Kavanaugh train wreck an opportunity to get one thing right

The reviews keep streaming in following yesterday’s Senate hearing on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court, and as you would expect, they are predictably angry, divided, fractious, sometimes vile and always wildly partisan.

Kavanaugh squared off with Dr. Christine Blasey Ford in a remarkable, virtually unprecedented and occasionally ugly debate over allegations that he sexually assaulted her when they were high school students in suburban Maryland in 1982.

The California psychology professor calmly and firmly told the Judiciary Committee she was 100% certain that Kavanaugh attempted to rape her at a beer-fueled house party when she was 15 years old. The judge responded angrily that he was 100% certain he didn’t do it.

The fallout from this classic he said / she said confrontation ranges from shock, sadness, sympathy and anguish from liberals and especially other victims of sexual assault and their supporters on the one side to political conspiracy theories and “smear” allegations from the Trumpian right wing and its base.

One comment I read this morning stands out, however. It suggested that Brett Kavanaugh should never be confirmed because of what Mitch McConnell and the Republicans did to Barack Obama nominee Merrick Garland in 2016.

And that, in my opinion, is not and should not be what this debate is all about.

In the last year of the Obama presidency, McConnell and his Republican majority refused to consider the appointment of Garland to fill the seat vacated by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, sitting on the vacancy for 10 months until Obama was out of office and Trump took his place in the White House. Conservative Neil Gorsuch was appointed to the bench instead, and took his seat in April 2017.

That shameless act by the GOP majority did happen and it was wrong on so many levels, but it’s over and no one can fix it. Sometimes your team loses the game, but you don’t get to go back and play it again just because you didn’t like the result. So this is not about revenge for Merrick Garland because there is no mulligan for that. He’s not on the court and Neil Gorsuch is. Period.

What this is about, quite simply, is the issue of doubt.

There is doubt about whether Brett Kavanaugh is guilty of sexual misdeeds in his high school and college years and even later, according to three accusers. There is doubt about whether Dr. Ford or the other women have anything to gain from accusing Kavanaugh and whether they are pawns of the Democratic Party to sabotage Kavanaugh’s nomination.

There is doubt about whether the FBI should have been called in to investigate the allegations, and there is doubt about what several identified witnesses would say if such an investigation were to take place.

Most of all, there is doubt as to whether Brett Kavanaugh is morally, emotionally and mentally fit to serve a lifetime appointment on the highest court in America as questions linger about his drinking, his anger and his relationship with women. The court already has one sitting justice who was famously accused of sexual misconduct in the early 1990s. Does the court really need another one, should the claims about Kavanaugh be true?

To resolve those doubts, there needs to be an independent, non-partisan, non-political investigation into the claims of three women who say they were assaulted by Judge Kavanaugh. Such a probe would involve interviewing a number of witnesses whose names have been revealed and who are suspected of having knowledge about the alleged incidents.

One of them, who Dr. Ford said participated in the assault, is hiding out in a Delaware beach house and refusing to tell what he knows.

Instead, we have the Senate Judiciary Committee – with its ruling majority of 11 mainly old, white men – sitting in judgment of Dr. Ford’s and Kavanaugh’s claims. In no universe does this body of legislators qualify as an independent third party, yet that’s what’s taking place.

As I and many others have said repeatedly, there is really no hurry to get this confirmation done, except as a desperate partisan political movement to give the Trump Republican base a victory prior to the November mid-term election. The court isn’t even in session, and there are indications that an FBI investigation could be completed in a week or less.

If the charges against Kavanaugh were confirmed, the country could be spared one of the greatest mistakes in Supreme Court history, or at least since Clarence Thomas was seated on the bench. If the charges cannot be proven beyond any reasonable doubt, Kavanaugh could still be confirmed as President Trump and the Republican Party intended. Liberals wouldn’t be happy, but that’s the way the system is supposed to work.

On the other hand, the debate over the fate of Brett Kavanaugh is an opportunity for the U.S. Senate to do one thing right, in a time when it has done so many things wrong. Is that too much to ask?

Most likely it is, I'm afraid. I would say I’m hopeful if not optimistic, but realistically, we can drop the hopeful part. I’m just not banking on the Senate to find its spine. Meanwhile, hang on to your hats, boys and girls, because this train wreck isn't over, and I think it's going to get even uglier before the last of the wreckage is cleared away.

Read this and I'll send you free money.

