Living in the Swamp!

This Kavanaugh situation is such a travesty!  What we are witnessing is no less than the corruption of our ideals as a system based on the rule of law, and the procedure of 'regular order' that is agreed upon for the operation of the government.  

Mitch McConnell stood up in the Senate yesterday and pompously and self-righteously excoriated the Democrats crying “Shame, Shame!” for somehow conspiring to derail the nomination of Kavanaugh.  What a worm!  That disingenuous accusation coming from a man who openly announced that it was his mission to make Obama a one term president; and then who opposed every legislative initiative proposed by the Democrats for 8 years and capped it off with denying a President with a year still in office from appointing a Supreme Court justice by corrupting the rules of the Senate.  This is a man with no shame at all who is the personification of all that is evil and rotten in the quest for power at the expense of American ideals.

The Kavanaugh mess is just what he deserves!  And now he promises to ‘plough through’ the accusations of sexual assault against his President’s candidate for the Supreme Court and try to ram through a vote, discarding all the rules of due process for consideration for the advice and consent of a nominee for a lifetime appointment.

Precedent for these kinds of hearings and process is being discarded.  The FBI has, in past proceedings, been requested to provide investigations and evidence to inform the questioning of candidates for approval.  Not anymore!  Republicans lead by McConnell and Grassley just want to force through the vote to get their man on the court so they can appease their base.  

It doesn’t matter if their nominee may have major character flaws, like being a sexual predator and a liar!  Of course, let's have someone with those 'admirable' character traits on the court who can decide cases on women’s choice?  After all, self righteous white men are surely the best and final arbiter of a woman’s right to decide what to do with their own bodies! 

Excuse me, but what is so wrong about getting to the bottom of this?  Why are Senators Grassley and McConnell so afraid of finding out the truth about what happened? Why don’t they want to allow the calling of additional witnesses, or the assembling of additional evidence?  You would expect that Kavanaugh would push hard to get to the bottom of the matter.  No, he just mouths his talking point about wanting a 'fair process'.   It's truly fair, in the meantime, that Grassley, McConnell and Trump and other 'fine' Republican members of Congress  continually are undercutting Professor Ford, assuming her 'imagining' the whole affair and blaming the Democrats for a smear campaign.

Let’s not forget why the sycophantic Republicans want to get this man on the court.  He is perhaps the world's most energetic proponent of protecting the President from any accountability for obstruction of justice or indictment for crimes he may have committed.  And, of course, he might not object at all to the President pardoning his family and himself.  Kavanaugh is perhaps history’s most avid proponent of executive power, and will most probably make decisions on the Supreme Court to that end. 

The Republicans in the Senate, at least most of them who have abandoned all allegiance to our American ideals of the rule of law and the oversight that they are supposed to provide in the quest for checks and balances, proceed in lockstep for reasons that can only be imagined.  They have abrogated their responsibility to the Constitution and the country as members of the Senate.

I saw something really striking last night.  I forget where I saw it on TV, but there was a discussion about the people running for office in the upcoming midterm elections.  First there was a screen full of faces of the Republicans running for office, both in the Senate and the House.  There were only faces of white men dutifully wearing their ties and jackets and looking like a composite picture from a fraternity house in the 60s.  Then there was the picture of the Democratic faces running for the same offices and there was a mix of men and women, both black, white and tan, dressed casually and neatly.  The question asked was “Which picture looks more like people who represent the ‘real’ America?”  Need I say more?

What my country has become at the hands of these Republican ‘Stepford-like’ conservative abusers of our American ideals is the true tragedy.  How sad that what makes America and the American ideal the dream of literally billions of people around the world should be represented by people who lie, who value only money and power, and who really don’t care a whit about the average American citizen.  These people are the image we present to the world because of the influence of big wealth in politics and idolation of money and power by the billionaires who have hijacked our Republic. (Thank you Citizens United!)

This is all so disgusting.  We all need to think about who the people are who are currently in power.  We need to shed ourselves of the Republican rot that has manifested in our statehouses and federal government.  It is time to turn them out and allow some real representation of the people of America in the People’s houses of Congress!