Photo of a Woman’s March protestor found at The Daily Wire site – no photo credit given
Just to round out this rainy Thursday afternoon (for me), let’s have the latest look at the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings relative to the conclusion of the FBI investigation. First off, Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) has gone on record, even before reading the FBI investigative report, stating that the report’s conclusion, or Kavanaugh’s innocence or guilt doesn’t matter. He’s also using his official twitter account to send out the phone number of Congress with hashtags such as #StopKavanaugh and #BelieveSurvivors.
Generally, I’ve read that Republican Senators feel the FBI report was comprehensive and Democrats feel it is full of holes (hardly a surprise), and have gone so far as to accuse the GOP of giving the FBI a list of witnesses which excluded Dr. Ford and, according to Ford’s attorneys, a number of other witnesses who could have corroborated her allegations.
Conservative news websites such as The Daily Wire, believe Kavanaugh is being tried in the court of innuendo, public opinion, and temperament, which they feel is insufficient to stop the confirmation. Unlike Senator Booker, they, and specifically their editor-in-chief, Ben Shapiro, who is also an attorney, believe that Kavanaugh should be judged by the evidence and to a legal standard.
This only goes one of two ways. Either the Senate confirms Brett Kavanaugh as the newest Justice to the Supreme Court or they don’t.
If they do, it will be a bloodbath, in some cases literally. To Trump’s and Kavanaugh’s opponents, it would feel like Trump being elected all over again, except Trump winning the election came as a total shock to everyone including me. No one imagined that Trump could win, and when I saw the news headlines the day after the election, I had to check several sources just to make sure it wasn’t some sort of gag.
If Kavanaugh is confirmed there won’t be any shock because it won’t be a surprise, so instead of people being stunned, they will be instantly outraged. The protests will be over the top, as if Trump and Kavanaugh were merged at the hip or became a composite being. The hate for both of them will be tangible, and I suspect the death threats toward the GOP Senators, Kavanaugh, and their respective staffs and families will continue (a credible death threat against the President is a felony). For all I know, someone may feel justified in actually committing assault or worse.
If Kavanaugh is not confirmed, the GOP will cry “foul,” but there won’t be anything they can do about it. The Dems, women’s groups, progressives, and so forth, will claim moral victory and the whole “right side of history” thing. Plus, all they have to do is stall further nominees until November when they hope to win a majority in the Senate. Then no conservative nominee to the high court will stand a snowball’s chance in a blast furnace of being confirmed, no matter how squeaky clean they may be (Trump should have vetted Kavanaugh a little more aggressively).
However, regardless of the results, American politics has already turned a corner. It’s no longer a matter of two differing political parties having control of the nation (there are a lot of other political parties, but the Republicans and the Democrats have the fix in, so the minority parties don’t have a shot at getting anyone elected, at least not on the national level, and certainly not to Congress and the Presidency).
Now, it’s a matter of each party claiming righteousness to the point where each one of them, that is, on both sides of the aisle, desire to reduce America to a one party system (my opinion, but it sure looks that way) where only one voice “represents” (Congress has stopped representing the people a long time ago in my opinion) the “will of the people.” It doesn’t matter if it’s the GOP or the Dems (even though you may think it does) because when only one party has total control, a totalitarian government is the inevitable conclusion.
Protesters gather in the Hart Senate Building atrium on Oct. 4. ALAN HE
If the GOP comes out as the winner, liberals will feel like abortion and same-sex marriage rights will go out the window. If the Dems win, then conservatives will feel like their First and Second Amendment rights will perish.
In other words, no matter who wins, everyone loses. Let’s see what happens in the next twenty-four hours.
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Well, let’s be honest here: the only reason Trump wants him on the bench is because Kav believes the president should be above the law. That’s it. There were others on that list who might have made relatively better candidates, but all that matters to DT is that he wants someone there to cover his rear end should things go seriously south for him.