Who doesn't want free money? Would you click here to get some?

Actually, this is a test to see if anybody is actually reading my blog. Facebook suggests that only three or four of my friends are seeing it, but my website says I get anywhere from 50 to 200 views. I'm trying to reconcile those numbers.

And by the way, there is no free money. Sorry. That was an alternative fact. Or fake news. Or truth that isn't really truth. Call it what you will. I'm not paying.  

The Twitter president just couldn’t help himself, and that’s frightening

If I tried to list all of the deplorable personality traits that Donald Trump exhibits, this essay would be so long that no one would read it. Maybe no one will read it anyway, but just in case someone does, let me say this: The one characteristic that frightens and saddens me the most is his total and unequivocal lack of impulse control.

Please allow me to explain.

When a woman came forward last week to say that Trump’s nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh, had attempted to rape her in the 1980s, Trump took what, for him, amounted to the high road. He made statements suggesting that the alleged victim, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, should be heard by the Senate Judiciary Committee and that Kavanaugh should be allowed to respond, and then the chips should fall where they may.

Political pundits generally applauded Trump’s comments, political as they might have been, and some suggested he even seemed marginally presidential. For once, when a woman claimed to be the victim of sexual misconduct, the faux-president with a shady past himself seemed willing to step back from the controversy and let the system play itself out.

But true to form, Trump’s “presidential-ness” didn’t last long:   

“President Trump cast doubt Friday on the credibility of the woman who has accused Brett M. Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her when they were teenagers,” the Washington Post reported today, “escalating tensions over the Supreme Court nomination, as Senate negotiations over whether she will tell her story at a public hearing slipped into the weekend.

“By attacking California professor Christine Blasey Ford, Trump abandoned the self-restraint he had showed for days and pushed Kavanaugh’s nomination deeper into turmoil. Democrats, key Republican senators and advocates for victims of sexual assault swiftly rebuked the president.”

In other words, he just couldn’t help himself.

The man who has been accused of forcing sexual advances on more than a dozen women, had sex with a porn star, cheated on all of his wives, had an affair with a Playboy model and bragged about grabbing women “by the pussy” because he was a star just could not stop his impulse to lash out at another alleged victim of sexual assault – without knowing the actual facts – because she stands between Trump and his next big “win,” getting Kavanaugh confirmed to the Supreme Court.    

“I have no doubt that, if the attack on Dr. Ford was as bad as she says, charges would have been immediately filed with local Law Enforcement Authorities by either her or her loving parents,” Trump tweeted on Friday. “I ask that she bring those filings forward so that we can learn date, time, and place!”

Impulse Control Disorder (yes, it’s a thing) is defined as “a class of psychiatric disorders characterized by impulsivity – failure to resist a temptation, an urge, an impulse, or the inability to not speak on a thought.” If you look it up in the dictionary, there's probably a photo of Donald Trump.

Please note two words in the paragraph above: “psychiatric disorders.” I’m not a psychiatrist nor do I play one on TV, but I know what I see and hear and for my money, Trump frequently and consistently demonstrates the symptoms of an impulse control disease. You see it in his speeches, at his rallies, in the impromptu press conferences he holds on the driveway outside the White House on his way to a helicopter and in the aisles of Air Force One when reporters throw questions at him.

He lives for conflict and always needs an enemy to pick on, and if one isn’t handy he goes looking for one. When he finds him or her, he goes out of his way to harass, embarrass, mock, manipulate, degrade, diminish or intimidate his victim until he achieves the appropriate level of self-satisfaction. Whatever passes through his mind falls out of his mouth (or his Twitter finger) without regard for the consequences.

Sometimes he walks it back later, but the damage has already been done. To borrow some trite expressions, you can’t un-ring the bell, un-hear the comments or put the proverbial toothpaste back into the tube.

After the name of Dr. Ford became public, I can just imagine Trump sitting around the White House with his phone in his hand for four days, wanting so badly to strike out at her and boiling over because his handlers had told him not to do it. Like a volcano starting to generate lava, I can see him getting hotter and hotter until finally, the volcano erupted into a molten tweet like the one on Friday which mocked her for keeping quiet about a painful event in her life.

This disorder is bad enough when the president is lashing out at war heroes, Gold Star families, Democrats, disabled reporters and sexual assault victims, but just imagine if his lack of impulse control rose up during a tense negotiation with a foreign country or, say, an unstable authoritarian regime that controls nuclear weapons.

