Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Ia.), banged his gavel, pursed his lips and harrumphed his way through the valid objections by Democrats during the opening hearing to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. If you remember, this is the same Republican Party, led by the efforts of Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), that invoked a made up ‘Biden Rule’ to deny Merrick Garland and former President Obama a rightful Supreme Court nomination and appointment. The same Republican Party that claimed that the Affordable Care Act was “rammed” down the throats of the public despite seventy-nine committee hearings and debate that lasted from March of 2009 until its’ passage in March of 2010. If you could see under your nose, you would find a Republican.
Defiantly, Grassley conceded that 42,000 pages of documents outlining parts of Kavanaugh’s judicial record were given to his committee [Democrats] the night before the opening hearing. At one-point Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) referred to the Democrats insistence on the use of parliamentarian procedure as, “mob rule.” Again. this was the same group of obstructionists that not only refused a hearing for Garland but would not even grant him a get-to-know-me meeting.
The uneven treatment of a process denying the career goals of honorable men and policy for political gamesmanship is abominable. I know all the quotes; “politics is a blood sport” and “politics is not beanbag” but what will it take for Americans to take to the streets and demand the return of their inalienable rights. A limited number of protesters showed up at the hearing yesterday, and yelled in favor of the rights of women and justice. Most of us (including me) sat at home and threw soft pillows from the couch at the screen. Democrats threw those pillows throughout the Obama Administration. Liberal pols treated Obama like a messiah, waiting on his waving of a staff to fix all that ills us.
At what point and what will it take to demand a return to the government we once respected. The government that passed Medicare; the government that integrated the military; the government that passed the Civil Rights and Voter Rights Acts. I grew up at a time when making people uncomfortable with protest, was a worthy pursuit. I do not mean chaining yourself to a door or blocking highways, we have all grown too “self-important” to partake in that behavior, but we have not outgrown wage gaps; attacks on a woman’s right to choose, and the spilled blood on the American streets of people of color, authorized by a uniform and a badge.
I can hear the screechiness in my syntax but I am tired of hearing that screeching only in my head. The screams from the public should be louder and sustained. I have not gotten a chance to read the new book by Bob Woodward, as of yet, but the reports of Trump’s staff describing the job and the White House as “crazy-town” should spur liberals into action. Bernie is not the socialist bogeyman, Hillary is not the devil, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Andrew Gillum are not there to be lobbed and volleyed back and forth over the net by those who still cannot meet at center court over the Bernie/Hillary rivalry. Stop double faulting into the net, cross the forecourt line and backhand your resistance vote at the adversary on the other side.
Vote in ’18 for Change.
