Image via Twitter.
Nothing is real
And nothing to get hung about
by Tom Sullivan
Image via Twitter.
In the ongoing Brett Kavanaugh confirmation drama — now with Christine Blasey Ford's allegations of sexual assault at a teenage party — reality itself seems to be breaking down. That's just the way the sitting president likes it. He's in charge and reality is what he says it is. His faithful will believe whatever he tells them to because, as a used-car salesmen this week told the Los Angeles Times, “He would walk through fire for us.” And more besides used-car salesmen:
The doppelganger defense that has been percolating for days appeared on Twitter yesterday, reports the Daily Beast:This is an incredibly stupid defense.
— Matthew Chapman (@fawfulfan) September 21, 2018
Which means Senate Republicans will believe it in an instant. https://t.co/IDUXiPNsRZ
A former Supreme Court clerk gave an alternate explanation for Christine Blasey Ford’s allegation against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in a Twitter thread. Ed Whelan, former law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia and the president of a think tank called the Ethics and Public Policy Center, attempts to map possible locations for the party Ford described when telling her story about the alleged attempted assault. He points to a home belonging to another person whose floor plan “corresponds closely to Ford’s description” of the party house. Whelan claims Kavanaugh and the other person closely resemble each other.See, the little lady was mistaken about who assaulted her. It wasn't Kavanaugh. It was one of his classmates and a character witness. Ford shot down that theory immediately.
The point of such sophistry is not to get at the truth. It is to muddy the waters. Dissolving external reality sustains the Trump cult. The FBI could provide findings of fact to support or undercut the Ford allegations. That is the agency's role in such matters. But even if it did, even if the White House could be pressured into ordering the FBI to reopen its background investigation into Kavanaugh, would anything it finds matter? After all, the sitting president considers the law enforcement agency "a cancer in our country." Whatever he says is so, is so. Im-ho-tep!Good lord! This is too perfect. The guy they slimed as the real culprit is one of the alums who signed a letter to the senate attesting to Kavanaugh’s character! https://t.co/W5474G3gAi thx @DoremusJ pic.twitter.com/Yw6Av8URYn
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) September 21, 2018
The bottom line is that a legitimate fact finding role for the FBI in this process is simply not possible with this president in office, and Trump’s corruption is the root cause of this. Because of it, there could not be such a fact-finding effort by the FBI in this case even if both parties were to agree that it’s desirable. And Republicans — who are now claiming that testimony by just Ford and Kavanaugh will be sufficient, to keep this dispute shrouded in he-said/she-said uncertainty — are complicit in creating this state of affairs, in which bringing an external, neutral fact finding effort to bear on this process is essentially unthinkable.The cancer is not in our country. It is eating our brains.
Kavanaugh very well may be entirely innocent, of course, but this only underscores the point further. That absence of that neutral effort to determine the truth — which is the direct outgrowth of Trump’s corruption of the rule of law for his own personal ends — will forever be a question mark over the process, should Kavanaugh get confirmed. After all, if you presume Kavanaugh’s innocence, that inevitably also means that this absence leaves doubt lingering over his ascension that should have been dispelled.
And BECAUSE both house floorplans were made by GM, were they both available in METALLIC MINT GREEN PAINT?!?!!1
— Anomynous Tweeter-1, LLC (@KagroX) September 21, 2018