Part Two – Confirmation in Jeopardy for Supreme Court Nominee

Let’s search for the facts on accusations against Supreme Court nominee…since there really is no hurry, other than the GOP trying to rush this through before we get so close to the midterms.  But it’s a lifetime appointment so we must take the time to get it right!  See the updates on the status of this Supreme Court nominee, Judge Kavanaugh, at the bottom here in part 2.  But first, we have a constitutional democracy to save!  It’s really Trump who is attempting a coup to take over our government, even though he’s already president.  He wants to pull strings to put himself above the law in giving himself dictatorial power, not mere presidential power.  So he wants to operate outside the Constitution, usurping control over the courts, intelligence agencies & the media in weaponizing them against his political opponents.  Should he fire Rosenstein &/or Sessions to get at Mueller, plus putting Judge Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court whose preference for extreme executive powers would likely seek to protect Trump, all seem to play into this president’s authoritarian playbook.  History is littered with psychopaths turned dictators who brought carnage to their countries after taking control.  The warning signs are currently there for America, which it would prove tragic to fall into that trap.

Trump follows his buddy Putin’s dictatorial playbook

The key is to use the levers of power & messaging sources to ruthlessly suppress any opposition, so Trump is learning these tactics well from his Russian idol, as seen in this post from president-trump-fbi-cancer-vladimir-putin-playbook:

It is not often that the president* invites a couple of reporters in to help him obstruct justice in an investigation into his own conduct, but we live in interesting times. Of course, John Solomon and Buck Sexton, the two mooks conducting this interview, give no indication that they’re aware that they’re being used for that purpose, or that they pushed back in any way against this incredible overflow of self-serving crapola. (Solomon has been such an all-purpose White House bobo that even his colleagues have complained about it, and Sexton is a conservative talk-radio goon.) But that’s not the important thing. The important thing is how carefully the president*’s tantrum hews to the tactics in Vladimir Putin’s playbook. Recently, I watched Active Measures, the documentary about Putin, the Russian oligarchs he has brought to heel, and how all of them are connected to the president* in one way or another. Filmed on a shoestring and now running on Hulu, among other platforms, AM is best at illustrating Putin’s ongoing attempts to delegitimize other governments for his own political and financial purposes. One way is to ratfck your candidate into office and then have your new plowhorse throw his opponents into jail. That’s what happened in the Ukraine, and what almost happened in Georgia. The way you do this, of course, is that first you have to undermine the credibility of independent law-enforcement institutions that might get in your way. There is no other way to look at the president* remarkable tantrum about the FBI. “A cancer on the country”? This is an incompetent authoritarian sending signals to his master.

Trump lying has accelerated & let’s heed the warning signs!

The total numbers are obviously unprecedented beyond normal human comprehension.  But the facts are these, that the number of verifiable lies coming from Trump was only 2000 after his first year in office.  But he’s really ratcheted things up here in 2018, with the total number of lies now exceeding 5000!  That means already just this year, Trump has lied to us more than 3000 times!  Extraordinary!  And yes, we should feel insulted & outraged!  What’s even more extraordinary is his base somehow believes him.  That only serves to egg him on to lie some more.  As TV PR lawyer Rudy said a few weeks ago, their strategy is to convince their fans that “truth isn’t truth.”  Inside this next link is a sincere attempt to define fascism, which it says a key component is the destruction of truth.  The similarities to Trump’s methods & rhetoric are unmistakable: how-fascism-works-donald-trump-jason-stanley.  This overall situation imperils our nation when we have the thinking of the partisan Trumpeter crowd possessed by their cult leader, who constantly lies while restating those same lies repetitively, causing his fans to actually believe the unbelievable.  It’s gotten to the point the American people as a whole can’t even agree around basic facts.  See excerpts from trump-lies-endangering-american-democracy-rand, as the rest of the article refers to this new form of truth decay is making for fertile ground for demagoguery.

In recent months, the steady stream became a deluge. Although Washington Post journalists and other fact-checkers have dutifully documented President Donald Trump’s now more than 5,000 misleading statements and outright lies, the American public may no longer pay much attention to the exhausting flood of misinformation. Now, a book-length study from the nonpartisan RAND Corporation warns that a growing disregard for basic facts could have dire longterm consequences for American democracy. From June through August, Trump averaged more than 15 bogus statements a day —more than triple his daily rate in 2017. Recently, he went after Google, falsely claiming the country’s biggest information search tool is “rigged” to make him look bad. He sowed confusion over a key statement he made about the Russia investigation by falsely accusing NBC News of doctoring video of his famous interview with Lester Holt (which has been publicly available in full since May 2017). And in his startling rebuke of an official government-commissioned report concluding that 2,975 people in Puerto Rico died in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, Trump falsely claimed that the report was a Democratic hit job and that the toll “did not go up by much” beyond 6 to 18 deaths.