Oh, I know, there are people and procedures that could stop Trump from starting World War III because he was having a bad day, and I don't expect that to ever happen, but isn’t it frightening to know that such a man has the theoretical power to end the world in less than a week?

Tell that to a Trump supporter and they’ll laugh it off as fake news or liberal propaganda or “Trump derangement syndrome,” or they’ll blame it all on Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama or the so-called “deep state.” The President of the United States clearly suffers from one or more psychiatric disorders, and the red hats don’t seem to care…and that’s what’s really frightening.

My dog and I tend to believe Dr. Ford

I have held off writing about the Brett Kavanaugh nomination because, I figured, there is little I could add to what’s been said already and will continue to be said as this saga plays out to its conclusion.

I do have an opinion, however, and no one else has written about that, so here it goes:

I was walking my dog on the day it was announced that a California college professor named Christine Blasey Ford had written a letter claiming that Kavanaugh – faux-president Donald Trump’s second nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court – had attempted to rape her when they were both in high school. He “categorically” denied the accusation and a classic he said/she said scenario began to take shape.

At the time, few facts had emerged, so it was left to our imaginations to determine what had actually occurred…and I have a pretty active imagination. I’m the kind of person who likes to think things through, whether it concerns some issue with my wardrobe or my car or my house or the legitimacy of a Supreme Court nomination.

Also, walking your dog is a good activity for thinking and using your imagination, because while you can talk to the dog all you want, she can’t reply to your comments and is only marginally interested anyway as long as there are things to smell and explore, so you might as well live inside your own head during that time.

So there I was, walking Lucy and thinking about Dr. Ford and Judge Kavanaugh and a theme kept flowing through my brain. Actually it started with a scene from a movie, but I’ll get to that later. In the present tense, she was claiming that he assaulted her and he was saying he didn’t, so at least one of them was not telling the truth.

So was it her, I wondered? What did she have to gain by making her accusations, assuming they are true? As far as we know, she isn’t getting paid for coming forward, isn’t auditioning for a reality TV show and wasn’t planning a book. I mean, she didn’t even want her name released until other people started trying to tell her story for her, so her potential gain was zero, as far as I could see, other than just doing the right thing for the country.

But what could she lose? Well, how about everything? Loss of reputation, loss of credibility, maybe loss of her job and her friends and her peers, not to mention years of therapy for having to sit down with the whole world watching and retell a story that was so painful it took her many years and many visits to a counselor to reveal. And that’s not to mention the inevitable death threats that have forced her and her family to move from their home and go into virtual hiding.

In short, regardless of what happens from here on out, her life will never be the same – not ever – and it will probably be much worse instead of better for doing what she considers to be the right thing.      

He, on the other hand, has everything to gain by denying the accusation and everything to lose if it is true. His whole career – starting with the Georgetown Prep days when the assault allegedly occurred right up through college, law school and the judiciary – has led him to where he sits today, on the doorstep of the highest court in the United States. If Dr. Ford’s allegations are false or not believed, he’ll receive a lifetime appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court where he could easily serve for 40 years and help shape American culture in the conservative Republican mold.

On the other hand, what does he have to lose? See the paragraph above, and add in his reputation, his credibility and the likelihood that he’ll ever again sit on a judicial bench anywhere above Traffic Court in Weewalken, North Dakota, or some such place.        

The stakes in this one are high.

During my walk, I couldn’t help thinking about the Al Pacino character who was solicited to represent a judge accused of raping and beating an innocent woman in the movie, “And Justice for All,” and the climactic scene where he gives up the guilty judge.

“My client should go straight to (effing) jail,” Pacino shouts to the jury. “He raped and beat this woman and he’d like to do it again. He told me so.” And then he turns to the judge and says, “You’re supposed to stand for something.”

I know it’s only a movie, but the parallels were unavoidable inside my imagination. You had a judge, a rape, an innocent victim and, supposedly, “justice for all” according to the American system. Pacino even asks the question about the victim: “Why would she lie?”

Why indeed?

So taking it all into account, I still don’t know who is telling the truth and who is not, and in reality, we may never really know, so the issue comes down to whom we choose to believe. Applying my imagination and my sense of logic – and only slightly influenced by Al Pacino – I tend to believe Dr. Ford. I mean, I don’t know why she would make up a story like this and put herself through the hell she is now experiencing if the incident had never occurred.

