There They Go Again: Dominant Democratic Politician Connived To Put another Reactionary On U.S. Supreme Court, Failed Rapist Brett Kavanaugh, and Joe Biden, Blackmail Victim??

The Democratic Party is truly hopeless. When it comes to protecting human rights, or even just what paltry protections for average people exist on paper in U.S. law, or "standing up for" its proclaimed "values," or "fighting for" people it claims to represent, the Democratic Party has proven once again to be a political death trap for anyone relying on them for these things.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, did her utmost to keep secret a letter from a college professor that stated that Trump's second Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, attempted to rape her while both were high school students. Feinstein is the senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which just concluded high-speed "confirmation hearings" led by the Republican chairman, Charles Grassley, a fossilized reactionary from Iowa. [1]

The woman, Christine Blasey Ford, now 51 and a psychology professor, described how Kavanaugh and a chum, who were 17 at the time, attempted to rape her when she was just 15. Both men were very drunk, and Kavanaugh threw her down and lay on top of her, stifling her screams with his hand and tearing at her clothes while his accomplice turned up music in the room very loud as cover. When the accomplice jumped on top of the two, they tumbled over and she managed to flee. In 2012 she confided in a therapist, who notes corroborating the woman's account were obtained by The Washington Post newspaper. The victim also just passed a polygraph test of her veracity.

Kavanaugh, predictably, denies it. However Kavanaugh’s classmate, a neofascist hack named Mark Judge, said of the attempted rape, “I have no recollection of that.” That's not a denial! Furthermore, he wrote a memoir that provides some indirect evidence for the victim's claim, "Wasted: Tales of a Gen X Drunk." The title gives an accurate sense of the contents. [2]
 
Feinstein refused to let her Democratic colleagues on the Judiciary Committee see the letter from Ford, and stonewalled questions from other Democratic Senators and staffers about the letter from Kavanaugh's victim.  Her staff brushed them off by saying it was too long ago to matter and that Feinstein had “taken care of it.” [Yeah, the way Joseph Biden "took care of" Anita Hill's revelations about Clarence Thomas in 1991.] The New Yorker magazine quotes "Congressional sources" saying  “We couldn’t understand what their [Feinstein and her staff] rationale is for not briefing members on this. This is all very weird;” and “She’s had the letter since late July. And we all just found out about it.” [3]

After being exposed in the media, Feinstein passed the letter (and the buck) to the FBI for "investigation." The FBI announced that it put the letter in Kavanaugh's file, and that's it. Feinstein announced her passing of the hot potato to the FBI with this internally contradictory statement: “That individual strongly requested confidentiality, declined to come forward or press the matter further, and I have honored that decision. I have, however, referred the matter to federal investigative authorities.” Which of course isn't honoring the victim's request for confidentiality, as telling the FBI exposes her identity and the FBI passed it along to the Trump White House for good measure.

By first deep-sixing and then being forced to reveal the victim's letter, Feinstein reaped the worst of both worlds. She is exposed as trying to cover it up, and attacked for the timing of a "last minute attack." White House spokesperson Kerri Kupec quickly took advantage, stating  “Not until the eve of his [Kavanaugh's] confirmation has Sen. Feinstein or anyone raised the specter of new ‘information’ about him,” slamming the revelation as an “11th hour attempt to delay his confirmation.”

Which, unfortunately, is how it looks. [4]

Republican Senators have followed suit, also blasting the Democrats.

But there is more. Feinstein ignored a letter she received in July, months BEFORE the just-concluded high-speed "confirmation hearings," from an attorney stating he had information from several Federal employees regarding Kavanaugh. Grassley also received that information. Here Feinstein can't pretend she was protecting someone's confidentiality. Taken together, the two cover-ups prove Feinstein's intent to help seat the extreme reactionary Kavanaugh on the high court, where he will vote to kill Roe vs. Wade, ending women's right to abortion in most of the country immediately, empower every abuse by the secret police, and immunize Donald Trump from any prosecutions. [5]

We're been here before, over and over, in fact. The Democratic Party has a HISTORY of smarmily helping the GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) elevate anti-human reactionaries to the Supreme Court. Then every election they send out political junkmail saying only THEY stand between us and a far right wing Supreme Court that will overturn Roe vs. Wade, etc.