 

This unprecedented behavior from a US president is akin to dumping gasoline on a long-smoldering trend RAND researchers call “Truth Decay”: a deepening disagreement over basic facts that is increasingly undercutting the fundamentals of our democracy, from elections to policymaking. When Trump’s personal lawyer makes the argument that “truth isn’t truth” in Robert Mueller’s investigation, or argues that “facts develop” to explain away a shifting story about the infamous 2016 Trump Tower meeting, this misinformation coming from the highest levels of the US government fuels blind partisanship. And it could potentially leave the public confused and mistrustful during crucial times, from national votes to a national security crisis. “When we have objective facts that can be verified, or science where there’s a great deal of evidence supported by data, there isn’t an alternative version and facts don’t ‘develop,’ ” says Jennifer Kavanagh, co-author of the RAND report. Trump is ultimately a symptom of a longer-term problem that RAND studied across the political spectrum. The phenomenon grew larger with the rise of social media, but it began stirring and has gone largely unchecked since the early 2000s, she says. The purpose of the RAND report is to better identify the problem and lay groundwork for confronting it. Kavanagh warns: “We should expect truth decay to get worse if we do nothing about it.” Indeed, President Trump’s daily drumbeat of lies and false statements marks an accelerating crisis.

Motives for text message warning system?

Everything Trump does looks like an attempt to portray his omnipotent greatness & usurp unbridled power.  These excerpts from donald-trump-sliding-into-our-dms-an-amber-alert-but-for-the-countrys-soul explain a potential Trojan horse of a new alert system where Trump could control the messaging.  The greatest tool any dictator has is propaganda without dissenting voices, which is why Trump keeps propping up his Fox echo, while engaging in a relentless assault to discredit the real media:

Executive time” was set to take on a whole new sinister dimension this week, as FEMA had announced a test of its wireless emergency alert (WEA) system allowing the president to send text messages about developing disasters directly to the American people — no opt-outs! — was to be scheduled for Thursday.  The system test has since been pushed back to October 3, either because the federal agency is dealing with the “ongoing response efforts to Hurricane Florence,” as it announced, or because there’s no disaster plan in place for the volcanoes of vomit the American people have threatened to unleash if Donald Trump is allowed to slide into their DMs any time the spirit moves him. “I think it is an outstanding tool in the toolbox,” Nick Crossley, president of the International Association of Emergency Managers in the U.S., told NBC. “It is a great way to get notification to anybody who has a cellphone.”

 

Nick — can I call you Nick? — I hope it doesn’t dampen your enthusiasm for emergency management, for which we are all very grateful, but I don’t think you’ve thought through what could happen here. I’ll make a deal with you, Nick. You spend a year as the sole participant in this pilot project and get back to us after the seventeenth “LOCK HER UP!” sends you shooting straight up in bed at 3 a.m. It’s one thing for the president to barf his grievances all over Twitter like a violently drunk Georgetown Prep alum, and quite another for all of our phones to do the missing-child WOOP WOOP every time he thinks Sean Hannity maybe went soft on that segment about Elizabeth Warren’s new Colin Kaepernick tattoo. (Yes, we know he’d be breaking the law.) Holding proof in our hands that Trump has the tools to send out a FEMA alert moves us one step closer to actually comprehending the real possibility that Gary Cohn forgot to steal the nuclear launch codes off the president’s desk before he resigned back in March.

