Deciphering the Kavanaugh Con Job

By Calvin Hill

I don’t remember the day or date. I don’t remember the floor or room number. I am unsure of the time it happened. In fact, I don’t remember if it occurred during the fall or spring. But there are things I am 100% certain of to this day. I was a pint-sized ninth grader when two of my bigger male classmates held me up against a female classmate while her back was against the coat closet. I remember the look on her face when they wouldn’t put me down, I remember her name, and I remember the name of one of the guys who held me against her – and it was 55 years ago. The suggestion that certain traumas or very uncomfortable events are false or fabricated, misremembered, or cases of mistaken identity because of the passage of time are patently absurd. I remember I cried when my mother left me on my first day of kindergarten. I remember my kindergarten classmate, neighbor and friend, Carl Goff, put his arm around me to comfort me on that day. I do not remember anything else about kindergarten – just that.

It is why the attacks on the memory of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford are insulting. It is why the insinuations that attorney Michael Avenatti and his client, Julie Swetnick, ruined the case against Brett Kavanaugh are also absurd.  Ms. Swetnick made the claim that she witnessed Kavanaugh and his friend, Mark Judge, at parties where gang rapes had taken place. For veteran columnist, Mike Barnicle, on an episode of Morning Joe, to make the claim that Swetnick’s assertion was “preposterous” was in and of itself, preposterous. CNN host and New York Daily News columnist, SE Cupp, described Mr. Avenatti as a carnival barker. Not only did the attorney insist that Ms. Swetnick be willing to sign an affidavit to the effect, she also provided names of witnesses to corroborate her statement. For a “veteran” columnist to dismiss a statement by Ms. Swetnick and Cupp to castigate the attorney who was careful enough to insist that it be sworn to under oath in an affidavit simply shows that Barnicle, along with Cupp, have succumbed to the White House reality show, Truth Isn’t Truth.

In a more recent episode of Morning Joe, Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse, who was hawking a book, conveniently fudged facts when he claimed that Kavanaugh was accused of participating in gang rapes. He was not. The factual accusation was that he attended parties wherein such assaults took place. Another fact disclosed by ex-girlfriend of Mark Judge, Elizabeth Rasor, was that Judge confided to her that he and other Georgetown Prep classmates took turns having sex with girls who had had too much to drink. She never said that Judge implicated Kavanaugh. Apparently Senator Sasse’s short term memory is much worse than the long term memory that Maine Senator Susan Collins accused Dr. Ford of having.

Several corroborating witnesses reached out to the FBI on behalf of Ms. Swetnick and Deborah Ramirez, who had accused an inebriated Kavanaugh, when Yale students, of exposing his penis and shoving it near her face, causing her to touch it as she pushed him away. And though she doesn’t know who it was, Ramirez distinctly remembers a male voice yell out that ‘Brett Kavanaugh just put his penis in Debbie Ramirez’s face.’ However, with truth not being truth in the Trump White House, the Republican controlled Senate never approached a serious attempt to corroborate the allegation of Ms. Ramirez, the sworn testimony of Dr. Ford, or the accusation in the sworn statement by Julie Swetnick.

It should not surprise anyone that there would not be a legitimate search for the truth – especially Senator Jeff Flake. As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he was witness to the corrupt intent surrounding the confirmation hearing of Kavanaugh. It had become known that Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, told Trump that Kavanaugh’s paper trail made him too difficult to confirm. The response of the White House, aided and abetted by Chairman Chuck Grassley, was to nominate Kavanaugh anyway and hide the paper trail. That which was demanded of nominee Elena Kagan and made available to the committee was deemed unnecessary to be scrutinized by the committee in the case of Kavanaugh. For Flake to submit to this discriminatory practice, over such an important position, makes his call for an FBI investigation into the allegations against Kavanaugh ring hollow. It was Flake who countered, “Oh yes,” that it would be the end of the Kavanaugh nomination if it was discovered that he lied under oath before the committee, knowing that any documents exposing possible perjury would not be forthcoming. And knowing that the White House, the chairman, and his party members were willing to hide relevant documents, it should have been more than obvious that they would also hide corroborating witnesses.