And Kavanaugh? He was nominated for the court by a pathological liar and has already been accused of lying to Congress multiple times, so it’s not a stretch to believe he’s not telling the truth once again. Why would he lie? A better question is, “Why would he not?”

Finally, I asked my dog Lucy what she thought and she looked at me and barked. I’m taking that to mean that she agrees with me, which might be because I’m the guy who walks her every day but more likely, it’s because Lucy – like Dr. Ford – has no good reason to lie.

Trump's version of 'Just Do It.'

Caught lying about the ratings for his “Apprentice” TV show, Donald Trump told Billy Bush of Access Hollywood, “Billy, look, you just tell them and they believe it. That's it: you just tell them and they believe. They just do.”

And that’s how Trump conducts his life. Lie constantly. Say the lie long enough and loud enough and people will believe it. They just do.

To the anti-Kavanaugh caller: What are you talking about, and what took you so long?

A few days ago I got a call from the Sierra Club. At least, she said she was calling for the Sierra Club. (You never know these days.) At any rate, the conversation did not go well.

Caller: Hello. I’m calling on behalf of the Sierra Club because Brett Kavanaugh might be nominated for the U.S. Supreme Court, and…

Me (interrupting): He already has been.

Caller: What? He’s already been nominated?

Me: Uh, yes. He was nominated by the president some time ago. You’re too late.

Caller: But not by the Senate. He’s already passed the House of Representatives but not the Senate.

Me (heavy sigh): The Senate has already held hearings on the nomination and we’re waiting for them to vote on confirmation.

Caller: On confirmation yes, but have they voted already? Has he already been confirmed?

Me: No, not yet.

Caller: OK, well, that’s why we’re calling. Argle bargle, argle bargle Joe Manchin argle bargle, argle bargle I know it might not mean anything argle bargle, argle bargle call your senator…

Me (interrupting again): We have already contacted everybody about this some time ago, but thanks for calling.

Click.

*     *     *

Now don’t get me wrong. I respect the Sierra Club and what they do to defend the environment, and I don’t believe that this phone bank volunteer (or whatever she is) accurately represents the organization or its mission and goals. But here’s the thing…calling me this week was a waste of good oxygen on both her part and mine, and the planet needs all the good oxygen it can get.

For the record, Brett Kavanaugh was nominated by faux-president Donald Trump on July 9, 2018. That was about 10 weeks ago. He has already held one-on-one meetings with many members of the Senate and sat through three days of Senate hearings.

He has been in the news daily because of his controversial positions on key issues such as birth control, abortion and executive privilege and because the Republican administration is hiding tens of thousands of documents they don’t want the public to see.

Now, some mysterious woman claims in a letter to Democratic lawmakers that he tried to rape her when they were in high school. The FBI has been asked to investigate the claim, but the woman refuses to be identified so that’s probably not going anywhere. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking on his confirmation proceeding and time is running out.

It seems to me that the Sierra Club should have called me, say, 10 weeks ago when this nomination was first announced. That’s when my wife and I – and other politically involved citizens – started attending rallies like the one in downtown Fairmont and contacting our senators to oppose the Kavanaugh nomination. Just this week, for example, I asked Shelley Moore Capito how much she got paid for promoting Kavanaugh with her daily tweets.

“Do you get paid by the tweet or a flat fee?” I asked her on Twitter. I'm sure she'll read and reply.

To start calling now suggests that I could somehow change Manchin’s mind or convince Capito to do the honorable thing for once in her Senate career. I could be wrong – and I hope I am – but I’m afraid the votes have already been decided. The only thing left to learn is what promises Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins can wrangle out of Mitch McConnell in return for their “yes” votes. Maybe Mitch will offer up some relaxed regulations on the Alaska Pipeline or a new missile defense installation on the eastern coast of Maine.

To be fair, Kavanaugh still has to win the approval of the Senate Judiciary Committee and then the full Senate, and that could take a couple of weeks, so his confirmation is not a done deal, even though most experts believe the outcome was never in doubt. And who knows? Maybe this sexual assault allegation will turn into something.

But the main point here is this: Clearly the woman who called me didn’t know what she was talking about. As I said, she started her pitch by saying Kavanaugh “might be nominated” and later suggested that he had “passed the House of Representatives,” even though the House has absolutely nothing to do with the confirmation of Supreme Court justices.

