly shifted to spend a minute on his most recent act of asinine, corrupt behavior.

Still, it bears mentioning that the Orange Menace is now responsible for a failed response to a hurricane with a fatality count that has surpassed that of W.'s personal fiasco, Hurricane Katrina (1,833 dead). You've done a heckuva job, Donnie! With his administration's (intentional?) lagged response one could almost consider it criminal. It's too bad some enterprising attorneys don't try to make that case. But, hey, what's one more lawsuit for Trump? He's so used to suing and being sued, he probably gets all fidgety and disoriented when he or one of his corrupt businesses isn't involved in some form of protracted legal dispute.

In any event, one thing we'll never hear from Trump or his white supremacist goons is an apology, which is certainly due to the people of Puerto Rico. I'd say that the Trump administration revels in treating them second-class citizens but they're all so morally bankrupt and intellectually deficient, most of them don't realize that Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens. Not that it matters to them, they just take great pleasure in sadistically depriving people of color of their basic human and civil rights, regardless of their citizenship status.

This is what it feels like to be "governed" by fascist sociopaths, and that's nothing to sing about.

(c) 2018 www. imperial wardrobe.blogspot.com