The Conspiracy President

As a pathological liar with an inability to see the world through a lens that extends beyond himself, it’s second nature for Trump to devise untrue conspiracy theories for the purpose of feeding his massive ego & aggrandizing his reputation.  The list of conspiracies below from trump-conspiracy-theories-deep-state is just a tiny fraction of the ones he’s embellished, with the worst of them being the false stories undermining our security/intelligence agencies:

President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he is “really not a conspiratorial person.” Trump made the comment during an interview in the Oval Office with the Hill Tuesday after he was asked about the “deep state” — a popular right-wing conspiracy theory that alleges liberal globalists are working to undermine the president. “I don’t like to use it,” the president said of the term, “because it sounds so conspiratorial and believe it or not I’m really not a conspiratorial person.” The comment comes from Trump, who has spent years — and effectively began his political career — pushing the debunked Obama-is-Kenyan conspiracy theory by questioning the legitimacy of his predecessor’s birth certificate. Trump has also pushed baseless conspiracy theories that:

• He saw“thousands and thousands” of Muslims in New Jersey celebrating 9/11.
• He wonthe popular vote in the 2016 election “if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.”
• Climate change, despite scientific consensus, is “a total, and very expensive, hoax!”

And, without any evidence, has:

• Insinuatedthat MSNBC host Joe Scarborough is actually a murderer.
• Tried to linkthe father of Sen. Ted Cruz to the assassin who killed John F. Kennedy.
• Flirtedwith the thoroughly debunked idea that vaccines somehow cause autism.
• Suggestedthat Google was conspiring to shadow-ban positive news about him.
• SaidDemocrats conspired to inflate last year’s hurricane death toll in Puerto Rico, which was determined by a team of scholars and independent researchers.

Thought better of it

Trump delivered a reckless order earlier this week to release highly-sensitive FBI documents.  He did it at the urging of his congressional & Fox lackeys, since together they look to discredit the DOJ/FBI which is just a ploy to taint whatever Mueller finds or shut down the investigation altogether.  They also want the info as an October surprise so Trump’s far-right radicals can use the info out of context to smear Dem opponents prior to the election.  Trump has even gone so far as saying exposing FBI bias could be a “crowning achievement” of his presidency, while accusing the bureau of being “truly a cancer in our country.”  Fortunately the DOJ & our allies convinced Trump how dangerous such exposure could be to intelligence sources & methods, so the prez on Friday agreed to put the brakes on releasing those documents (at least for now): trump-delays-release-of-russia-docs-after-key-allies-raise-concerns.  Inside trump-declassify-russian-investigation, these excerpts show how ridiculous that idea was in the first place:

But even at my most skeptical, I never believed that a president* of the United States would declassify intelligence material in order to assure the Fox News Channel would have programming options for the next year. Also, of course, as a distraction to help save his own ass. Make no mistake. The material being released is cherry-picked in order to keep the rubes riled and to throw sand in the gears of the ongoing investigations. (The release also may be timed to take some of the heat off Brett Kavanaugh, but I think that’s a minor consideration. This is about the president*’s chestnuts being in the fire.) It is a release tailored to fit the specifications of the increasingly febrile presidential base. I’m surprised they didn’t have Sean Hannity or Alex Jones do the vetting. Congressman Gaetz, who is not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, already knows what’s in there. He’s been inventing the stuff in his head for two years and now he will have The Proof. And, make no mistake. This is a thoroughgoing operation aimed at bringing down the entire Legion Of Supervillains that has been spoon-fed through their radios, their favorite TV news programs, and over the Intertoobz, to various audiences of angry shut-ins since January of 2017. To be sure, the president* needs the rubes aflame more now than he ever has before. Michael Flynn will be sentenced this week. Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen are doing their Righteous Brothers karaoke act for the special counsel’s office. An electoral catastrophe is looming in November, and his Supreme Court nominee, the only real bona fides he has with the Bible-bangers, is in serious trouble. His administration* is in the trash compactor and he knows it. So it’s time to feed the loyal fans some Top Secret Stuff about the Deep State that they can chaw over at the cafes and diners in Zitoville, Ohio. It’s time to give Hannity some Hot Stuff he can toss around with Sheryl Atkinson, Tomi Lauren, and other veteran gumshoes. And Robert Mueller, with no expression on his face, reaches across his desk for another document.

Crazy Fox extremists serve as co-presidents?

When far-right radicals on Fox are permitted by the President to serve as unelected bureaucrats calling the shots in governing our country, the results can be dangerous & lead to devastating consequences.  Check out this link donald-trump-declassify-russia-documents-fox-news-hannity-dobbs-pirro & also When-Donald-Trump-says-many-people-want-him-to-do-something-he-means-Fox-News & these excerpts from trump-ordered-government-declassify-information-he-apparently-hasnt-read:

It wasn’t a surprise when the White House announced Monday that it was ordering the Justice Department to declassify a set of material related to the genesis of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. For weeks, President Trump’s allies on Fox News and in the House had been echoing one another’s calls to do precisely that. So on Monday, that very specific order from Trump: Declassify precisely those pages of the application for a warrant to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page that were mentioned in a news conference held by 12 staunchly Trump-loyal members of the House in September. What’s more, Trump ordered the department to declassify text messages involving a number of names familiar to the Fox News audience. Former FBI agent Peter Strzok, Justice Department official Bruce Ohr and so on.