If she was reading from a prepared script, then it needs to be significantly revised or discarded altogether and replaced by one that contains some actual facts. Political advocacy calls like this one – however well-intended they may be – do not help advance a cause when the recipient of the call knows more than the person making it.

I almost told the caller that, but I had already lost five minutes of my life that I’ll never get back, so I was happy just to get off the phone. When I hung up, my wife – who had heard my end of the conversation – was laughing out loud in another room. When I relayed the other end of the conversation to her, she said, “You have to write about that.”

And so I did.

Three reasons why I hate the NFL

There are three reasons why I have grown to hate the NFL:

* First off is the whole Colin Kaepernick / American flag / national anthem thing, which I have previously written about several times, so I won’t go into it all again. Just let me say that the simplest solution is for the NFL to do what college football does and play the anthem before the players come onto the field to start the game.

They can say they’re doing it to make pro football consistent with the college game or offer any other lame excuse their public relations staff can devise. After a few weeks, fans will forget it was ever done any other way.

The best solution, however, is for the NFL to simply get out of the way and let its players exercise their rights to free speech and freedom of expression and stop trying to dictate every facet of their lives. What, really, would be the harm in that? (Oh, and while they’re at it, they should also tell Donald Trump where he can stick his Twitter device.)

* My second reason for hating the NFL is all of the stupid rules they have implemented since the days when the Chicago Bears were the Monsters of the Midway, Sam Huff was on the cover of Time magazine for his “violent world” and Jack Lambert was doing things that no 220-pound linebacker should be able to do. (Today he would be considered small for a quarterback.)

I defy anybody to watch an entire NFL game and come away thinking the officials consistently called holding, pass interference, targeting, intentional grounding, the “tuck” rule and what constitutes a legal catch. The calls aren't even consistent from one half to the next. Half of the circus catches Lynn Swann made for the Pittsburgh Steelers would be overturned under today’s rules, and Swannie wouldn’t be in the Hall of Fame.

    

* My third reason is what I call “individual aggrandizement.” This takes into account such things as your basic end zone dances; those short stories, soap operas and three-act plays that are seemingly being staged after every score; the celebrations players do after routine performance; and the apparent need that some players have to fight first (to show how tough they are) and to play football later.

I mean, if you’re a wide receiver and you catch a pass or you’re a linebacker and you tackle a guy, why do you have to celebrate every time? Isn’t that what you get paid millions of dollars to do? If you weren’t catching passes or making tackles, after a few games of such abject failure you’d find yourself on the first bus home and someone else would be playing your position.

I may be old fashioned (ok, sometimes I am), but I like the saying, “Act like you’ve been there before.”

* OK, there are actually four reasons why I hate the NFL. The fourth reason is instant replay. This doesn’t apply only to professional football, because I believe that instant replay in all sports could be the anti-christ. It all started years ago when the Steelers beat the Houston Oilers on a disputed call in a playoff game and the NFL decided that replays would be used to overrule bad calls by officials.

The problem is, instant replay slows down games, makes them last too long, frequently takes away momentum from teams on a roll and on top of all that, after reviewing a play six ways from Sunday, the replay officials still get it wrong about half the time.

If we had had instant replay combined with today’s rules, they’d still be reviewing Franco Harris’s “immaculate reception” 45 years later, and we still wouldn’t know if the ball touched the ground or not. If a play is going to be called wrong, let the guys on the field do it and then move on. Life is short. There are other things to do.   

* Actually, there are five reasons why I hate the NFL. The fifth reason is the money. A guy who plays for the Steelers made $12 million last season and is due to make over $14 million this year, but he’s holding out, refusing to play, and people who are defending him say he needs more money because “he has to think about his family.”

My question is, what kind of family does he have that they can’t live on the $26 million he will have earned when this season is over, not to mention all of the other millions he has collected since entering the league?

I blame the owners for this. They’re the ones who sign the checks. A quarterback who isn’t even the best QB in the league just signed a $150 million contract, which means next year another QB will want $175 million and then after that someone will want $200 million and where does it stop?

People are complaining that the NFL isn’t drawing the audiences it once did because of Colin Kaepernick and his infamous knee. I think it’s because people like me can’t afford to go to a game and don’t watch it on TV because we can’t relate to the players on the field, in part for the five reasons listed above.

Actually, there are more than five reasons why I hate the NFL, but I’m tired now and I need to go lie down. Besides, I think there’s a show I want to watch on the Lifetime Movie Network. If not, I can always switch over to C-Span or Home and Garden TV.