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CSotD: Truth, Justice or the American Way

Mike Lester (AMS) sums up Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearings, in which she was asked a barrage of asinine questions that had nothing to do with her fitness for the position, and in which she politely declined to answer those which were clearly and obviously irrelevant.

He slips in a few sensible topics there, but when she was asked something that had anything to do with her profession — as opposed to how often she goes to church, for instance — she answered eloquently and thoroughly, at which point the Gotcha Gang accused her of using up their harassment time.

 

As Deb Milbrath notes, Mitch McConnell, having previously pronounced her fully qualified, has now declared that he won’t support her nomination, in large part because of her answer to the question of court packing.

In which she said she took the same position as Amy Coney Barrett, whom McConnell did support.

I question the degree to which race played a role, though the race-baiting questions were both extraordinary and transparent.

There may, in fact, be an actual inability to separate color and gender from positions and beliefs, given that Republicans placed Clarence Thomas on the bench to replace Thurgood Marshall, and then Amy Coney Barrett to replace Ruth Ginsburg.

It’s possible that they genuinely can’t see past the external and obvious.

 

After all, it would explain why their understanding of sex and gender is based entirely on penises and vaginas, as seen in this Chip Bok (Creators) commentary, echoed by Tucker Carlson’s graphic of female reproductive organs.

Though, in my benevolent mission of putting the most generous possible misreading on a cartoon, I’m going to assume she’s puzzled because this is a stick drawing of half a man and she wonders where his other half went, and why, since he lacks genitals, he keeps asking her about them instead of going to a doctor.

 

Along which lines I agree with this Tom Stiglich (Creators) cartoon, in which she accurately answers that she is being shown an abstract image by someone who, though knowing she is not a biologist, fancies himself a psychologist, perhaps because he thinks neither requires any depth of study or knowledge.

Sort of like assuming Marshall and Thomas are the same, as are Barrett and Ginsburg.

It’s easier to believe they’re identical if you don’t confuse matters by looking beyond the most superficial iconic traits.

 

OTOH, I’m going to disagree with Matt Davies (AMS), with whom I rarely do, because I suspect, if anything, it would be the opposite: She’d be reminding him to leave his Q-Anon hat behind as he heads for the office.

As Charley Pride noted, nobody knows what goes on behind closed doors, but, nonetheless, the pleasant GOP fiction that the Thomases never talk shop at home beggars the imagination.

I’d be willing to believe that she didn’t put the big bowl of SpaghettiOs on the dinner table and say, “Well, I texted Mark Meadows today and asked him to help overturn the results of the election.”

But asking us to believe that Clarence didn’t know she is a major, active promoter of rightwing lunatic politics is like asking us to believe that Gisele Bündchen doesn’t know her husband plays football for a living.

Though back when he was head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Clarence apparently didn’t know that talking to women about porn and making jokes about public hair might not be appropriate workplace behavior.

Perhaps it’s unfair to assume that he is an intelligent, sensitive and perceptive human being.

 

Nor is it fair to assume that Mark Meadows knows where he lives, and despite Ann Telnaes doubts on the subject, fairness requires we remember that Big Important Men like Meadows have limo service to the office each morning and back home in the evening.

He may not even know that he doesn’t live in the rusty old mobile home listed on his voter registration form. He just knows you come out and get in the big black car in the morning and get back out after work. Where it comes from and where it goes is a mystery.

Anyway, it appears his wife may have filled out those fraudulent voter registration forms.

How on earth could a husband be expected to know what the little lady is up to?

 

Uxorial Juxtaposition of the Day

(Clay Bennett – CSFP)

 

(John Cole)

Bennett and Cole predict disaster, with Cole graphically capturing the vulnerability of mobile homes to tornados, a factor less of how they’re made than of the river bottoms where mobile home parks are often located.

And where people with the purchasing power of the Meadows family rarely live — in their case, apparently never did — though, again, how could he possibly know where his wife said they lived?

But it does look like the hounds may be closing in.

I wish I felt Ginni and Clarence were going to feel something more immediate and earthly than “karma,” but part of the problem is that SCOTUS ethics have been grounded in personal responsibility and common decency, and, if Chief Justice Roberts imposes any pressure on Clarence to be a mensch, it will be quietly, out of sight and likely futile.

Worse, even the Jan 6 committee, from which Q-Anon true believers were excluded, is reportedly divided on whether they should subpoena Ginni to testify about her part in the insurrection, which raises an important question:

Where’s Oliver Cromwell when we need him?

As noted before, until the Supreme Court greenlighted the release of the White House tapes, I was convinced Nixon would escape the charges surrounding Watergate.

I could be wrong again, and nothing would make me happier — or more surprised — than another case in which justice is no respecter of wealth and power.

 

Don’t look for pro-justice riots in the streets.

As Lemont learns to his frustration in this Candorville (WPWG), people only read the headlines and look at the pictures, and, moreover, only the headlines and pictures on the news sites they already know will not force them to change their minds about anything.

Never mind. Here’s a song for Clarence and Ginni and Mark and Debra:

 

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