 

Those elected officials and the Fox News hosts who echoed their demand insisted that the declassifications would demonstrate anti-Trump rot in the Justice Department. Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) promised that revelation would help Republicans win in November. It’s odd, though, that Fox News’s Sean Hannity or Lou Dobbs would call for the release of classified material, given that neither has security clearance allowing them to know what was actually contained in the documents. They, it seems, were relying on the analysis of people like Nunes and Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Mark Meadows (R-N.C.). They were calling for something to be declassified just assuming that it was what was promised. Trump, of course, does have clearance and could know precisely what he was ordering be exposed to the public. But in an interview with the Hill, Trump revealed that he, too, hadn’t read the material.

 

“I have not reviewed them,” he said in response to a question about whether he had reviewed “the memos.”  “I have been asked by many people in Congress, as you know, to release them,” Trump continued. “I have watched commentators that I respect begging the president of the United States to release them. . . . I have had many people ask me to release them. Not that I didn’t like the idea, but I wanted to wait. I wanted to see what, you know, where it was all going. And I think this whole, it’s a hoax. You know Gregg Jarrett wrote a book called ‘The Russia Hoax.’ It actually is a hoax. I call it a witch hunt, but it’s a hoax. Beyond a witch hunt.” “I have been asked by so many people that I respect,” he added later, “ ‘Please’ — the great Lou Dobbs, the great Sean Hannity, the wonderful, great Jeanine Pirro.” All three are Fox News or Fox Business Network hosts. 

Avoid Fox evening shows!

Americans across the nation tuning into the evening shows on Fox fake news are exposing their minds to a saturation of toxic brain rot.  So every night the prime-time hosts put their viewers through 3 straight hours of pure idiocy: all-three-of-fox-news-primetime-stars-raise-suspicions-about-timing-of-brett-kavanaugh-allegations.  A main culprit causing so many Americans to lose their minds as though they’re scrambling their brains in a blender, is the racist, bigoted, sexist Tucker Carlson.  Not only is his show boring & avoids the real news, but there is no useful purpose to his rants of feigned outrage, as indicated by these recent articles inside white-nationalists-love-tucker-carlson-and-other-startling-discoveries-in-rising-out-of-hatred & also tucker-carlson-says-democrats-willingness-listen-christine-ford-same-racism & also tucker-carlson-blames-democrats-death-threats-made-toward-christine-blasey-ford & also fox-news-kavanaugh-ford-sexual-assault-memory.  When it comes to sheer lunacy, the delusional insanity Hannity takes the cake, plus he’s instrumental in why the president has turned into such a goof: trump-released-sensitive-intel-at-sean-hannitys-request.  The female component of the 3 stooges lineup is also complicit in selling Fox viewers on a morally reprehensible & extremist agenda: laura-ingraham-christine-blasey-ford-smear.

It’s plain to see the lying from the echo keeps getting worse & worse: conservatives-war-on-the-press-has-gotten-dangerous-and-it-is-only-going-to-get-worse.  It seems the origins of many of the crazy conspiracies touted by Trump & his congressional/echo allies, are made-up stories fitting a far-right narrative that have gone viral from the deep dark crevices of the internet, which likely often stems from white nationalist groups or foreign bots.  See the powers & dangers of internet messaging in report-youtubes-alternative-influence-network-breeds-rightwing-radicalisation & also how-conspiracy-theories-spread-internets-darkest-corners.

Supreme Court nominee status up in the air

It’s a reasonable request from Dr. Ford’s attorney to spend a few weeks letting the FBI do background checks & explore the circumstances about the incident, just to see what they might find.  Even Kavanaugh should welcome such an investigation to clear his name (if he’s innocent).  But Trump & the GOP are battling against the facts coming out.
They are determined to push through their Supreme Court nominee no matter who he really is.  As public sentiment is turning against them, plus other facts could come out or other victims come forward, it could squash their plans.  As well it should, since I believe we have the wrong Supreme Court nominee.