Most people are honest and remember certain events – particularly those that are traumatic and earth shattering. People can easily recall where they were when they heard Michael Jackson died, when John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were assassinated, and that fateful day after 9:05 AM on Sept. 11, 2001. Not Donald Trump. He recalls seeing hundreds of Muslims in Jersey City celebrating the destruction of the Twin Towers. That was proven false. He also claimed to have lost hundreds of friends in the Trade Center – another fabrication. I remember Chap Hayes put a dent in a barracks utility panel on April 4, 1968 at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi. I also remember a caucasian fellow airman, JB from Pennsylvania, who came by my room a few days after that for a long conversation about things I can’t remember, except that he was bothered because the training instructors had told the white GIs to avoid the black GIs after King was murdered. It suddenly made sense why white GIs seemed to make detours to and from the chow hall and other venues when they saw two or more black guys walking together. None of which made any sense because we all had to line up in formation to march to and from our tech school classes.  Apparently, the brass was concerned that the racial turmoil throughout the country might spill over onto the base. As a black teenager from the ethnically diverse lower east side of New York, being in southern Mississippi in 1968 was concern enough. And it was one of those formations where I overheard a guy named Leonhardt say that he was not going back to the Lamplighter, (a bar several of the white GIs frequented), because “they wouldn’t serve my man, Hill.”

All of this is so unforgettable to me that I would be willing to swear to it, under oath, or by sworn affidavit. I cannot attest to the fact that the persons I mentioned would do so under oath or on the record. What I do know, is if they were willing to do so and there was no effort to contact them, much like the witnesses of Dr. Ford, Swetnick, and Ramirez, it becomes easy to say that my stories could not be corroborated. For members of the US Senate to authenticate a sham investigation on behalf of an accused nominee is shameful. What is infinitely more deserving of scorn is that they did so on behalf of a president who supported an accused pedophile known to be banned from a mall for trolling for underaged girls and was verified to have called a high school seeking a date with an underaged girl. Even when confronted with a photo of a female with black eyes who claimed she was beaten by her husband, and corroborated by a second wife who said he beat her also, Trump simply chose to believe the husband’s denials – much as he believes in the innocence of the murderous Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un and Mohammed bin Salman instead of the FBI, the CIA, or British Intelligence.

The Republican acceptance of Trump’s abnormal and seemingly illegal and unconstitutional behavior as his being an “unconventional” president does not bode well for our future as a free republic with legitimate and constitutional checks and balances. Such cowardly, and widely accepted submission to this unconventional abnormality will send the United States well on its way to authoritarianism. Check and mate!

Is America Finn-ished?

By Calvin Hill

As Donald Trump and his allies continue to exploit the free speech rights of professional athletes as being disrespectful to the flag and the military, they have yet to give any reasonable explanation as to why 7 Republican senators found it necessary to spend America’s 242nd birthday in the capital of the country formerly ruled by Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev. Surely, whatever they needed to discuss that required a trip to the Kremlin could have been accomplished, at some point, between July 5th and September 10th. And, it is also highly questionable as to why the President of the United States planned a special trip to Helsinki, Finland to meet with the present Russian president/oligarch, Vladimir Putin, on the heels of a NATO summit.

Both of these visits with the Master of Moscow are virtually inexplicable. The only logical explanation is that they were summoned – which makes sense because of the probability that Putin also had the Republican National Committee hacked – exposing GOP opponents of Donald J. Trump, of which there were many. The intelligence community’s assessment of Vladimir Putin should lead us to believe that Putin would not hedge his bets on an operation so vital. The brilliant documentary, ACTIVE MEASURES (available on ITunes), smartly spells out Putin’s rise to power and his non-violent approach to cultivate dissension and doubts in western democracies. One of the very telling scenes includes Putin seated in a room full of his oligarchs and intelligence cabal, and, with a very wry smile, thanking them for all their efforts after the election of Donald Trump had been secured. In retrospect, it is absolutely chilling. It is almost impossible to absorb this film and not see that the deliberate trashing of our NATO allies by this 45th POTUS was a foregone conclusion on his way to Helsinki – a gift to his Kremlin benefactor. Or perhaps, a mandate.