Recall that Antonin Scalia was confirmed by a Senate vote of 98-0. Those weren't 98 Republicans.
And in 1991 the man who proved indispensable to elevating known sexual harasser Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, another extreme reactionary, was Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Democratic Senator Joe Biden. (Yes, the same whom Barack "The Drone Assassin" made vice president, and who has pretensions of becoming president in his own right.)

Biden blocked the testimony of three corroborating witnesses for Thomas' victim Anita Hill at the confirmation hearings for Thomas. He also privately advises his Democratic Senate colleagues to discount Anita Hills' testimony. The damning story is recounted in a book by two establishment reporters. [6]

In December 2017 Biden, preparing his run for President in 2020, issued what The New Yorker mischaracterized as an apology to preempt criticism of his dirty deed in 1991, saying “I wish I had been able to do more.” Of course he certainly WAS able to "do more," or rather just NOT do what he DID, which was to privately smear Hill and block her supporting witnesses.

Unless he literally means he had no choice. Which could only mean the regime of Bush the Elder was blackmailing him.

If that is the case, Biden needs to come clean right now!

 Reactionary birds of a feather: Grassley and Feinstein, both born in 1933, both 85. 
Feinstein thinks life begins at 90, as she is currently running for another 6-year Senate term.

1]  "Dianne Feinstein Withholding Brett Kavanaugh Document From Fellow Judiciary Committee Democrats," The Intercept, September 12, 2018.


2]  "Brett Kavanaugh’s High School Friend Isn’t Helping the Nominee’s Case," Mother Jones, September 15, 2018.

3]  "A Sexual-Misconduct Allegation Against the Supreme Court Nominee Brett Kavanaugh Stirs Tension Among Democrats in Congress," The New Yorker, September 14, 2018.

4]  Similarly, New York officials let Donald Trump run his fraudulent "charitable foundation" in blatantly illegal fashion for years, and only after he became president initiated legal action against it. Which sure looks "political," don't it! Likewise, the FBI questions Paul Manafort years ago about his work in Ukraine, and took no action against him. And of course the NSA knows everything about everyone's money transfers, including Paul Manafort's. Since he'd been allowed for years to "launder" his money, underpay his taxes, and work for a Ukrainian ruler without registering as an "agent of a foreign power" without the government minding- and remember, the Democrat Obama was president for the previous eight years!- it is little wonder he was complacent. Yet suddently secret police apparatchik Robert Mueller III hurls all these charges at him. Rather like the scene in Casablanca, when the French police chief, under Gestapo pressure, suddenly "discovers" gambling in Rick's club.

5]  "Attorney Sent Letter to Chuck Grassley and Dianne Feinstein Claiming Federal Court Employees Willing to Speak About Brett Kavanaugh," The Intercept, September 17, 2018.

6] See "How the Democrats Helped Create an Ultrareactionary Supreme Court- And Strip Women of Their Abortion Rights," July 10, 2018.

Democrats Put On An Empty Show of "Resistance" To Kavanaugh Supreme Court Nomination

You have to hand it to Democratic Party politicians: they are indefatigable con artists.

Their latest con, from just yesterday, was trying to stop the wheels of the Republican-controlled Senate from inevitably placing the extreme, anti-human reactionary ideologue Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court.

Trump's presidential predecessor, Barack "The Drone Assassin" Obama, nominated Merrick Garland to fill the vacancy left by the departure of Justice Anthony Kennedy in mid-March of 2016. That was TEN MONTHS before the end of Obama's term. The Republicans in the Senate, led by their fuhrer, I mean leader, Senator Mitch "Coalbrain" McConnell, refused to hold necessary hearings to consider the nomination.

What did the Democrats do? Did they scream bloody murder? Did Obama use the bully pulpit of the presidency to denounce this travesty, this usurpation of his presidential prerogative, daily or at least weekly? Did the Democrats launch an unrelenting media campaign to force the Gang Of Plunderers (GOP) to end the obstructionism of normal Constitutional process?