And again, looking from the outside, I’m not so sure that the Democrats believe as firmly that theirs is the only voice that matters. True, they have been no angels themselves, but have they ever gone to the grand-operatic heights of the Republicans in commanding the spotlight? Not if news here is any indication. The GOP has done an amazing job of claiming that position, to be sure, even if it means convincing people to vote against their better self-interests… but you have to give the GOP leadership chops for taking every situation, no matter how dire, and turning themselves into victims as a result. Kav’s unhinged rant about “Clinton revenge” should have been enough right there to stop his process… but, as we all know, the GOP Senators took that rant and ran to the goalposts in their desire to become, through him, victims of their own failures to find any real dirt on Hillary when they had the chance. And now, an FBI investigation that supposedly clears him but wont be made public… okay, if this guy’s such a shining beacon, why hide the thing that proves it? It just doesnt make sense.
But then, not much out of your demented country does these days.
If anything, James, I fear this means the Great American Experiment has gone so far off the rails that now there’s not much else to do but clear away the wreckage and the debris and let the other trains get to moving again without it. Somehow, we’ll survive..
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I guess it’s up to Canada to save the world, then. 😉 Relax, I’m just kidding.
Actually, that’s a major point of disagreement I have with Kavanaugh. Sure, he wants “his” President to be above the law, but no President should be (including Obama’s phone and pen). Unlike the Senate and SCOTUS, Presidents are rather fluid things, moving on in four to eight years. What we need are term limits on our Senate (don’t know if you have that sort of thing) and perhaps even limits on how long a judge can sit on the Supreme Court. Pretty sure Feinstein and Baden are on their last legs by now.
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Our Parliamentary system is very different from yours, and our leaders can be called down and replaced far more easily: all it takes is a no-confidence vote to bring down the government and force another election. Also, our prime minister is just another member of Parliament — granted, one with more perks, but he’s still an MP and he has to not only answer to the country but he certainly has to keep his riding (his political district) happy if he wants to keep his job. I guess bottom line in all of this is that we have safeguards built into every level to make sure “professional politicians” dont last long. Yes, we have those who do serve for a long time, but they are not as “professional” about it as yours. A Mitch McConnell, for example, would not last long here, nor would a Clinton. If you’re going to hang in there for the long haul, you have to prove to the people in just your riding that you deserve to stay… and that gets tough for most of them.
Yes, our judges serve for life, but again we have a different set of criteria for selecting them, one the US would find totally unacceptable, I suppose.
The US could learn a lot from our system of governance, but you know, being exceptional and all, it’s unlikely to pay any kind of attention. 🙂
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I’d like to clarify that Kavenaugh does *not* wish to place the president above the law (period; full stop). He would, however, prevent insurrectionists from interfering with the performance of his duties while in office. The present political climate seems to require just such protections.
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Uhm… no. He does.
https://www.thenation.com/article/brett-kavanaugh-argued-sitting-president-law/
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The headline and the tenor of that linked article are both in error and misinterpret that which they reference. A sitting president who has not been impeached, to convict him of any actual crime, is entitled to the presumption of innocence to which any citizen is entitled. That means his discharge of his presidential duties must not be unimpaired by unproven insurrectionistic accusations. That does not constitute placing him above the law; it is using the normative principles of law and justice to protect him from unjustified attack and interference. If, and only if, he were guilty of some “high crimes and misdemeanors”, and the charges against him were proven, then and only then would he be removed from office. Even if not removed from office, prosecution against him might still proceed upon completion of his term in office. Consequently, at the absolute worst, a criminal president’s conviction and punishment might be delayed by a few years. Again that does not constitute placing him above the law. It merely respects the position of the presidency and the sanctity of the electoral process that elevates a candidate to that office.
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Nice try, but no. What you’re saying is that the president is no longer a servant of the people but its master, above the law and immune to any claims whatsoever against him. To say, “Oh well, they’ll get him in a few years” is just saying he has a few ore years to break the law with pretty much complete impunity. His position, in theory, is no higher or lower than your own, but in the past decades, you Americans have elevated your president to the very royalty you fought against. And look how that’s working out for you.