A bit more difficult to discern is how and why a vast number of Republican senators, who appeared foursquare behind Bob Mueller in his quest for the truth in the Russia investigation, and their threats to protect the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General, have suddenly reversed what they perceived to be their duty and responsibility to defend the investigation. “There’ll be hell to pay,” and “It would be the beginning of the end of the Trump presidency” were just two of the admonishments of South Carolina Senator, Lindsey Graham, before he became a regular golfer with The Donald – and before the death of John McCain. Using the midterm election as their target date for the Senate to abandon any pretext of defending the investigation, there is a common wisdom that the GOP may be able to tamp down a blue wave that could explode were they to engage in allowing a pre-election, Nixon like, Saturday Night Massacre. That is one theory. Another, in a two year series of “coincidences” concerning Trump, his campaign, his administration, and their myriad of lies about meetings and conversations with Russians, is that the sudden change of heart by Senators Graham, Hatch, et.al. suspiciously occurred almost immediately after their Republican senatorial colleagues returned from their July 4th sojourn in Moscow. While the angst of the secret two hour Helsinki meeting between Trump and Putin reached a fever pitch among the intelligence community, the media, and a large swath of the American public who know nothing of what went on in that meeting, we also have not been privy to what took place in Moscow between those 7 GOP senators and whomever they met at the Kremlin. What we do know is that a whole lot of Republicans have suddenly  become hostile to the intelligence community and the Special Counsel investigation as the mounting guilty pleas makes it increasingly apparent that American citizens have been complicit in conspiring to defraud the United States – full stop.

As that has been going on, aiding and abetting an executive destruction of law and order is the departing House Speaker, Paul Ryan, who has failed miserably to rein in the Freedom Caucus and support legitimate and meaningful oversight of the executive branch. Ryan has failed to remove Devin Nunes from the Chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee wherein Nunes’s vast conflicts of interest, as a member of the transition team, is wide and deep. Integrity challenged Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, feigned outrage, that he caused, over the treatment of Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, by blaming the Democrats, who merely requested the documents that female nominees, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor were required to produce. Well before the sexual assault allegations, McConnell told the president that Judge Kavanaugh’s paper trail would make him difficult to confirm. The response by the president and Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley was to hide the paper trail. And as the Republicans prepare to shred the social safety net to close a one year trillion dollar deficit, courtesy of a top up tax cut, Senator Susan Collins has yet to realize that she’s been had to get her tax cut vote. McConnell has done nothing to preserve the Affordable Care Act’s provisions that she cares about. Now, the Maine senator has been duped into believing that Judge Brett Kavanaugh will not decide to reverse Roe v. Wade. In addition to Kavanaugh’s prior confirmation testimony, under oath, being exposed as dishonest, Collins and Arizona Senator Jeff Flake, seemed to be unconcerned that the informative documents provided by female nominees, were being deliberately concealed from them, their colleagues and the American people.

As all this goes on, so-called free trade Republicans and Conservatives sit back and watch job and industry killing tariffs invade the pocketbooks of American consumers. While almost all of Donald Trump’s business ventures outside of real estate have been colossal failures, the GOP has allowed this president to con the American people and businesses into believing that the pain his tariffs are inflicting upon them will only be temporary, and then the results of his deal making prowess will bear fruitful returns – which is what the thousands of employees of his casinos and other bankrupted entities believed on their way to the unemployment office. Or, perhaps it all depends on what the definition of “temporary” is. In any event, when “the art of the deal” has ended in multiple bankruptcies, the self-aggrandizing words and talent of the dealmaker are undeserving of serious consideration. And those who blindly accept such proposals, which have always been antithetical to their policy positions, do deserve serious scrutiny.

When the self-proclaimed “stable genius” returned from Helsinki with his poorly explained defiance of America’s intelligence community as his personal failure of differentiating between would and wouldn’t, the ACTIVE MEASURES documentary paints a very different, extremely disturbing picture. As Vladimir Putin sought to spread his Russian tentacles into western democracies, the vast financial difficulties made Trump’s organization a prime candidate for infiltration. And after witnessing The Donald tearing US alliances apart at the NATO Summit, it is almost impossible to walk away from this film without thinking three very alarming and consequential possibilities. In alphabetical order, they are asset, blackmail and treason.

For those Republicans and Conservatives who were deeply concerned about the president’s behavior in Brussels and Helsinki, but are still willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, and are willing to hedge on their own good sense as it concerns Trump, Putin and Russia, a consultation with a body language reader may be in order. Because after their long, very secret meeting in Finland was over, with the press conference poised to ensue, Putin confidently strode to his podium. With notes in hand, he was smiling as though he had just left a wildly enjoyable orgy. Trump, on the other hand, sauntered to his podium, arms hanging and head hanging, wearing a hang dog expression as though he had just been gangbanged by Russian oligarchs.