They did not. They just rolled over and played dead. Yet another despicable act by that reactoinary party of con artists and the execrable Obama.

Imagine if the situation was reversed. What do you think the Republicans would have done if a Democratic-controlled Senate snuffed a nominee of a Republican president like that? They'd threaten a civil war if they had to.

But then, the Democrats let the GOP steal at least three presidential elections from them -2000, 2004,
and 2016.

The truth is, the Democrats WANT a reactionary Supreme Court. They smarmily disguise the fact with political gamesmanship.

Antonin Scalia, one of the most extreme reactionaries ever elevated to the high court, was confirmed by the Senate 98-0! That means every Democratic Senator voted for that vile creature. And Clarence Thomas would never have made it if not for Senator Joe Biden, who chaired the Judiciary Committed in the then-Democratic-majority Senate. He told the other Democrats to discount the damning testimony of Anita Hill about Thomas' gross sexual misconduct. [1]

EVERY rightwing horrible who got to wear the robes of ultimate judicial power got there with the crucial votes of Democratic Senators. The Democrats merely POSE as "liberals." They are in fact pro-repression, pro-corporate tyranny in their actions.

So on Tuesday morning, during the opening of the sham "confirmation hearings" for rightwing GOP apparatchik Brett Kavanaugh by the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by a fossilized reactionary Senator from Iowa, Charles Grassley, we were treated to stunts by Democratic Senators Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Richard Blumenthal, and others, trying to raise points of order with the authoritarian Grassley, who ignored them, talked over them like he was deaf, and repeatedly banged his gavel to try and silence them. To be sure, the Democrats objections were valid- such as the fact that the Trump regime dumped 40,000 documents on the Committee the day before, leaving no time to read and evaluate them, and refuses to release another 100,000 dealing with Kavanaugh's crimes when he was a henchman to President George W. Bush in the White House. These documents probably contain proof that Kavanaugh lied during his previous Senate confirmation hearings, when he was made a Federal Appeals Court judge by Bush. He swore then he'd had nothing to do with torture policy. There is evidence this was a lie. (By the way, Booker is a reactionary, as Glen Ford has documented, and Kamala Harris quashed an investigation into Steve Mnuchin, whose bank was found by her staff when she was California state attorney general to have committed at LEAST 1,000 cases of mortgage foreclosure fraud, stealing people's homes. So to see people like that posturing as Brave Liberal Warriors is particularly nauseating.) Mnuchin is now Trump's Treasury Secretary, thanks to Harris aiding and abetting his mountain of felonies. [2]

But what if the Democrats manage to stall the confirmation process past the upcoming midterm election in November? Say they manage to retake the Senate? That's a long shot, and if it happened they would have only a bare majority. They'll have to stall until the new Senate is seated next January. And then what? RIGHTWING DEMOCRATS FROM PRO-TRUMP STATES ARE GOING TO VOTE TO CONFIRM KAVANAUGH! So this whole "opposition" show is just to snooker people into thinking the Democrats are "fighting" the Kavanaugh nomination.

They should have done their fighting during the ten months McConnell and his wrecking crew bottled up the nomination of Merrick Garland. Not that Garland was any prize. He's a rightwinger, just not an extreme one like the despicable Kavanaugh. [3]

1]  Biden's despicable role is documented in the book Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, by two establishment journalists (one of which went on to become the first woman to become top editor at the New York Times, Jill Abramson).

2]  To discover the real Booker behind the mask, see: "Glen Ford Speaks about the Black 'Mis-Leadership' Class," October 18, 2013; "Cory Booker is No Progressive: The Countless Reasons Why He Will Not Be a Good Senator," The Majority Report with Sam Seder, August 12, 2013; and "Glen Ford: Corporate Assault on Public Education," May 9, 2012, all on youtube.com

3]  For what an anti-human interest scumbag Kavanaugh is, see "Report Finds Judge Kavanaugh Ruled Against Public Interest in Almost All of His District Court Cases," Democracy Now!, September 5, 2018.