I'm having a hard time keeping up with the things I'm supposed to be mad about this week. And that makes me mad.
I'm not a guy who likes to carry grudges, but sometimes you just gotta suck it up and lift. The supreme court hearings are a great reminder.
Three years ago a legitimate, twice elected president was denied a supreme court pick by Kentucky's champion of Party over Population, Senator Mitch McConnell.
There was no legal precedent for the move, no standing principal of governance. McConnell, who had failed miserably in his vow to make Obama a one termer, did what he's done in 90% of his senate career: chose his party over his country.
He wanted to make sure there was no supreme court justice who would vote to overturn Citizen's United, the insane ruling by a conservative majority that made it even easier for people with lots of money to buy politicians and elections.
Which paves the way for questionable "interest groups" to carpet bomb local television and radiowaves with blatant lies and distortions to sway elections. If you watch TV channels out of West Virginia right now, you know exactly what I'm talking about. The Lexington stations have a pretty good share of them too.
So here we are in the middle of another Supreme Court fight and the Democrats, whose slogan should be "Making Republicans Strong since 1980", are pulling out all the stops to blow it again.
I"m not for the confirmation of Kavanaugh, don't get me wrong. I believe conservatives are, in general, wrong about everything and have no business dominating the direction of this country. Backwards is not now, nor has ever been, an improvement.
But surely Diane Feinstein could have forwarded the accusation of sexual harrassment against the nominee a lot earlier. Is there a good reason she waited until the hearings were almost over to act?
Sometimes it isn't better late than never. Sometimes late just looks like desperation and desperate is not a good look going into midterm elections where there is a real chance of taking control of congress out of Republican hands.
I may be wrong, maybe it's a brilliant political move designed to get more women out to vote. But I'm not holding my breath on that one. Don't tell anyone, but a lot of women vote for anti-choice candidates.
Do I think Kavanaugh did what he's accused of? Probably, but I don't really know if I'm being honest with myself, it's a classic he said she said.
What I do know is I'm pretty squeamish about holding a person accountable for bad teenage behavior 30 something years later. Especially if there's no evidence of that kind of thing in the ensuing years. It's early, but this isn't looking like a Harvey Weinstein or Bill Cosby serial predator.
The reason I said probably is simple. He believes he is better suited to make decisions about a woman's body than the woman. It's not a stretch to see how that mindset could lead to sexual assault, especially emboldened by alcohol.