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I believe, docandraider, that you missed the point about being deemed *innocent* until *proven* guilty, which is foundational to US jurisprudence and liberty. It is not a matter of elevating the president to any royal, untouchable status. There is no hint of a license for ongoing criminal behavior — though there was some question during the Obama administration about how to interdict suspected criminal behavior at the highest levels. This principle does serve to protect a public servant from unwarranted attack and interference with his performance of the duties for which he was elected, and Kavenaugh’s opinions on the subject were legal ones based in existing law.
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Again, nice try, but no. Kavanaugh isnt operating under any kind of innocent-until-proven-guilty methology. He has said, qite baldly, that if anyone were to take the president to court, it would be “disruptive to the nation”. It wouldnt matter, in his POV, if the president was innocent or guilty. He is simply above the law… because he’s the president — and therefore should not be charged, period. Or, if we want to look at it another way, Trump had a list of 22 potential justices, all approved by his far right wing advisors. Some were, according to reports, better suited than Kavanaugh and would have sailed through this. But Trump was insistent on putting him on the bench. Gosh, I wonder why….. As for your drive by about Obama, someday you Ameericans are going to wake up to the rather glaringly obvious fact that Obama was the best thing to happen to your country in decades — and that the only reason his reputation gets trolled like this is because he had the temerity to be a black man living in your ever so pristine white house. You’ll deny that, of course, but I’m afraid the history is a bit too obvious. So do please continue to support the Bankrupter-in-Chief as he systematically trainwrecks your country. Your choice, of course. Just remember, as you slog thorugh paying off the massive debt load he’s put on you for generations — 1.7 trillion and counting — that he didnt put it there because he actually gives that much of a damn about any of you. You are no different than the investors he bilked over the decades: you’ve simply given him access on a far grander scale, and he’s reveling in it. And now he has a SCotUS justice who will absolve him of doing everything right to his claim of shooting someone on Fifth Avenue… and quite possibly that as well.
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Those trillions of dollars worth of “massive debt load” that you cite was created by Obama, and race was not in any degree the reason for disparaging him. That accusation is entirely a “red herring” to deflect the real shortcomings of his administration. Leftist ideology and pursuit of policies that lead to totalitarianism rather than democracy are among his faults; and it remains to be seen whether law enforcement will complete investigations that have been mooted into criminal behavior in his administration.
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Uhm… again, no. That 1.7 was created by the tax cut just passed by your Congress. You do remember the tax cut, right? It was in all the better papers and magazines. It is hardly a red herring. Your Congress then turned around and made it even worse by increasing, over the Pentagon’s protests, the defense budget to almost a trillion dollars all by itself. So please explain how a trillion spent on army toys coupled with a 1.7 trillion tax cut that benefits only the top 1% is somehow Obama’s fault when both issues came around in 2017 and 2018?
As for Obama’s adding to the debt load, that’s not rocket science: it was expenses left over from the Bush era that, over Obama’s objections, Congress continued to dole out. You seem to forget that Congress cuts the cheques, not the president. With Obama, you had a Congress that loved to spend because it meant spiting the president they loved to hate, and with Trump, you have a Congress that loves to spend even more with the president’s encouragement, even as it cuts taxes for the wealthy out of some PR-manufactured dream that this will trickle down to the poor… just like it didnt work with Reagan, remember?
And let’s not forget the latest budget irony: Trump’s trade war with China — which has hurt American farmers, requiring DC to promise to underwrite their lost income — which means finding the cash to do it — which means (are you ready? are you? I dont know that you are, but here it is) borrowing the money from China to pay for it.
Seriously, do you really keep up with this stuff? Because it’s pretty sad when a Canadian knows more about this than an American.
Have a nice day. 🙂
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If you want to talk about “keeping up with this stuff”, then go look at the change in the debt rate during the Obama administration. The debt in 2008, as of the end of the Bush administration, was $459 billion. In 2009 under Obama it rose to $1.4 trillion, and stayed above a trillion until 2013. That rise corresponded with a change from 60% of GDP to more than 100%. Don’t blame the Republicans for that spending. And your economic analysis skills could stand some improvement.
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Oops! Typo alert! “… must not be impaired” rather than “… must not be unimpaired”. The double negative was not intentional.
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” …. being exceptional and all, it’s unlikely to pay any kind of attention. ☺ ”
That was a good one, docandraider.
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