But those GOP claims there’s a timetable is ridiculous.  The Senate sat on Judge Merrick Garland’s nomination for several months & wound up not doing anything, so the precedent was recently set there is no reason to hurry.  A lifetime appointment to the highest court is too important to just slam through.  Much like the Russian probe, the GOP seems terrified at the truth coming out, so they seek to hide the facts rather than seek them out.  So even as someone like myself who’s pro-life, I say wait on the confirmation until these allegations can be adequately checked into.  As of now they’re still negotiating the terms, but the hearings could be next week.  It’s likely Dr. Ford’s hearing would be more civil & not as abrasive as what happened with Anita Hill, but Ford is no doubt fearing she’d be heading into an ambush.

Our tone-deaf president made more idiotic comments today questioning why Ford didn’t report the assault immediately back when it happened.  It’s not unusual for victims to stay silent following a traumatic event like being sexually attacked, just like what happened with dozens of victims Trump himself allegedly sexually assaulted: trump-christine-blasey-ford-sexual-assault.  Folks, these Trumpian comments from an insensitive jerk seen in that link are more good reasons why women, & men who love women, should vote against the Trump cult party in the midterms, since very few in the GOP have the courage to push back against their leader, this sorry excuse for a human being.

It sounds like GOP senators want the hearing on Wednesday with an outside counselor starting the questioning.  Those 11 GOP male senators on the judiciary committee don’t want to be perceived as interrogating Dr. Ford, knowing they may risk having their Todd Akin moment, the ex-GOP candidate who had run for a U.S. Senate seat from Missouri & became famous for his “legitimate rape” comments.  Orrin Hatch has already come close by saying Ford is “mixed up.”  To all tone-deaf GOP politicians, sexual assault in no joke!!!: rep-ralph-norman-jokes-ruth-bader-ginsburgs-groped.

The victim understands agreeing to Senate hearings would just turn into a he said/she said scenario, so her lawyer correctly wanted the FBI to do background checks, since they’re in a far better position to dig up the facts.  Other witnesses should also testify, like the one actually in the room during the alleged attack.  He denies anything happened, but if they subpoena & get him under oath, it might revive his memory.  Dr. Ford’s life has been put in turmoil since the story broke, including getting death threats, so for security reasons she’s suddenly moved her family out of her home.  At least the FBI is investigating those threats.  As these tug-of-war negotiations go on, one way her story could be told in an non-combative environment without interruptions, criticism or pushback, Ford should consider appearing on a narrative-friendly network, like a Maddow show on MSNBC.  That might sway public opinion forcing an FBI probe.  Or she could spring an October surprise, going on a show after Kavanaugh was confirmed, which should she come across as credible could set up a November midterm slaughter for the GOP.

A high school classmate also recalls hearing things about the incident at the time, while also saying it was consistent with the culture at the school: accusers-schoolmate-says-she-recalls-hearing-of-alleged-kavanaugh-incident.  She even alluded to the assault being common knowledge throughout her school, so again the FBI is best equipped to look up these classmates & verify one way or the other if Ford’s accusations are valid.  There’s other solid evidence the assault did happen, from the concerns she’s expressed to her husband over the years & to her therapist a few years ago, when the trauma from the event prompted her to seek counseling.  The notes from that therapist are very convincing evidence, plus Ford recently passed a lie detector.  There’s a also letter signed by 1000 women from her old high school supporting Dr. Ford.

More Americans now oppose Kavanaugh than support him.  McConnell even tried to warn Trump there were better choices out there than Kavanaugh for a Supreme Court nominee.  But Trump wanted a judge with extreme views on power for the executive branch, so he could get a favorable ruling should any case involving the Mueller probe be brought up before the Supreme Court.  So like everything else Trump touches, this pick was corrupted from the get-go.  Ironically, confirming Kavanaugh will likely spark even more of a November blue wave, as women would turn out in greater numbers than ever.  But shooting down Kavanaugh’s nomination may pare back the blue wave, since the same open Supreme Court seat that energized the evangelical base to turn out in 2016 could do so again.

Articles from newsfeeds about allegations against Supreme Court nominee 

In holding down the number of outbound links coming from our blog, you can copy & paste any of these titles in your search engine.  These news stories are from the last couple days, & just reading the titles themselves is informative, but find the articles you want to read for a depth of knowledge on this fast-evolving story: